Postmodernism thesis pdf

Directed by Panos Cosmatos. Canada: Magnet Releasing, Netflix Streaming. Ford, Hamish. Both beliefs of the terrorists and counter-terrorists are validated by the critical theory.

It can be said, then, that even in the 21st century, specific principles of the critical theory still holds true and are still reflected in the current political events and movements in the world. Even the school of thought that sprung after the modernist period, postmodernism, is considered valid when discussing the study and issue of counter-terrorism.

Postmodernism does not look at the world as black and white or a dichotomy of oppressor and the oppressed. Instead, it posits that there exists different versions of the truth, and this ideology actually shies away from identifying a 'universal truth' that will determine all realities of the world. Postmodernism embraces the principle of pluralism because of its acceptance of different truths based on different groups of people and their lived experiences. Thus, in studying counter-terrorism using the postmodernist perspective,….

Language - Postmodernism and Truth In Postmodernism and Truth, readers immediately understand Dennett's stark analogies to make his points valid. He strongly believes in the entity of he refers to as "the gulf. Dennett uses instances to explain the reality of this gap between people, especially in the world of philosophy. According to Dennett, people, including both onlookers and participants, don't see this gulf, or actively denies its existence and therein lies the problem.

The term is used in philosophy, literature, social sciences and architecture. Different post-modern thinkers may have different opinions, as Dennett points out against his friend and colleague Richard Rorty and people from different fields may have somewhat different definitions of "postmodernism. Works Cited Dennett, Daniel. What is Intelligence? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Dennett, Daniel.

Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Cinema is, after all, the modernist art form par excellence; and to a certain extent it is the burden of postmodern critique to undo the totalizing artistic concerns of modernism. As De Mul, paraphrasing Lyotard, writes of postmodernism: We could agree with Lyotard…that postmodernism was implicit in modernism from its inception….

De Mul, 19 De Mul's insight here is amply borne out in cinema: almost any film could be understood…. Culture Within organization frameworks, postmodernism tends to look at an organization more in light of contemporary views on diversity, job satiscation, teamwork, managers as leaders, and coordination of efforts.

Hierarchies exist, but are not the primary form of organizational behavior -- teams are more of a flat design. This view holds that the success or failure of a contemporary business or organization is quite dependent upon the management of diversity. Public and private sector organizations, both are involved in numerous federally mandated programs that are designed to reduce cultural and communication barriers within the workplace.

Multiculturalism is no longer a "nice-to," with the era of globalization upon us, and rapidly growing, diversity training and maximization of multicultural understanding, combined with management and leadership commitment to provide a diverse workplace, is now the norm.

The same is true in accepting and managing a diverse workforce -- those over 55 perhaps vs. Family Process. Ungar, M. Social Work. Postmodernism in arsan Shire's Poetry Born in Kenya, Somali-origin writer arsan Shire pens poems that are an uncompromising depiction of an African outlook. This London-based poet's work emphasizes the continent's culture, challenges, armed conflict, societal beliefs, and other negative issues impacting its people. The majority of Shire's works are a reflection of self-experience, steady testimonies and prayer.

She attempts to portray the society, from kids', females', lovers' and migrants' standpoints. Thus, a majority of her poems reflect postmodernism. She aims at presenting a systematic personal outlook using her superior knowledge on societal aspects and values. In this paper, the following three poems composed by Shire -- 'Home', 'Ugly', and 'The letter my mum would have written had she known English' -- will be analyzed for postmodernism and for Shire's representation of Africans.

Ugly This is an unusual piece of poetry wherein Shire reveals her fears being a woman in the…. Works cited Wars an Shire, 'The letter my mother would have written had she known English.

Flipped eye London. Flipped eye. Because of the extreme nature of the pop culture, it has presented a psychological windfall for study in excessiveness.

It is represented by an excess of economic affluence, drugs, sex, and expressions of behavior. The excessiveness is found not just in the music industry, but also in literature, film, and paintings and photography. It is all encompassing of all art expressions.

One important definition of the post-modern, as a radically sceptical and questioning attitude of mind, is that provided by the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard , who wrote of it in terms of 'the death of grand narratives', with Marxism and Freudianism particularly in mind.

Lyotard would see as futile attempts to consider the modern and post-modern in terms of historical periodisation. For him,…. Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings. Auckland, N. Book online. Accessed 24 August Modernism to Deconstruction. New York: Peter Lang, Del Loewenthal, and Robert Snell.

Hove, England: Brunner-Routledge, The research the authors review spans the period from -- , in which significant developments occurred regarding consumption, advertising, technology, and culture.

This article aims to describe the nature and philosophy of Consumer Culture Theory. The authors contend that Consumer Culture Theory varies from other homogenous theories and concepts of culture. They describe consumer culture as a social arrangement between individuals and society. For the authors, Consumer Culture Theory concentrates upon and describes the world as multitudinous.

In the world of Consumer Culture Theory, there are many meanings and groups in the global capitalist market. Consumer Culture Theory recognizes the links among everyday experience, material resources, social resources, and the mediation of resources through economic markets. The thesis of the…. References: Arnould, E. Journal of Consumer Research, 31 4 , -- Firat, A.

Journal of Consumer Research, 22 3 , -- They are often used relatively loosely and postmodernism in particular is deployed in a very flexible manner, to denote a form of art based upon pastiche and humor with a kind of ironic, self-referential quality. The difficulty of defining postmodernism is due to the fact that the philosophy denies the idea of modern 'progress' or the ability to arrive at a secure definition of reality. Instead, "postmodernists deny both the possibility and the desirability of an integral postmodernist philosophy," and postmodern philosophers often seem to share little other than a sense of opposition to modernism Nekrasas The idea that there are no truths, only subjective beliefs, might seem antithetical to the sciences, including the health sciences, and there are some postmodernists who deny the….

References Hutton, Erica. An examination of post-positivism. Erica Hutton, PhDc. Positivism, post-positivism, and postmodernism. Postmodernism Capitalism entered a new 'postmodern' phase in the s and s in which small-scale and entrepreneurial enterprises revived, and became the most dynamic sector of the economy in the West.

This revival coincided with the reemergence of free market conservatism under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the same time, along with a culture that became more aggressively competitive, egotistic and individualistic.

During the same period, economists and sociologists rediscovered "sweatshops and…informal activities of all kinds" as the older Fordist mass production industries declined and shifted labor to low-wage regions in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Labor, production and capital markets all become more "flexible" and mobile arvey, , p.

All of these trends had already existed for decades, to be sure, but the new computer and communications technologies accelerated them greatly. Postmodern political-economy is "a fantastic world of booming paper wealth and assets," prone to severe…. Harvey characterized modernism as it existed from the 19th Century to the s as based on Fordist mass production and consumption at least in the Western world and Japan , bureaucracy, collectivism, labor unions and the welfare state.

Its culture was materialistic, authoritarian; paranoid and alienated, symbolized by the anonymity of the big city and the large organization. Postmodernism is more laissez faire and free market, individualistic, entrepreneurial and decentralized, based finances, services and virtual money rather than production. Its workforce was more white-collar than blue-collar, and its culture was schizophrenic, chaotic, pluralist and eclectic.

Politically, postmodernism favored celebrities and charismatic, transformational leaders rather than faceless managers and bureaucrats Harvey, p. Some philosophers who were hailed as postmodernists like Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man were better characterized as anti-modernists with fascist sympathies, but postmodern culture and political-economy should not be dismissed as synonymous with fascism.

Indeed, it is more neoliberal, chaotic and disorganized than totalitarian, and seems to have no center. Its ideologies are more ephemeral than concrete or totalizing. Unlike classical Marxism, postmodernist politics emphasizes culture, gender, race and religion -- identity politics -- rather than unified metanarratives and ideologies centered on social class.

Postmodern technology has caused a sense of shrinking, compressed time and space in which a constant stream of disconnected and incoherent images seem more real or hyper-real than concrete reality itself. New Left politics of the s and s were harbingers of postmodernity, although their emphasis on gender, race, sexuality and the counterculture "connected better with anarchism and libertarianism than with traditional Marxism, and set the New Left against traditional working-class attitudes and institutions" Harvey, p.

One of the great ironies of the postern era is how the politics of the New Left and New Right interested in this peculiar way that undermined organized labor and the welfare state, and unleashed a revival of free market capitalism. Although the New Left radicals and hippies of the s could hardly have intended this, in the end the fact that their movements coexisted in the same time and space as the New Right or Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan turned out to be anything but coincidental.

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Mark Leyner Hey-I know this looks long, but it's about words without the two long quotations from the book. So it's actually the right length according to the assignment, but you might want to mention that to the instructor. A selection from Mark Leyner's work Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog is included by the editors of the Norton Anthology Postmodern American Fiction, although Leyner himself claims in a note in the anthology that his "work isn't animated by a desire to be experimental or post-modernist or aesthetically subversive or even 'innovative' -- it is animated by a desire to craft a kind of writing that is at every single moment exhilarating for the reader, where each phrase, each sentence is an event.

As a result the entirety of Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog holds up as a kind of aesthetic whole…. This comes to only point out the fact that the role of postmodernism is essential because it offers a different perspective through which humans can understand the events taking place around them and can interpret them to provide meanings that would be useful in their own development and in the development of the social being.

One of the important aspects of postmodernism is that unlike other theories that have been advocated throughout the decades, this approach takes into account the human perception of things.

The development of this trend was essential because the human individual needed a framework through which it could accept, acknowledge and deal with the changes taking place around it. More precisely, at the end of the 19th century, the issue of industrialization together with the huge developments that were taking place at the level of the political changes, economic burst, and cultural revolutions set the human….

Works Cited Chorney, Harold. Scarborough: Nelson Canada International Thompson ltd. Greenpeace International. The Founders of Greenpeace. Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, Modernity and Modernism, Postmodernity and Postmodernism : p This paradigmatic view recognizes that the world is constantly changing and subsequently, no one position or perspective of the world should be privileged over any other Jennings, Postmodern thinkers are bothered by the implication of modern ontology that since there is one world out there, and observation is not problematic, then there is only one reasonable interpretation of the world.

The postmodern philosopher counters that while there may in fact be only one 'true' world out there, "there are many reasonable, but distinct interpretations or understandings of that world" Moore, , pg.

Postmodernism rejects the pictorial metaphor of knowledge in favor of a constructivist metaphor Lyotard, As such, postmodernism provides new, unconstrained ways to move…. References: Arbib, M.

The construction of reality. Becvar, D. Family therapy: A systemic integration. Fruggeri, L. Therapeutic process as the social construction of change. McNamee Eds. Gergen, K. The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Post positivism Defining Post positivism: definitional exercise in identity politics, in expanding cultural and semiotic discourse, and reinterpreting the continuing the literary effort of the 20th and 21st century to deconstruct human life and society Postmodernism, the literary buzzword of the past century, is often considered to be a 'liberal' form of hermeneutics, in the sense that rather than attempting to define what makes the canon great, it attempts to expand the notion of what is a literary canon, what is great literature in general.

However, many liberal political activists have accused the deconstructionit movement and the postmodern aesthetic for its tendency towards reductionism and relativism. In other words, by stressing that everything, including identity, is a construction, there is little ground for feminist and Marxist critics to stand on, politically, speaking, to make a material critique of oppressive structures within a society.

If all definitions are contextually based, how…. Works Cited Moya, Paula. University of California Press, However, this can create the impression of feminists being 'desperate' to find examples of female greatness and over-inflating the reputation of relatively minor artists. Other feminist art historians have criticized the notion of what constitutes 'greatness' as overly masculine in quality and tried to create a new, specifically female-centric notions of artistic greatness.

Feminist critic Linda Nochlin sees this as problematic given that there is no clear feminine principle uniting women artists through the ages: in fact, women artists and writers are more apt to resemble males of their respective periods than they are of all women throughout the ages. Instead, Nochlin asserts that the absence of great female artists is similar to the reason why there are…. Works Cited Hoffman, Lewis. Post Modernism: A Forced Impact The objective of this work is to describe a philosophy or philosophies that the writer of this work ascribes to and to explain why specifically incorporating values and beliefs held by the writer.

As well, discussed will be the personal philosophy of the writer as it relates to the purpose of education, the student's role and the role of the school in society, locally, nationally, and internationally as well as the role of students and parents as well as teachers and administrators.

Also addressed in this study is where ideals are derived from and examined will be development of curriculum and instruction, classroom management issues, school management and administration issues as well as diversity of education and how education can best cope with change. Finally, this work will examine education as an integral part of lifelong learning and who should be in receipt of an…. Bibliography Aronowitz, S. Postmodern education: Politics, culture and social criticism.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Elkind, D. Schooling and family in the postmodern world. Hargreaves Ed. ASCD Yearbook. Media hegemony: Towards a critical pedagogy of Representation. Giroux, H. Living dangerously: Multiculturalism and the politics of difference.

Your request will be reviewed and you will receive an email when it's processed. Toggle navigation. ScholarsArchive OSU. Advanced Search. Home Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation. Copy link. Obviously, people can sell their products in an open market or online exchange, but they cannot sell their experiences. The phrase "gaining a life experience" is an allegory. The food you enjoy outdoors is an often used example of the "experiential market".

Consumers buy food, beverages and services from a service provider. They can also receive information from a company through an interesting discussion. But they can actually buy and pay for the food, drink and services and perhaps dinner, but not the overall "atmosphere" created.

Consumers only pay for the main fixed assets eg airfare to a destination, hotel to stay, tour guide, food and drinks. They do not pay, for example, to watch a sunset from the plane or the feeling triggered during a bicycle ride or to watch the Eiffel Tower and more.

So one cannot ask for his money back because he did not enjoy the aforementioned experiences. Consumers understand that there is generally a conceptual ambiguity between the two concepts under consideration.

Gilovich et al. A particular focus of the research is the study of the relation between these movements and trends with the postmodern period, the consumer culture and capitalism. The research tool that was used for the methodology part of the dissertation and for the analysis of the research question is the qualitative research method and more specifically the one of qualitative interviews.

The reason behind the choice of this research tool is the fact that it studies human motivations through understanding perceptions, beliefs and attitudes and helps to investigate how certain segments of the population perceive ideas and issues or to explain why certain segments of the population make choices or even how thoughts and ideas vary between them. According to Tuckman, an interview is defined as the possibility of 'entering' into what is happening in the subject's mind Tuckman, Interviews, therefore, are the means by which the information and knowledge of the person, his or her values and preferences are presented, but mainly his or her views and perceptions, focusing on the perspectives from which the individual feels and experience the events as they study 'why something happens', not just 'what's happening'.

For this reason, qualitative research was selected through qualitative interviews, which enable each analyst to investigate in depth the chosen topic. For the shake of the research, six different people between the ages of 26 and 39 who follow the movement of minimalism and the one of the tiny house were asked. Moreover, another complication was the language barrier, since two of the participants spoke Spanish and there was a need for a translation in English.

For a living she is working online building her own business and team focusing on creating awareness for natural living and she also sometimes builds vans. Laura follows the minimalistic lifestyle and also lives full time in a van. When you live in a space that is so limited, you got to watch out for what you buy. But I think the journey actually starts before that… I think most people who switch to this lifestyle have actually felt the want for less and then chose this lifestyle as a consequence.

I figure even now when I reduced my everyday stuff to fit in a van, I still find things I barely use. For me I also feel lighter. I feel like every materialistic thing I own kind of attaches a string to me. So the less I own, the more free I feel.

We have very few things and we use almost all the time the same clothes, the ones we are most comfortable in. The same vision as Nadia, has Rachel Manning, a 29 year old Silversmith who has been following the vanlife movement and a more sustainable and minimal life with her husband Sam, 30 and son Ellis, 2. Mentally freeing but also freeing from the constraints of society.

It forces you to readjust the ways our brains have been trained as consumerists to view things. I think living minimally is a necessity to becoming more sustainable in a World that is desperately running out of resources.

It also makes you appreciate the small things like water and food! Parenthood really made us question what was important to us and we became really critical of how our actions tallied to our intentions.

We wanted to spend more quality time together. We wanted to live more meaningfully and sustainably. We wanted to be free — outside of the usual everyday tethers. And importantly we wanted our Son to experience the beauty of the World at a young age so that he could develop his own love and appreciation for Nature. Vanlife just really offered us a means to fulfil our dream - Minimal and sustainable travel whilst really immersing ourselves in Nature.

I was tired of purchasing more and more and not feeling satisfied, and wanted to put an end to the wasted time and energy. The advantages are definitely more time spent with other people and on more important things!

There is not space!! Less things, less weight in your back, in your head. You become more conscious about what you consume and of what you throw away.

As Rachel explains, living in a tiny house with small space design means everything has to extremely carefully considered for usage and it has to be multipurpose, while at the same time retrieving an item from a cupboard or draw means having to move lots of other items, so things can get messy quickly.

Moreover, everyday tasks can become more menial. Having to be extremely conscious of water usage and needing to find water fillups. Finally, according to Rachel, rainy days can be challenging when spending a whole day in a small space, especially with a toddler.

Peter, a 33 year old cybersecurity engineer, who follows the van life and minimalistic movement with his girlfriend a freelance photographer, 30 , also states that the challenges of living in such a small space is less personal space and less room to store things.

This of course makes me really excited. However, we are yet to see anyone actually make any positive changes. Sometimes we feel like people are not willing to make changes or sacrifices for the greater good of the World. Social media has been overwhelmingly positive and we have made lots of wonderful connections and friends with people living in a similar manner. Some people say I have too little that it's depressing, others comment that they aren't minimalist but they have less than me -- comments like these reflect that everyone's journey and perspective on their belongings and minimalism is different.

We have the entire world as a terrace. Opinions go more for not having conventional jobs, kids not going to school And yes this lifestyle we are trying to build. People are scared of us and envy us at the same time. I believe people are starting to shift their values and that more and more people realize that the current system that we have been taught to live is not gonna last and that there must be more to life than this. I believe more people start to see that working all your life, being unhappy and more so unsatisfied with every day only to finally retire but most likely be sick because of all the stress and dissatisfaction you lived through for about 40 years is not why we are here.

I believe more people want to experience life fully and start to realize that they can make the most of it now and that it is their responsibility to do so. In Japan, the Marie Kondo trend took off after the earthquake and nuclear disaster which struck in , making people question how much they owned.

In America, people have been taking up minimalism in response to over- consumerism which has been the norm for generations. I know people like myself have gotten tired of consumeristic ways, but we'll see if this trend actually stays and becomes the norm for society. Those lands are rural areas and you cannot construct many square meters, so they Just build small houses and have land to run, live, grow plant that give them food, etc.

Also is Spain many people now are buying campervans so they don't have to pay the crazy rents. People are being conscious of the tons of things that we consume that sometimes go directly to the rubbish without being used. Resources being exploit unnecessarily. We newt to slow down, and it goes with the lifestyle. Many people are in the move. However, Laura and Rachel would disagree.

According to Rachel, capitalism and the mainstream mass consumer culture is all about business, growth and money; thriving off our insecurities and need to conform. The rate at which the collective race of humans are using resources to fuel this modern way of living is unsustainable and we are rapidly running out. We cannot keep living the way we have been.

And this is where minimalism goes directly against the modern living. Living minimally forces you to be extremely critical about what you already have and your future purchases. So what you do have needs to have a real purpose and ideally made well enough to last. You are so busy enjoying the word and nature that you forget about the insecurities you have about your appearance and so you stop using make up or hair dye In my personal experience.

You become more aware about your usage of water and where your waste is going. Your overall footprint becomes smaller because you use less energy than having a big house. Ever since I started minimalist living, I've thought quite differently about my goals in life - before it was all about stability and being able to purchase whatever I wanted, but now it's about earning just enough to live and save a bit for the future, without sacrificing so much time and energy in my work or desires for new things.

So people start to look for more, what else there is. I think for the majority of humans to reach this state we still got a while to go. In the conclusions outline the main findings of the analysis and outline issues that warrant further investigation. Summarizing what has been discussed so far and the results of the research, we come to some conclusions. Taking into consideration the point of view and the reasoning of all the interviewers, we can easily come to the realization that the main reasons for following this lifestyle are two.

The first one is highly ideological, political and environmental reasons and the second one is social and practical, without other extensions. More specifically, for some of them, being a minimalist is a conscious decision derived from strict and high standards, values and ethics. For some other people, on the other hand, the minimalistic lifestyle is not a conscious decision, a purpose or a prerequisite, as contrary to the previous category, it is not based on moral code but on a more practical and socially acquired mindset derived from economical and space arrangement reasons.

In addition, another important outcome of the interview is about the nature of these movements and how they are perceived by the people who follow them. There is a distinction between those who perceive minimalism as a trend and alternative movement and those who disagree. The group of people who argue that minimalism is indeed an alternative movement is suggesting that because they compare it to general and broad mainstream social standards that prevail, while the ones that believe that it is not actually a subculture, make the comparison between their relatively close surroundings.

Again, the distinction is made based on different personal mindset, opinions and perspectives. The replacement of "communities of resemblance" by "circumstance communities" expanded liquidity as a social-to-interpersonal property, shattering lasting bonds and never overthrowing state institutions such as marriage and the family. Depersonalization has transformed, in the example of citizen privatization, into a mechanism for managing close personal relationships.

The above changes have been carried out under the high supervision of the respective power structures and assisted by the modern and later postmodern model of power, which are associated with the incoherent, omnipresent modern states. The liberal state, by default operating on market conditions, displaced the subjects who resisted the new consumerist lifestyle and clearly saw with clear aims of exemplary and punishing the disobedient members resolute human lives and unworthy lives.

Thus, the post-war economic revolution has particularly affected society, with the result that multiple changes have taken place within it. Although all of the above issues have no coherence with each other, they nonetheless are the main focus of the postmodern era and directly contribute to the formation of a new 'race' of people, which is characterized by strong feelings of compassion and tendencies.

Brown, ; Wehner, Nowadays, postmodern philosophy proposes a situation in which the individual, freed from the constraints of collective ideals, can create his personality with few constraints and many choices. Brown, More specifically, these postmodern communities are by their very nature small and unstable and share common feelings, lifestyles, morals and eating habits.

In short, postmodern society is a network of small groups and subcultures, one of which is minimalism, whose members share common emotional bonds, cultures, visions, experiences, and passions, while forming their own interpretations, symbols, invisible and virtual races; Brown, ; Cova, ; Cova, Races, in which the person is constantly changing roles and persons, rendering the work of any sociologist, psychologist, and marketing expert to classify the consumer into specific groups and market segments.

Pine, ; Brown, ; Cova, ; Turow, ; Cova, These groups and subcultures such as minimalism, have the capacity to change the relation of man to his own needs and to society as a whole. What changes in post-capitalist, communist society is that man ceases to submit to the needs of production and subordinates production to his own needs. Thus, it is possible to achieve a transition from the illusion of the freedom of capitalism to the real freedom of man within his society as a human being Mandalakis, With its development, this kingdom of physical necessity is enlarged, as its needs grow.

At the same time, however, the productive forces that meet these needs are expanding. Freedom in this field can only consist in the fact that the social man, the cooperative producers will rationalize their exchange of matter with nature, subject it to joint control by themselves, rather than being dominated by it as a blind one.

Beyond this begins the development of man's forces, as an end in itself, the true kingdom of liberty, which can flourish only on the basis of that kingdom of need. Minimalism is one of these postmodern subcultures that was born in the postmodern era as a response to the capitalistic and consumer lifestyle and could be even perceived as a revolution against this dominant power of consumerism.

As Marx states, "A radical revolution can only be a revolution of radical needs" Marx, a: These are needs that cannot be met in capitalism, despite being born in it. Moreover, the realization of these needs comes at the same time as the realization of their dissatisfaction with the existing system.

The capitalist society does not only produce alienation but also the alienation of consciousness. The radical need is the need that cannot be integrated into capitalism, develops contradictory during its own development and becomes individually and socially conscious.

The present paper extracts much from the literature and attempts to address the major issues related to postmodernity and consumer culture. The wide range of bibliographic sources makes it difficult to adequately and deeply cover all issues. However, particular emphasis was put on trying to combine existing postmodernity and consumerism theory. Instead they will expect that solutions to the problems can be found through an ever more rigorous and even more precise application of the old methods.

Indeed Rendtorff uses the notion of paradigm in a somewhat contradictory way. On the one hand he argues that the Wellhausen paradigm dominates Old Testament scholarship during this century, but simultaneously sees Gunkel, Von Rad and Noth as undermining this paradigm.

Thus he writes: I have sought to demonstrate that Old Testament scholarship in this century was, and still is, deeply determined by the methods of Literarkritik, in the form of the Documentary hypothesis. Rendtorff implies that this direction is towards contemporary focus on the final form of the text. Rendtorff is concerned to establish continuity between historical criticism and contemporary readings of the Old Testament and consequently a narrative of continuity fits his purposes. It fails, however, to do justice to the strong reaction to modernity that is at the heart of postmodernity and which underlies the crisis in Old Testament studies today.

Rendtorff implies as much when he says that the crisis has shattered the edifice of half a millennium of Old Testament scholarship. A Solution? What has changed is the scholarly attitude to the sources, in particular to the main core of sources, namely the texts of the Old Testament itself.

He dislikes this tendency and even more the tendency of those engaged in such ventures to declare their method the only right one and those who pursue more traditional approaches biblicists or fundamentalists. There are many scholarly approaches and methods, in Bible studies as well as in history writing.

Nobody will forbid any scholar or group or school to believe their own method to be the best one. Many will be interested in seeing the results and checking their validity and usefulness. But in scholarship there is by definition no heresy.

We should rather practice and accept methodological pluralism. Nicholson, Interpreting the Old Testament. The great advantage in the newer literary methods is, according to Rendtorff, their concern with the text as it is.

For too long Old Testament scholarship has neglected the final form of texts. This is a kind of nineteenth-century hubris we should have left behind us. I believe it has changed already. But the field is open.

Many new and fruitful approaches are visible that will lead Old Testament scholarship into the twenty-first century. At the moment there is no new model that could be expected to achieve common acceptance as a paradigm, and there will probably be none in the near future.

What he does not perhaps take adequate account of is the ideological exclusivism that permeated historical criticism. Now that the boot is on the other foot it is too easy to make a plea for methodological pluralism. Rendtorff correctly recognises that Old Testament studies is increasingly characterised by fragmentation and pluralism; common postmodern themes.

But it is not just that the Wellhausen paradigm has lost its power, as Rendtorff correctly asserts, but that the underpinnings of the dominant mode of Old Testament interpretation in modernity seem to many no longer valid. The postmodern turn has called modernity into question: since the dominant method of Old Testament interpretation in modernity, historical criticism, is deeply rooted in the modern world view, it is inevitable that historical criticism should also partake of the crisis of modernity.

It is this link that Rendtorff has not explored in his analysis of the contemporary crisis in Old Testament studies, and consequently he too easily speaks of continuity between [p. Not that there is no continuity: but the crisis is philosophical as well as methodological, with different epistemologies competing for attention.

We have to ask whether or to what extent the questions posed by traditional Old Testament scholarship have been legitimate and of what relevance they are in a changed framework. Who and what we are, what communities we belong to, these elements are always involved in our Old Testament interpretation. So called neutral historical critical scholarship was deeply prejudiced in its own ways, something which the myth of neutrality sought to conceal.

The crisis is bigger than he realises. The problem is, as we have said, not just one of methodological pluralism but of philosophical epistemological pluralism. The implication of this is that no single paradigm can claim to be the obvious one: each must now give an account of itself. If Old Testament scholars continue to labour under the banner of neutral historical criticism or propose the sort of methodological pluralism that Rendtorff does, they will need to account for their use of this particular epistemology in Old Testament studies.

We will examine their approaches to develop our analysis of the postmodern situation and to see how they propose Old Testament studies be reshaped in this new situation. Brueggemann, The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. In a culture saturated with religious belief involving the Bible, this weakness was less apparent, for the defence was less called for. Now, however, after secularism has impugned the worth of the Bible, and multiculturalism has begun to critique the cultural traditions at the base of which it stands, biblical scholars, including, I must stress, even the most antireligious among them, must face this paradoxical reality: the vitality of their rather untraditional discipline has historically depended upon the vitality of traditional religious communities, Jewish and Christian When fundamentalists become liberals Brueggemann emphasises the change in our epistemological context signified by the postmodern turn.

Historical criticism has been shaped by this construct and shares in its crisis: It is my judgement that church interpretation especially where historical criticism has been taken with excessive seriousness has tended to trim and domesticate the text not only to accommodate regnant modes of knowledge, but also to enhance regnant modes of power. More succinctly, imagination as the quintessential human act is a valid way of knowing.

Imagination as a human act does not yield the kind of certitude required by Cartesian [p. Perdue, The Collapse of History. We thus need a mode of reading the Bible which funds postmodern imagination.