Postmodernism Views, Gandhis Philosophy, Modernism Political Science YouTube Lecture Handouts

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Postmodernism Views, Gandhis Philosophy, Modernism|Political Science

Title: Postmodernism

Illustration: Postmodernism

Introduction

Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.

Modernism

  • Modernity first came into being with the Renaissance. Modernity implies “the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world” (Sarup 1993) . In essence this term emerged in the context of the development of the capitalist state.
  • The fundamental act of modernity is to question the foundations of past knowledge, and Boyne and Rattansi characterize modernity as consisting of two sides: “the progressive union of scientific objectivity and politico-economic rationality mirrored in disturbed visions of unalleviated existential despair”

Post Modernism and Modern Philosophy

  • Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th through the 19th century) .
  • Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period.
  • Postmodern political scientists claim that in these marginal sites it is impossible to construct a coherent narrative, or story, about what is really taking place without including contesting and contradicting narratives, and still have a “true” story from the perspective of a “sovereign subject,” who can dictate the values pertinent to the “meaning” of the situation.

Gandhi as a Postmodern Thinker

Illustration: Gandhi as a Postmodern Thinker

Objectives of Post-Modernism

  • It works to establish an ideology free society.
  • The cultural aspect of any society plays a very important role in studying the post modernistic elements in that society.
  • Post modernism can be termed as a process rather than as a stage.
  • Post modernism is available in almost all the subjects of social sciences viz. Economics, anthropology, literature, arts etc.

Questions

1. Difference between the modernism and post-modernism?

2. In some political science theories modernism and post-modernism evolve concurrently?

Mayank