Can the Post-Modern world be considered anthropocentric?

Urgh.

I think the term you're looking for is either solipsistic or self- centered.

And following on from Nick, one of those narratives is certainly that of the the individual. Several 'postmodern' theorists, including most prominently Michel Foucault, would argue that the self is a discursive construct.

I don't think Postmodernism can be attacked for being self-centred. Its theorists are trying to get to grips with how as human beings we communicate with each other, and with how concepts like power and knowledge operate within society. It's all very politically motivated.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=74811

^^^ my mom has been telling me for a while the fundies up in rural SC are going around saying "post-modernism" is the cause of all of americas moral decay too.... does anybody know the o.g. source for this?

kinda funny cuz intelligent design pplz are big on 'there's no objective truth, we should teach all the different theories about the origins of life' and shit

http://www.onenewsnow.com/uploadedImages/Media/Images/right%20decision_wrong%20decision.jpg

I was talking to a christian recently who claimed that "postmodernism" was what was killing the church off, taking away any spiritual dimension from people's lives, etc...

So I sez, "Well, the modernists weren't too hot on religion either, were they?" And he was all like "Uhhh... who were the modernists, then?"

headinhands.jpg

Didn't Pope John Paul have a tract of some kind where he blamed post-modernism for the ills of the world?

i think the "postmodernism is evil" thing started with the intellectual wing of conservatism and translated easily to the culture-war mainstream. all they really need to know about it is that a bunch of liberal eggheads are teaching their kids that there's no right or wrong.

kinda funny cuz intelligent design pplz are big on 'there's no objective truth, we should teach all the different theories about the origins of life' and shit

-- and what, Sunday, 11 May 2008 14:57

Yeah, Bill Maher pulled this one out on Dawkins in an interview.

It's about resentment over control of academia too.

http://geordierussell.instone.net/Jukebox/Img/M/MSP%20-%20This%20Is%20My%20Truth,%20Tell%20Me%20Yours....jpg

Would christians prefer some good old fashioned modernist marxist dogma, then?

*snort*

*snigger*

I fault the post-moderns, the homo-sexuals, and the free-masons.

I blame the evil mathematicians and their Chaos theory!!!!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41092A6WKPL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

This book talks about postmodernism and modern religion and their weird overlap and sometimes similar effects.

Christian Game Theory

(NB that site is satirical and fucking awesome.)

"If we bicker among ourselves over adiaphora -- such as the Triclavianist would have us do -- we will weaken our National resolve and leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would abolish our Covenant Freedom."

Take for instance the Prisoner's Dilemma game as illustrated above. According to the payoff matrix for this game, the best policy for minimizing losses is to testify against the other criminal. Since both criminals will realize this, the natural outcome is for both criminals to testify, thereby resulting in them both being punished for breaking the law. This outcome is in agreement with traditional Christian morality which teaches that we should not commit crimes and that we should tell the truth.

Homosexuality is a zero-sum game as well since one man plus another man equals zero children.

In a broad way, the OP makes sense. If modernism was concerned with demographics, systems thinking, internationalism, scientific progress, achievable utopias, communicability, objective truths arrived at by rationally guided consensus, etc. - and it was - then modernism was essentially anti-individualist.

In that light, post-modernism could be construed as the revenge of the person-specific, the subjective. Simplistic, but why not?

Anyway, yeah. Christians are funny.

Maybe simplification vs. re-complexification is a better bracketing scheme though.

does anybody know the o.g. source for this?

catholic church has been railing against "postmodernism" for a while

As have conservative political thinkers. The idea that seemingly "objective" historical & scientific truths reflect cutural/social conditioning & as much as any inarguable baseline reality pissed 'em off from the get go.

Postmodern theologians are hilarious though.

In a broad way, the OP makes sense. If modernism was concerned with demographics, systems thinking, internationalism, scientific progress, achievable utopias, communicability, objective truths arrived at by rationally guided consensus, etc. - and it was - then modernism was essentially anti-individualist.

In that light, post-modernism could be construed as the revenge of the person-specific, the subjective. Simplistic, but why not?

If you put it that way, yes. But modernity also invested a lot in the idea of a undivided personhood and integrated identity as the basis of subjectivity. Whereas postmodern theories claim subjectivity and identity are divided, fragmentary and constantly reproduced in interaction with social forces. This why the postmodernism has also been called anti-humanism, because it undermines the basic principles of humanism. So in that sense postmodernism is less anthropocentric than modernism, because it criticizes the idea of a unified individual human subject as the basis of knowledge and action.

I mean, one of the principle tenets of modernism was that human beings can master the world via objective scientific study and approproation of technology, whereas postmodernism casts sever doubts on those ideas. So in that sense modernism put humans on much higher pedestal.

Apart from Mark S's plausible deniability above, two answers:

1. PoMo is anti-anthro because it is anti-humanist and denies the agency / centrality / self-knowledge of the self

2. PoMo is anthro because it is Culturalist. In seeing things as Constructs, it is effectively seeing them as bound to / made by the Human world of meanings, language, discourse, texts etc -- rather than eg the Natural world of physical processes as known to hard science, or the Divine world of gods, supernatural beings as known to theology.

"It's about resentment over control of academia too".

maybe, but I think its less resentment, and more about thinking “rational criteria” or maybe a “type of cognition” and not just culture/language/context are important—ie "how" we interpret, ”how" we understand, “what" we accept etc, to wit, "postmodernists claim to have stolen the sacred fire. Does anyone pay them the compliment of wishing to steal it from them?"

That Francis Wheen book mentioned upthread ("How Mumbo-Jumbo Comquered the World") is really good, apart from the stuff on post-modernism, which is all arguments against straw men.

there was a point when the fundamentalists & crazed righty dudes were very down on "deconstructionism" as another cause of moral rot

unsuspecting Christian men have every right to be fearful

yeah, pluralism scares the crap out of a lot of churches. i've heard several sermons against post-modernism here and there.

there's a movement known as "Emergent Christianity" (it has several names) that's embracing post-modernism however. it's realizing that if christians don't embrace this dominant western view, it's going to push belief further and further into the corner as it has in Europe.

it's not really so ridiculously off message either. God as omniscient prime mover has the absolute truth. since we're limited and sinful, we don't. there's always been differences in the theology of various believers... in some sense, embracing that competing textual revelations have always happened kind of informs the fractured state of the church today.

my uncle actually wrote about it in his doctoral thesis... post-modernism is actually kind of good for "faith"... too many christians try to prove their way via archaeological evidence, which anybody who is remotely educated knows that gets tricky in a heartbeat. it's almost better to adopt the "Mysteries of God"... mysticism is a good thing. although, it may not appeal to the evidence-obsessed strains of contempary culture.

m.

Interesting thoughts, MSP. I do see the link between eroded certainty and the concomitant value of faith. And of course lots of Theory bods turned to Theology in the 1990s etc, often suspending the question of its truth and falsity.