The 'Primitive,' the 'Real,' and the 'World System': Knowledge Producion in Comtemporary Anthropology
1992; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3138/utq.61.4.430
ISSN1712-5278
Autores Tópico(s)Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics
ResumoThere can be no doubt that the theorizing of those writers who have defined the postmodern movement—Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty among others—has produced a number of arguments which offer a substantial challenge to the assumptions of traditional Western philosophy. While it would be misleading to suggest that the writings of these critics form a monolith unity, it is nevertheless possible to point to a number overlapping themes and motifs in their arguments. The body of work which has become known as postmodem theory is suspicious of Western rationalism's claims that a neutral and objective reason can formulate accurate, unbiased knowledge; it is suspicious of any assumption that human reason is homogeneous and universal, unaffected by the specific experiences of the individual knower; it is suspicious of the presupposition that knowledge is generated from a free play of the intelligence and is not bound up with or implicated in forms of power and systems of domination. To raise such questions is to imply that the goal, purpose, and justification of knowledge can no longer be unreflectively defined as a pursuit of an absolute, timeless truth.
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