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Post-Modernity
1. Understands current transi-
tions in epistemological terms
or as dissolving epistemology
altogether.
2. Focuses upon the centrifu-
gal tendencies of current social
transformations and their dis-
locating character.
3. Sees the self as dissolved or
dismembered by the fragment-
ing of experience.
4. Argues for the contextuality
of truth claims or sees them as
"historical."
5. Theorises powerlessness
which individuals feel in the
face of globalising tendencies.
6. Sees the "emptying" of day-
to-day iife as a result of the
intrusion of abstract systems.
7. Regards coordinated politi-
cal engagement as precluded by
the primacy of contextuality
and dispersal.
8. Defines post-modernity as
the end of epistemology/the
individual/ethics.
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Radicalised Modernity
1. Identifies the institutional
developments which create a
sense of fragmentation and
dispersal.
2. Sees high modernity as a set
of circumstances in which dis-
persal is dialectically connected
to profound tendencies
towards global integration.
3. Sees the self as more than
just a site of intersecting forces;
active processes of reflexive
self-identity are made possible
by modernity.
4. Argues that the universal
features of truth claims force
themselves upon us in an irre-
sistible way given the primacy
of problems of a global kind.
Systematic knowledge about
these developments is not pre-
cluded by the reflexivity of
modernity.
5. Analyses a dialectic of pow-
erlessness and empowerment,
in terms of both experience
and action.
6. Sees day-to-day life as an
active complex of reactions to
abstract systems, involving
appropriation as well as loss.
7. Regards coordinated politi-
cal engagement as both possi-
ble and necessary, on a global
level as well as locally.
8. Defines post-modernity as
possible transformations mov-
ing "beyond" the institutions
of modernity.
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