Two Perspectives on the “Us” and Postmodern Thought

المؤلفون

  • المؤلف

  • Azmi Bishara

الكلمات المفتاحية:

Postmodernism، Relativism، Scientific Objectivity، Universal Ethics، Morality، Scientific Theories

الملخص

This study offers a critical reading of the implications of importing postmodern thought into a non-Western context. It argues that postmodern claims on the relativity of truth, the deconstruction of grand narratives, the transcendence of the authority of universal reason, and scepticism toward human agency are grounded conditions of Western modernity that remain absent in partially modernized societies. The study shows that the adoption of postmodern critique in a modern/premodern context can contribute to the erosion of scientific objectivity, the justification of moral relativism, and the reinforcement of modes of traditional authority. This study focuses on the domains of science and ethics by deconstructing postmodernist arguments regarding scientific discourse and ethical standards. In addition, the study clarifies the differences between scientific, philosophical, and religious truths, as well as those between universal moral values and moral rules, and between theories of ethics and scientific theories.

المراجع

  1. Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1999), p. 1.
  2. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernity (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 16-18.
  3. The Egyptian-born American scholar Ihab Hassan (1925-2015) wrote two seminal books on the postmodern turn in culture and literary production during the 1960s. It was primarily characterized by a subjective perspective, instability of meaning, hybridization, genre fluidity, interpretive multiplicity, reader participation in meaning, and a mistrust of conventional wisdom. See: Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature , 2nd ed. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1982 [1971]); Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987). For a key reference on postmodern architecture, see: Charles Jencks, The Language of Postmodern Architecture (London: Academy Editions, 1977). See also this interview in Style: Frank L. Cioffi, “Postmodernism, Etc.: An Interview with Ihab Hassan,” Style , vol. 33, no. 3, Postmodernism and Other Distractions: Situations and Directions for Critical Theory (1999), pp. 357-371.
  4. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , Geoff Bennington & Brian Massumi (trans.), Fredric Jameson (foreword) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 [1979]), p. xxiv.
  5. Azmi Bishara, al-Dīn wa-l-ʿAlmāniyya fī Siyāq Tārīkhī , part II, vol. 1: wa-l-ʿAlmāniyya wa-l-ʿAlmana (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2015), pp. 712-725.
  6. Sokal & Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense , p. 198.
  7. Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker & Michael J. Thompson, “Introduction,” in: Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker & Michael J. Thompson (eds.), Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics: The Betrayal of Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 6.
  8. I have addressed this issue in depth in two monographs, namely: Azmi Bishara, Masʾalat al-Dawla: Uṭrūḥa fī al-Falsafa wa-l-Naẓariyya wa-l- Siyāqāt (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2023); Azmi Bishara, al-Dawla al-ʿArabiyya: Baḥth fī al-Manshaʾ wa l-Masār (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2024). This issue should constitute a third avenue for critiquing postmodernism from “our” perspective, one that perhaps deserves another study.
  9. John Sanbonmatsu, “Postmodernism and the corruption of the critical intelligentsia,” in: Smulewicz-Zucker & Thompson (eds.), p. 34; Alan D. Schrift, Poststructuralism and Critical Theory’s Second Generation (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 38.
  10. Smulewicz-Zucker & Thompson, pp. 1-4.
  11. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , Alan Sheridan (trans.), 2 nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 194, 202-203; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge , Robert Hurley (trans.) (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 100-101.
  12. Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1996), p. 27.
  13. The Egyptian-Canadian scholar Shadia Drury demonstrates the futility of such a dialogue by dramatizing an imaginary debate between Rorty and Edward Said. In it, Rorty treats liberal democracy as an American lifestyle, whereas Said views it as something the white man has prescribed for the rest of the world rather than holding Western policy to account for its liberal-democratic claims. See: Shadia Drury, “The Postmodern Face of American Exceptionalism,” in: Smulewicz-Zucker & Thompson (eds.), p. 29.
  14. Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” reprinted in: Daniel Breazeale (ed. & trans.), Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s (New Jersey/London: Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 82-83.
  15. Apparently, the most significant postmodern idea Nietzsche put forth is that what we call truths are human conventions: “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins”. See: Ibid., p. 84.
  16. Sherif Younis, Suʾāl al-Huwiyya: al-Huwiyya wa-Sulṭat al-Muthaqqaf fī ʿAṣr mā baʿd al-Ḥadātha (Cairo: Merit Publishing House, 1999), pp. 113-114.
  17. Zouaoui Beghoura, Mā Baʿd al-Ḥadātha wa-l-Tanwīr: Mawqif al-Anṭūlūjiyā al-Tārīkhiyya: Dirāsa Naqdiyya (Beirut: Dar Al Taliaa, 2020), pp. 246-247.
  18. Gary Aylesworth, “Postmodernism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), accessed on 21/12/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPdZ
  19. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews , Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Donald F. Bouchard & Sherry Simon (trans.) (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 140-142.
  20. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason , Richard Howard (trans.), David Cooper (into.) (London/ New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. ix-x.
  21. One of postmodernism’s most significant contradictions is its critique of narratives and the trans-historical subject, and its insistence on using the term “reason” as if in reference to a trans-historical subjectivity.
  22. Beghoura, p. 19; Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (London: NLB, 1978), p. 13.
  23. Raja Bahlul, “Muqaddimat al-Tarjama al-ʿArabiyya fī Mā Lā Yufham wa-Mā Huwa Ghayr Qābil li-l-Fahm,” in: Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont, Hurāʾ ʿAṣrī: Sūʾ Istikhdām Mufakkirī Mā Baʿd al-Ḥadātha li-l-ʿIlm , Nagib El-Hassadi (trans.) (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2025), p. 47.
  24. Sokal & Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense , pp. 54-55.
  25. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Vintage Edition, 1967), § 10, pp. 36-39.
  26. Friedric Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil , Marion Faber (ed. & trans.), Robert C. Holub (intro.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), §108, p. 64.
  27. Jean-Francois Lyotard & Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming , Wlad Godzich (trans.) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), p. 26.
  28. Eagleton, p. 89.
  29. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” in: Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 352.
  30. Beghoura, pp. 185-186; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon, 1970), p. 279.
  31. Beghoura, p. 186; Foucault, The Order of Things , pp. 386-387.
  32. In principle, there is no difference between the two terms, except that the first derives from Latin and the second from Greek. They have been used to mean the same thing. However, many philosophers use morality to refer to the rules governing interaction between individuals, and ethics to denote a broader domain, which includes the inquiry into the virtuous life, how a person ought to live a good life, or how one can become a better human being, and other related questions. See: James Griffin, What Can Philosophy Contribute to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 93.
  33. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure , Robert Hurley (trans.) (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 25.
  34. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 5, 11, 14, 48.
  35. Ibid., p. 13; Zygmunt Bauman, “What Prospects of Morality in Times of Uncertainty?,” Theory, Culture & Society , vol. 15, no. 1 (1998), p. 13.
  36. Bauman, Postmodern Ethics , p. 61.
  37. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death , David Wills (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 68.
  38. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 4-5.
  39. Some postmodern thinkers have recast these societies as domains of freedom and individuality, viewing “trends” as a mode of rebellion and individual personality formation, unconstrained by rules of appearance or “style”. The generation represented by Gilles Lipovetsky presents the most forceful expression of this view. They see themselves as moving beyond postmodernity into hypermodernity. See: Gilles Lipovetsky & Sébastien Charles, Hypermodern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). This book epitomizes the view that postmodern thought is a phenomenon linked to late capitalism.
  40. Taylor, pp. 7-9.
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2026-09-01

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47 مشاهدة 44 تنزيل

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مجلد 9 عدد 021 (2026): العدد 21

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