Rutzou, Timothy;
(2015)
In pursuit of the real: postmodernism and critical realism.
Doctoral thesis , UCL Institute of Education.
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Abstract
Postmodernism is often used as the signifier for the fashionable drift into relativism and unseriousness within Western philosophy. Conference after conference, article after article, book after book have appeared describing, denouncing or celebrating the postmodern condition. Within in this context, critical realism has, by and large, positioned itself against the postmodern turn. This project re-evaluates this stance. Against the critiques which have been levelled at postmodernism I will argue that critical realism is theoretically best placed to mediate the various postmodern positions and concerns by developing a reading of critical realism which places critical realism firmly within the context of postmodernism as an alternate postmodernism. Yet if critical realism can be understood within postmodernism, postmodernism can equally be understood within a more encompassing, more mediated realism. The task then is to find a new language which brings together Apollo and Dionysus, moving towards perspectival realism and a scientific anarchism concerned with the possibility and limitations of representing a complex world characterised by intensity, difference and becoming.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | In pursuit of the real: postmodernism and critical realism |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | Critical realism, miracle, the event, naturalism, Bhaskar, Marx, religious experience, political theology |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10021917 |
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