Postmodernism and the dilemma of an appropriate Christian paradigm for ethical descision making

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Church is facing a dilemma in how to apply and live out its message in a postmodern world. For many in the Church an understanding and application of morals and ethics has become bewildering. This assignment attempts to develop a Christian vocabulary and conceptual framework for morality. This is done by firstly elucidating the milieu out of which postmodernism arose. Modernism, through universal claims of reason and instrumental rationality, believed in the ultimate mastery of the world. The failure of the Enlightenment project to develop universal morality and law led to a new perspective on reason and reality and new reflection on life, morality and meaning. Thus, I reflect on' the parturition and value of postmodernism through offering an evaluation and critique of the ideology of postmodernism. Next, I propose the need for Christian ideology to be firstly separated from cultural interpretations so as to avoid ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism. After exploring the development and purpose of worldviews I argue for the building of cultural bridges and for the Gospel and Biblical worldview to be suitably encoded. Finally, I posit an understanding of what postmodern ethics entails and how then to define and respond to ethical issues. Through case studies I apply the key principles identified in the study. These are that moderation is a virtue; that many timeless truths are customary truths that arise in a specific historical/cultural situations; that many problems are not ethical issues but are rather a comprehension and/or a misinterpretation of the Scriptures regarding what it means to be a Christian and how we are to live our Christian profession to mention a few. I reason and plead for a Christian ethical system of incarnational engaged compassion in a postmodern world.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: geen opsommin

Integració i avaluació de la competència genèrica transversal actitud adequada davant el treball en assignatures de bases de dades

El canvi al nou Espai Europeu d'Educació Superior va portar a la Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya a incorporar competències genèriques tranversals en els seus plans d’estudi. En aquest article es presenta com s’ha integrat la competència actitud adequada davant el treball en les assignatures de bases de dades del Grau en Enginyeria Informàtica en la especialitat d’Enginyeria del Software, el mètode d’avaluació utilitzat i es comenten els resultats obtinguts en els darrers tres anys.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Uncomfortably Numb: Finding Meaningful Agency and Resistance in a World without History, without Future, without End

As described by Jean Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, the present postmodern era is one in which transcendent narratives have been revealed as culturally constructed and hegemonic. In this postmodernity, people often feel a loss of history and meaning, as, according to Jameson, the very concept of an individual subject is called into question. Finding meaningful agency in such a world seems, at times, impossible. There is a received cultural assumption of powerlessness and meaninglessness that can be demonstrated metaphorically as zombies or bands of survivors wandering a post-apocalyptic world. This study looks at activist authors in the postmodern era, starting with the post-apocalyptic metaphor in Richard Matheson\u27s I Am Legend and Cormac McCarthy\u27s The Road. It then examines the contingency of historical narrative in the post-historical novels The Book of Daniel, by E. L. Doctorow and The Public Burning, by Robert Coover. Finally, it focuses on the paradox of transformation in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. These authors metaphorically create the post-apocalyptic postmodern condition in different ways, yet all present the problem of finding meaningful agency within that condition. Applying the concept of contingency, rather than randomness, to postmodern existence, these works demonstrate meaningful agency in free contingent action. The postmodern condition has liberated characters from transcendent narratives, and the acting on that liberation allows for individual transformation from postmodern object (zombie) to individualized subject (human), and allows social transformation from masses to multitudes. Meaningful agency exists through the act of resistance itself

Trigger-Narratives: A Perspective on Radical Political Transformations

Thesis advisor: Richard KearneyThis work addresses an important phenomenon in the contemporary philosophy of narrative and coins it as a term. Trigger-narratives denote myth-like stories that ignite certain mass social participation. Juxtapose to five well-established philosophical concepts of narrative this work demonstrates that while trigger-narratives share formal characteristics with all, they fail to be meaningfully and comprehensively subsumed under any. I use three protagonists as comparative case studies to illustrate trigger-narratives: Rosa Parks (US), Mouhammed Bouazizi (Tunisia) and Daphne Leef (Israel). The sociopolitical reaction to trigger-narratives exceeds them in content and in size. Yet, these protagonists continue to serve as catalysts and perennial symbols of the transformative events that follow their protesting acts. Trigger-narratives are not lived-narratives. They do not disclose what Arendt’s refers to as a unique who or MacIntyre’s unity of a human life. They do not answer the ownmost rhythm of Heidegger’s Being-toward-death or operate like Ricoeur’s or Kearney’s concepts of testimony. The protagonist perspective is rarely heard or seriously considered. Unlike historical narratives trigger-narratives are not the product of research. They form quickly and in their aftermath they resist change. Trigger-narrative protagonists draw their power from being portrayed as context-less, weak and uncalculated while historical leaders draw power from descriptions of authority, skill, and deliberation. Trigger-narratives have the effect and/or aspiration of metanarratives. They aim at a new order. However, they spring from articulated singular accounts rather than form an all-encompassing tacit sub-current narrative. Adding a sixth sociological concept of narrative I refer to issue-narratives. Trigger-narratives congeal around an issue. But they instill a far greater expectation for change. I conclude that: 1. trigger narratives are closest to fiction 2. They operate through a condensation of Ricoeur’s mimetic cycle configuring and refiguring reality in a rapid rotation that ossifies them into a mobilizing form, and that 3. Interpreting trigger-narratives through the perspective of world-creating myths illuminates many of their typical characteristics in a unifying, comprehensive manner. The study points to two new research directions: 1. trigger-narratives’ aftermath operations (specifically rituals and newly erected institutions).2. Further interdisciplinary cooperation between contemporary political philosophy of narrative and the sociological methodology of frame-analysis.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Philosophy

Preaching for discipleship in an emerging postmodern culture

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1870/thumbnail.jp

The Effects of Postmodernism on Southern Baptist Churches and Teaching of Biblical Truth: Quantitative Research Method

Absolute truth has been denied within the current philosophical ideals as post-modern thought has sought to alter that concept by denying its existence (Siniscalchi, 2011). Post-modern thinking and philosophy have entered and influenced how some churches and denominations are teaching biblical truths and principles (Enns, 2008). The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore how Southern Baptist pastors perceive any post-modern influences in their churches and its effect on how the church presents and teaches biblical truth. This study looks at post-modern thinking, how it has infiltrated the church, and how it has influenced how the church presents biblical truths. This study will discover why so many churches have accepted this post-modern philosophy as seen in the presentation of a social gospel over the biblical Gospel while ignoring the sinful side of human nature (Enns, 2008). It looks briefly at the impact post-modern philosophy has on church attendance and retention and how it leads to the secularization of some churches (Enns, 2008; Erickson, 2013). The research conducted was through an e-mail survey sent to select participants. The participants’ answers to the questions were categorized according to their perception of the effects of postmodernism on the church. Survey results were utilized to determine the relevance of post-modern influence on Southern Baptist churches

Anarchism, anti-militarism, and the politics of security

This thesis seeks to conceptualise an anarchist response to the politics of security. Understanding security as a discourse of conceptual and political mastery, and as therefore resistant to incorporation within a framework of emancipation, it argues that anarchism offers theoretical and practical resources through which creative insurrections in the political-metaphysical fabric of security might be made. The thesis is built around an ethnography of UK-based anti-militarist activism, interpreting a variety of practices, tactics and strategies through a conception of anarchism which emphasises prefigurative direct action and a ceaseless resistance to relations and discourses of domination and hegemony. Three central interventions in the logics of security are identified. The first involves the subversion of the hegemonic ontology of agency which can be identified across both traditional and critical understandings of security; those anti-militarists under examination do not appeal to „the state‟ to redress their grievances and insecurities, preferring instead to „directly‟ engage in practices of security. The second intervention emphasises those forms of anti-militarism which can be seen to subvert the security/insecurity binaries themselves, and to open spaces and possibilities beyond the totalising frameworks which constitute our contemporary politics of security. The third examines those moments and movements where, as they subvert these binaries, anti-militarists prefigure forms of subjectivity which displace those forms of rationality and relationality which underpin the politics of security (and militarism). Together these three interventions destabilise the politics of security in ways which offer powerful opportunities for rethinking and resisting contemporary forms of political domination and violence. This also functions as an argument about the politics of resistance, which is conceptualised here not as a programmatic, strategic or confrontational posture, but a tactical, prefigurative and anarchic exploration of becoming otherwise

The truth about Texas : a naturalistic study of the construction of heritage

Vita.This investigation is set during what some regard an unheroic age -- an era of historical amnesia in the West, where compatriots are increasingly manufactured through the presentation of preferred narratives about the past. It attempts to establish a research agenda in iconology -- on state administrators of heritage-tourism as agents of normalcy, totalizing the histories they externalize. Exploring the preinterpretations (i.e., the unformulated thematics) within the discourse and praxis of these conceivable 'administrator-judges', it scrutinizes how tourism matters -- probing meanings of heritage-tourism at supra-individual and macro-cosmic levels. Given the theoretically invertebrate nature of tourism studies upon iconological issues of domination / subjugation involved in the past's 'pasteurization', it becomes a transdisciplinary inquiry of universe maintenance, robbing sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political science, marketing, communications and history for insight into social truth as collective coercive act. Thus, the investigation absorbs a Foucauldian / Nietzschean conceptualization of truthmaking - - where truth is fused with power: the validity of any particular truth is deemed relative to a specific regime-of-power. This fusion is found substantive for both the study problem (in exploring the Foucauldian 'gaze' of heritage-tourism administrators) and the research problem (exploring social science approaches able to capture the contemporary pluriverse of truths). Hence, concepts of postmodernity are frequently used to distill the temporal and inventive nature of the truths that unfold within 'editorialized heritage'. Plumbing the possible multivocality of 'the talk' of 'agents of normalcy', the investigation is constructivist, here deploying a naturalistic inquiry methodology as a catalyst study of pastmaking in Texas -- viz., as an adjuvant inquiry for the longhaul / blanket research agenda. Timing and access difficulties during summer 1992, however, diminished the interactive, in-dwelling and iterative force of that adjuvant contextualization. Instead, the available discourse was, restrictively, a one-time batch of 'public-professional' literature, published by the target Texan state agency..