Part Three: Postmodernism......9. Postmodernism, Philosophy And Literature

Truth is what appears true to each individual or community. Facts are not objective entities to which our thinking must conform: it is we who, in discussion with others, decide what the facts shall be. Particularly to be rejected is any theory, ideology or religion that claims to have the 'big story', the metanarrative that gives the universal truth about everything, which everybody must accept.[p 232] [p 233] Introduction 'Postmodernism', like its philosophical predecessor, 'modernism', is an umbrella term that denotes not a particular theory so much as an attitude shared by many contemporary thinkers in such diverse fields as art, literature, philosophy, social studies, architecture, city planning, science and religion. In this chapter we are to study postmodernism's attitude to literary criticism, chiefly as represented by the work of its most famous exponent, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), though, of course, some of his views are but extensions of views held by others, whether postmodernists or not. The question immediately arises, why do that here? This present part of our book is devoted to epistemology, to such topics as, how do we know anything? How do we know that what we cl...