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AFFIRMATIVE POSTMODERN SOCIOLOGY:

Contributions to the Knowledge Process
in Pre-modern, Modern and Postmodern Sensibility.

The hostility between marxists and other radical sociologists on the one side and postmodern critics/writers/activists on the other is, in my opinion, ill-considered.

There is much of value in postmodernity and much in Marx that resonates with postmodern sensibility. In order to extricate the affirmativities of each to the other, I will offer a couple posts based upon my 'reading' of modern and postmodern knowledge projects.

There is a lecture outline available from my home page upon which most of what follows in other posts is based. It would be helpful to my critique of the polemics between marxist structuralists and postmodern anti-structuralists if those interested in this analysis would glance at three such resources on-line at my home page:

They are:
The Archeology of Human Knowledge: Part I
The Social Bases of Postmodern Sensibility: Part II
The Technical Base of Postmodern Sensibility: Part III
How to Read/Decode Postmodern Speech: Part IV

Generally I will say that, in my considered opinion, each epoch in the knowledge process has different and most helpful contributions to make to the knowledge process. Pre-modern sensibility began the knowledge process and gave us the skills and practice in using faith, hope, trust, belief and imagination to create symbolic social life worlds and to invest them with social bonds which go far beyond the psycho-physical bondings we make in childhood.

Pre-modern Thought:
There is sort of a social magic developed over the long centuries of magic, mystery and mysticism which ground the social process...and without which social life itself is not possible not to mention social critique and all progressive politics.

Apart from the god-talk that mediates and mystifies pre-modern social philosophy,   social life as we know it would not be possible without the faith, trust, belief, hope and social bonds that religious sensibility reifies, deifies and sanctifies.

One should not dismiss pre-modern thought; one should view it through an affirmative postmodern lens...see Postmodern Theology.

Modern Thought:
Modern science and modernist knowledge processes serve quite a different purpose and give us quite different knowledge tools with which to create a good and decent society. Close control over nature and natural resources are helpful to food, shelter, transport, communications, health and a good many recreational activities.

Yet modern science is based upon a limited understanding of the dynamics of both nature and society. The tight and predictable behaviors of simple systems are not found in complex interactive systems with non-linear feedback processes.

Postmodern Thought:
A Postmodern philosophy of science, based upon these new scientific findings of chaos and Complexity serve to challenge us all in ways not imagined in either pre-modern or modern sensibility.

In general, postmodern critique/suspicion of structure, of linearity, of certainty and of predictability are supported by findings in non-linear dynamics.

This does not mean that class or class struggle are but 'gran narritif' as many poststructuralists argue..rather it means that both class structure and class struggle are far more complex and far more variable than ever we supposed in the innocence days when we thought the world was coherent and that that 'laws' could be set for once and for all.

Now we have reason to believe the knowledge process and any progressive social policies based upon that knowledge process need review and revision...using these new techniques and tactics from non-linear science.

So let us do have patience with each the other until we have a better reading of what is possible and how to do it.

TR Young