Postmodern philosophy

A diverse philosophical movement that questions universal foundations, objective certainty, and grand narratives, emphasizing how history and language shape knowledge and meaning.

Grand narrative: A broad explanatory story that claims to organize history, knowledge, or social progress. Postmodern philosophy questions whether such overarching stories can legitimately ground knowledge or political authority.
Deconstruction: A method of reading that exposes tensions and unstable oppositions within texts and concepts. Derrida’s approach demonstrates how postmodern critique unsettles claims to a single, self-contained meaning.
Jean-François Lyotard: A French philosopher who analyzed knowledge and legitimacy in postindustrial societies. His account of incredulity toward metanarratives gave postmodernism one of its defining formulations.
Modernism: A broad cultural and intellectual movement associated with experimentation and responses to modernity. Postmodernism is often framed as a challenge to modernism’s confidence in innovation and coherence.
Postcolonialism: The study and critique of colonialism’s continuing effects on culture, politics, and knowledge. Postcolonial thinkers use critiques of universal narratives to examine colonial authority and historical representation.
Epistemology: The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, justification, and belief. Postmodern critiques challenge assumptions about what counts as knowledge and how it can be justified.
Genealogy (philosophy): A historical method that traces how values and practices emerged through contingent struggles and power relations. Foucault’s genealogies replace timeless origins with histories of changing institutions and practices.
Michel Foucault: A French philosopher and historian whose work examined institutions, knowledge, and power. His histories show how categories of truth and normality emerge through changing practices.
Positivism: The view that reliable knowledge rests on observable facts and scientific methods. Postmodern critiques dispute positivism’s promise of neutral observation and universally authoritative science.
Feminist theory: A body of theory examining gendered power and seeking to understand and challenge inequality. Poststructuralist approaches helped feminist theorists analyze how identities and norms are produced.

Linked from 14 pages