1. Unit 10Critical theory is deadPostmodernist thought

2. Peter Sloterdijk Alas Dear Habermas (…) Critical theory is, on this Second of September, dead. She was long since bedridden, the sullen old woman, now she has passed away completely. We will gather at the grave of an epoch, to take stock, but also to think of the end of an hypocrisy. Thinking means thanking, said Heidegger. I say, rather, thinking means to heave a sigh of relief. (Die Zeit, 9 September 1999)

3. Modernity and grand-narratives

4. Modernism according to Gergen A revival of enlightenment beliefs A search for fundamentals or essentials A faith in progress and universal design Absorption in the machine methapor

5. Grand-narratives Enlightenment Humanism Marxism Capitalism Psychoanalysis

6. Progress? Are we all climbing the same mountain?

7. Compare these grand-narratives to: Popper Kuhn Feyerabend

8. Nietzsche: Anti-foundationalism Wittgenstein: Language-games

9. Friedrich Nietzsche Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? (…)What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?

10. To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.

11. The real and representation We cannot give a correct description of reality

12. Postmodernism

13. The ordinary

14. Jean-Francois Lyotard

15. La Condition postmoderne, A Report on Knowledge Opposing universals, meta-narratives Difference and micro-narratives, emphasizing the local

16. Michel Foucault

17. Historical research (remember Feyerabend) Responsibility, sensitivity, justice, and law are merely "tokens of ideology"

18. Knowledge is always a form of power Knowledge can even be gained from power, power creates knowledge

19. Jacques Derrida and deconstruction

20. Research implications

21. Against method Avoiding a definitive viewpoint Making research aware of ambiguity and difference Making research aware of the role of the author

22. Criticism

23. Criticism Relativist Vague, lost in its own complexity Postmodernism is also a metanarative, relapse into story-telling Wolves in sheep clothes: conservatives

24. Sokal-affair Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity 1. it contained the right buzzwords 2. It flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions.

25. Example Die Revolution der gebenden Hand (The revolution of the giving hand) The perversity of the welfarestate Sloterdijk: revolutionary or disguised conservative?