Critique and Theses Sample Clauses

Critique and Theses. Progress as the Product of Narratives 16 1.5. Approach, Method, Outline 21 Chapter 2 29 Case Study #1 29

Critique and Theses. Progress as the Product of Narratives A notion of progress that ‘speaks itself’ stands in tension with developments in the humanities and social sciences since the early 20th century. Philosophy has debated the nature and properties of the notion of progress in great detail and, on occasion, has contested the very possibility of progress.27 This work has revealed that there is no end to the different definitions and meanings of progress. Meanings have ranged from esoteric progress to progress in society and technological progress in the sense of control of the external physical world. The most common conception is the one of advance of knowledge in terms of techniques and sciences. It has also been conceived in terms of collective social progress, to refer to a world characterized by freedom, equality, health, and justice. More individualist conceptions would see progress as one achieved in terms of spiritual exaltation, one’s liberation from tormenting physical or psychological compulsions. The proposition that meaning is actively produced (as opposed to merely recorded) by text constitutes a principal tenet of some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th Century. Any attempt to draw here a synopsis of the theoretical origins of this proposition would be Xxxxxxxxx, for the additional reason that intellectual movements evade (or worse, detest) reduction to a standard set of propositions. The claim that meaning is actively produced (as opposed to being recorded) by text stands however in unison with a variety of writings in linguistics, social theory, history, ideology theory, philosophy. The movements of structural linguistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, post- modernism, social constructionism (all within or without inverted commas) have given rise to an enormous body of literature which shares some key starting points and parts company on others. Starting points include the idea that the world should not be treated as objective truth: knowledge and representations about how the world is ‘out there’ are not mere reflections of the world but products of certain ways of categorizing the world – they are products of discourse. Truth is a discursive construction. Different systems of knowledge determine what is true or not in their own way. The way we 27 For some notable and informative reference works, see J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origins and Growth (1932); X. Xxxxxxx, The Belief in Progre...