Flaubert, Foucault, and the Bibliotheque Fantastique: Toward a Postmodern Epistemology for Library Science,

Judgements without rules: towards a postmodern ironist concept of research validity.

The past decade has seen the gradual emergence of what might be called a postmodern perspective on nursing research. However, the development of a coherent postmodern critique of the modernist position has been hampered by some misunderstandings and misrepresentations of postmodern epistemology by a number of writers, leading to a fractured and distorted view of postmodern nursing research. Thi...

THE 1850s AND 1860s

The 1850s and 1860s have habitually been seen as the crucial turning point in cultural modernity. These are the years in which Manet and Flaubert are said to set culture on a new course. Modernité is born in Paris. The means of representation, the signs, symbols, and media themselves become the fundamental subject of art, rather than being deployed primarily in the service of expression or mime...

Fear of Scandalous Knowledge: Arguing About Coherence in Scientific Theory and Practice

A decade after the ‘‘Sokal Hoax,’’ Alan Sokal and Paul Boghossian still claim that postmodern arguments are incoherent attacks on reason and truth. However, both also continue to mischaracterize ‘‘constructivist’’ epistemology, to engage in highly problematic logical gymnastics to defend their own views, and to ignore changes in philosophy of science and science studies since 1996. I offer a br...

Borges's Postmodern Landscape

In his article "Borges's Postmodern Landscape" Mario Vrbančić examines specific constructs of space -among them heterotopia (Michel Foucault) and hyperreality (Jean Baudrillard) -and applies them to narration and narrative strategies in Jorge Luis Borges's texts. Vrbančić posits that postmodern mapping undermines our known familiar geography and that authors like Borges who experimented with di...

Michel Foucault Aesthetics , Method , and Epistemology