The discussion of positivism and modernism versus postmodernism brought to mind Tom Brokaw's novel, The Greatest Generation and the movie, "Pleasantville." Brokaw pontificates on what he believes to be the greatest generation. Yes, those brave men and women who survived the anguish, terror, and deaths of World War Two certainly deserve acknowledgement and recognition for their courage and heroism. Yet Brokaw's perspective goes off the page by proposing the greatest to be superior in just about everything. This modernistic viewpoint asserts that any other generation is secondary to its kind. Significant, is the question of politics and the ego of those politicians who proclaim sovereignty over human life? Wasn't it the politicians of the greatest generation who betrayed the "baby boomers" by the "big man's" business deal and a small man's war - Vietnam?

Synonymously, the movie, "Pleasantville" characterizes the Ozzie and Harriet's of the 1950s as being safe within the confines of white middle class suburbia. The thought of anything existing other than them was unquestionable. The boundaries of ignorance held them hostage. Yet, in the movie, the postmodernist questioned past truths whether if the people in Pleasantville knew it or not. Absolutism, the black and white approach to life had self destructed under its own rigidity. Typically a belief based exclusively on facts that are observable by the self chosen and declared by those to be the truth will eventually be challenged.

jeanne's comments: Good description of the problems with modernism - insular thinking (Lewis Gordon's ignorant bad faith") and the arrogance of knowing "the truth." Other examples of modernist positions of universal truths, or of deconstructionist, or postmarxist, or postmodern positions of the need to preserve our more local uniqueness?

Linking the discussion to law and social change class: We began with a discussion of the unstated assumptions on which the law is based, on the problems with categorical thinking and privilege. For a reminder on how privilege works see Chapter 18 in Images of Color. Many of the unstated assumptions rest on both privilege and modernist conceptions of universal truth. Postmodernism, and all the other critical theories opposed to the assumption of universality by positivism, insist that the law cannot and should not be unbiased, for no single perception, by people of people, can ever be universal. (Please note that this does not conflict with the concept that God may have a universal perspective. That is beyond the scope of academic proof.) (Copyright: October 1999, Curran and Takata, as part of Postmodernism Series.)