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Journal ArticleDOI

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies: A Rereading of an Ongoing Debate

Dennis K. Mumby
- 01 Feb 1997 - 
- Vol. 7, Iss: 1, pp 1-28
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TLDR
In this paper, a move beyond a simple modern-postmodern dichotomy and articulate four discursive positions that embody different assumptions about the relationships among communication, identity, and knowledge formation is made.
Abstract
Recent writings in communication studies have tended to represent the relationship between modernist and postmodernist thought as bifurcated and oppositional in character. Such representations, I argue, result from inadequate characterizations of both the modernist and postmodernist projects and of the various conceptions of communication therein. I therefore suggest a move beyond a simple modern-postmodern dichotomy and articulate in its place four discursive positions that embody different assumptions about the relationships among communication, identity, and knowledge formation. These discourses are: (a) a discourse of representation (positivist modernism), (b) a discourse of understanding (interpretive modernism), (c) a discourse of suspicion (critical modernism), and (d) a discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism). Finally, I adumbrate a set of “postmodern communication conditions” as a way of illustrating the connections between postmodern thought and communication studies.

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Citations
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Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as discussed by the authors are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Journal ArticleDOI

Discursive practices, genealogies, and emotional rules: A poststructuralist view on emotion and identity in teaching

TL;DR: In this article, a poststructuralist lens is invoked to conceptualize teacher emotions as discursive practices, and it is argued that teacher identity is constantly becoming in a context embedded in power relations, ideology, and culture.
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Postmodern Values in Public Relations

TL;DR: A postmodern analysis of public relations offers a new critical approach to public relations theory and practice and suggests that public relations should be freed from its narrow definition as organizational communication management as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI

Fracturing the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy: Moving toward "crystallized" organizational discourses and identities

TL;DR: The authors make the case that the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy is created and maintained through organizational talk and practices and, in turn, serves as a constitutive discourse that produces four subject positions with both symbolic and material consequences: strategized self-subordination, perpetually deferred identities, auto-dressage, and the production of good little copers.
Journal ArticleDOI

Thinking Dialectically About Culture and Communication

TL;DR: The authors identify and describe four distinct paradigms of culture and communication, based on Burrell and Morgan's (1 988) framework: functionalist, interpretive, critical humanist and critical structuralist, and propose a dialectic approach that facilitates interparadigmatic dialogue and offers new ways to conceptualize and study intercultural communication.
References
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Book

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Judith Butler
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as mentioned in this paper are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Book

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977

TL;DR: The Eye of Power: A Discussion with Maoists as mentioned in this paper discusses the politics of health in the Eighteenth Century, the history of sexuality, and the Confession of the Flesh.
Book

The Practice of Everyday Life

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a very different view of the arts of practice in a very diverse culture, focusing on the use of ordinary language and making do in the art of practice.