Realism

About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.

Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India

Abstract: Extract from review: '...Mukherjee's book is valuable as an original, insightful commentary upon the Indian regional novel. Further, it suggests a methodology for examining the means by which other derivative literatures within the colonized world reconciled the demands of western realism with the representation of indigenous realities.' Modern Fiction Studies

A Realist critique of the English School

Abstract: Over the past decade, the English School of International Relations (IR) has made a remarkable resurgence. Countless articles and papers have been written on the School. Some of these works have been critical, but most have applauded the School's efforts to provide a fruitful ‘middle way’ for IR theory, one that avoids the extremes of either an unnecessarily pessimistic realism or a naively optimistic idealism. At the heart of this via media is the idea that, in many periods of history, states exist within an international society of shared rules and norms that conditions their behaviour in ways that could not be predicted by looking at material power structures alone. I f the English School (ES) is correct that states often follow these rules and norms even when their power positions and security interests dictate alternative policies, then American realist theory – a theory that focuses on power and security drives as primary causal forces in global politics – has been dealt a potentially serious blow.

Against quietist normative realism

Abstract: Recently, some philosophers have suggested that a form of robust realism about ethics, or normativity more generally, does not face a significant explanatory burden in metaphysics. I call this view metaphysically quietist normative realism. This paper argues that while this view can appear to constitute an attractive alternative to more traditional forms of normative realism, it cannot deliver on this promise. I examine Scanlon’s attempt to defend such a quietist realism, and argue that rather than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of metaphysical enquiry. I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue on general grounds that that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial metanormative task: to explain the contrast between the correct normative system and alternative putatively normative standards.

Deconstructing the "Science Wars" by Reconstructing an Old Mold

Abstract: Human beings appear to have an innate tendency to describe the world in terms of inherently distinct and logically opposite alternatives. A prime example is the current "science wars," which pit "realists" who uphold the objectivity and progressive nature of scientific knowledge against "relativists" who recognize the culturally embedded status of all claims for universal factuality. Gould argues that this dichotomy is false both as an interpretation of the nature and history of science and as a primary example of our deeper error in parsing the complexities of human conflicts and natural continua into stark contrasts formulated as struggles between opposing sides. As evidence, he reconstructs an episode in the history of science that is typically viewed as a linear "march to truth," showing that it instead demonstrates that science advances within a changing and contingent nexus of human relations, not outside the social order and despite its impediments.

"Half and Half Children": Third-Generation Women Writers and the New Nigerian Novel

Abstract: The paper looks at seven novels by women published since 2000, and asks in what ways they reconfigure realism and the social text of the recent Nigerian past. Their authors are engaged in a lively dialogue with their literary precursors, male and female, using their interpretation of the past. Though realism is their preferred mode, it is a realism that bears the trace of pre-existing non-realist modes of expression and belief. By reclaiming the traditionally negative icon of the abiku child, they effect a retrieval of the feminine repressed, casting the feminine double as shadow or negative to the paradigmatic male protagonist of Nigerian fiction and reinserting it into the postcolonial national narrative. Like one of the protagonists, these novels ask the urgent question: “What was the country I loved? The country I would fight for? Should it have borders?”