Whenever we are to consider the discussion of the similarities and differences of the modern and the postmodern conditions that guided the intellectual status of the last century, we are confronted with one key question: What are the similarities and differences of the radically-modern (constructive) and reconstructive postmodern types of empiricism that locate themselves in the midst of the hermeneutic axis? In this section we will provide a brief analysis of the most prominent theoretical concepts that clarify this relationship. It is important to note that our aim is not to strengthen or to dismiss the hiatus that historically emerged between the modern and postmodern traditions but to (de)constructively unveil the meaning that has been concealed behind the debates. By focusing on disposing the issues of ontology of the marginalised versions of both the modern and the postmodern, we express an incredulity towards any ‘great narratives’, and instead propose a critical stance that makes our involvement in practical aspects more reflexive.
Radically-modern (constructive) empiricism sees our engagement with the perceptual and conceptual constructs (i.e., our intelligence) as an ongoing, open-ended process in ways dependent on collective accomplishments. Therefore our ways of constructing (our) knowledge (epistemology) about the nature of an actual world is to be seen as partial and never complete while the phenomenal world itself is always differing from a materially-concrete foundation that derives from the traditionalistic and positivist views of the past. This constructed lifeworld is considered plural and heterogeneous, mainly because phenomena that characterise it arise in a variety of different domains. Thus, ontological and epistemological postulations about the nature of real and knowledge are driven by a number of different domains and factors that co-exist and emerge within an interpreted horizon of meanings. Regressively, these very effects of consciousness influence, in a recursive manner, the defining of lifeworld.
This emphasis of constructive empiricism on ‘phenomenal world’ and the consequent development of a structurally defined symbolic network that ‘speaks for’ every situation and resembles the relationship between the actual and the phenomenal, is the main target of postmodern, post-structural and other deconstructive viewpoints. In their radical expressions these viewpoints try to dismiss any posed centre (radically against any grounding of meaning) and abandon any, ‘transcendent’ as it is usually called, relationships between structure and signification (against any classical signification that tries to stabilise the relationship between the signifier and the signified). However, on their critical expressions, deconstructive viewpoints try to unveil the weaknesses of the structural approaches by relativising logocentric structures and focusing in providing alternative arguments that elaborate on the analysis of the act of signification itself. This semiotic turn of the post-structuralist era starts by studying the processes of signification in a way that signs become recursive – instead of focusing exclusively on signified meanings, signs come to focus on themselves (signifiers are themselves explicitly signified) – and ends to the radical postmodern view of infinite recursion ad infinitum (the hall of mirrors effect, where each mirror reflects the others but nothing except mirrors to be reflected. There is no absolute or final signifier) (A new signifier is needed to signify what had been the signifier, but this new signifier is depends on signification by still a newborn signifier. Each time the implicitly tacit operation of the signifier is undermined by being explicitly signified (i.e. supplemented in Derridean terms), the functioning of what had been signified by that signifier is also affected. For example in language, terms and other illocutionary acts that are meant to signify, as well as that the objects of signification which are supposed to be signified, are continually disintegrate and reform in different structures of temporal unification. The signifiers and the signifieds continually submit into a never-ending redefinition. Such acts and structures might transiently infer meaning for an observing agent, but they are never considered to directly signify that which seems to present itself as the presentable (obvious). )
Positions within the postmodern condition envisage that the notion of intelligence is the combination of the domains of the semiotic and the sensory and take as essential the acceptance of the inability to provide a complete reflection of the real. Their major difference to constructive empiricism, of the modernist approach, is that this reflection of the real can not be described by the additive behaviour that radically instrumental modernism supported. This is primarily because postmodern empiricism refuses the existence and validity of an additive mechanism of the plural, and secondarily because it relies on the belief that there are no measurable parts that can be objectively observed. According to postmodern ideas the phenomenal reality is not merely pluralistic and greater than its material foundations, but also different from the observations that can be given from any vantage point towards explaining the absolute. Observations are inherently contained and thus their objectivity is questionable.
This turn to include the observer in the observed phenomenon and thus to escape the modernist epistemological lapse, is evident in a number of works ranging in a variety of contemporary epistemic disciplines that emerged in the postmodern era (constructivism, semiotics, second order cybernetics). The synthesis of these novel ideas introduces new questions regarding the status of the current epistemic beliefs in a number of theoretical issues that we will explore in the subsequent sections.
Thus, in the following we direct our attention to this set of issues related to the wider epistemic domain of communication studies and their consequent influence to social, organisational and technological research including collaboration, design and systems-design, in the context of modern and postmodern paradigms. In the first place, we engage with the characterisation of the relationship among modernism, postmodernism and communication studies and we suggest how to see more productively their relation. In particular we argue that the uncritical equation and/or differentiation of positivism, interpretivism, criticism and post-structuralist deconstruction under the authority of modernism and postmodernism seriously distorts the intellectual status upon which contemporary scientific thought is based, and hence contributes to the constant reproduction of misunderstanding in various fields of scientific research [Figure 3-2]. Therefore, our focus is twofold. On the one hand we try to avoid the complete dismissal of the critical, poststructuralist and deconstructionist approaches to scientific research (Sokal, 1996b)(Gross & Levitt, 1997), while on the other we also try to avoid the relatively uncritical appropriation of postmodern as an alternative to modern and its nihilistic conceptions (Fukuyama, 1989, 1993, 2003). It is historically evident that these extreme accounts leave both modern and postmodern approaches under-theorised and hence contribute to a lack of understanding of the continuities and discontinuities that exist between them. A number of thinkers identify this (Rosenau, 1992)(Natoli & Hutcheon, 1970)(Hassard & Parker, 1993)(Best & Kellner, 1997)(Gabardi, 2000)(Cahoone, 2003). Consequently, similar to a number of researchers of social, organisational, political and cultural disciplines (Lyotard, 1984)(M. Power, 1990)(Best & Kellner, 1997)(Deleuze, 1990, 1997, 2001)(Badiou, 2005, 2007) our intent is not to enunciate a fixed theoretical account of the relationship between the modern and the postmodern but rather to suggest practical means that contextualise collaboration and systems-development issues around the discourses that derive from mainstream social sciences, linguistics, psychoanalysis and systems theory, including social constructionism, communication theory and social psychology research. According to social and communication theorists (Anderson, 2004)(Leeds-Hurwitz, 1995)(Mumby, 1997) that also identify this hiatus of modern and postmodern, these discourses can include: discourse of representation (positivism), discourse of understanding (interpretivism), discourse of suspicion (critical theory) and discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism, post-structuralism and deconstruction) (According to Mumby the notion of discourse “is used here in Foucault’s sense of a system of possibilities for the creation of knowledge”). While the origins of these discourses are diverse and interdisciplinary, they intersect in their concern for the social construction of self, other, and event (i.e., interaction and praxis), and in their acknowledgment of the researcher’s role in establishing not only the research questions but also the research context. These discourses are systemic in nature and therefore try to stress the necessity of recognizing the impact of disparity that reigns social research, and thus identify the ways in which research inquiry creates meanings at the same time as it investigates them. Most importantly, they focus on instances of contact between individuals, the actual social transactions in which people engage and thus provide a plural theoretical apparatus for researching areas of human partnership and participation.
Each of these discourses provides a distinct way of seeing the discursive and ethical dimensions of knowledge and thus situates and constructs communication and collaboration studies as a human participatory phenomenon within a polysemic context.
Hence, we support that our meta-hermeneutic view towards an analysis of the human activity in communicational, organisational, social and technological contexts should place the object of inquiry within these four discourses and replace the habitual contrasting opposition between modern and postmodern. Briefly, the aim of this epistemological move is not to argue for standpoints that are sealed off from each other, but on the contrary, to offer an outlook position that considers the modern and postmodern as a continuum of mutually inclusive views; thus placing both notions (modern and postmodern) in an all-inclusive uncertainty, disposal and/or syndication. Moreover, the terminology used for the analysis of these discourses primarily stems out of our ontological framework that is presented in the following sections {see §0}. With this in mind, we suggest that the reader should not consider this text as a ‘readerly text’, read in a sequential order with fixed meaning, but rather as a ‘writerly’ text where notions (e.g., communication, collaboration, creativity etc.) are used with multiple meanings without any posed teleological culmination. It is possible that notions in this section might seem ambiguous in the first reading and therefore a transgressive and regressive reading is suggested. Our stance aims to identify both the undeconstructible condition of possibility that is posed in a lifeworld – similar to a mediated ‘hall of mirrors’ -, but also the inexorable condition of meaning production, of placing ourselves within the situation of analysis and decision making. The purpose is to intervene in an epistemological and practical way, to provide both questions and possible answers; not ‘the ultimate’ solutions, but merely justifiable arguments that fixate our thesis in a multitude of meanings where the reader is also responsible to excavate his/her own meaning related to his/her own symbolic horizon. The aim is to make elucidate the necessity of the contingent real, but also to provide an ontological device of representation that will attempt to put forward an actional creative means for understanding the context of human collaboration.
To set the stage, we pose that communication and collaboration, among other notions in the following analyses, are not considered uniformly, in all discourses, as the univocal notions of information transmission and purposeful cooperative activity, as seen in their positivist conception. Rather, communication is seen and compared with an interactive activity, always situated within an observed context, while collaboration is always (in)dependent to the purposeful character of consensual participation in cooperative actions. As a result, intentionality is an important characteristic of communicative and collaborative acts, but not the defining / causal quality that leads to the successful determination of the aforementioned terms (i.e., meaning closure). None would possibly deny that, for the most part, participants have particular intentions in mind when engaging in communicative activities. But we also argue that focusing on the intentional facet as the defining characteristic we might be close to fail in recognising that communicative and collaborative acts always occur within a diverse set of social contexts and are possibly defined independently of any intent that is produced among the participants (or the observers) in any currently observed network of analysis. Participants, thus, have intents precisely because they are always-already situated within, and are the affect/effect of/for, contextual discursive practices.
[I’ll post bibliography soon].
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