8. POSTMODERNISM AND THE LAW
❖ Prescribed: Textbook pg. 354-381
❖ Postmodernist legal scholarship in South Africa – Can postmodernism
contribute anything to the democratic transformation of the South African legal
order? (pg. 373)
Definition
❖ Although he term postmodernism is widely used, it has no fixed meaning and
signifies different things to different people in different fields of study.
o Definition is problematic
❖ Postmodernism literally means that which has come after or moved beyond
modernism.
Modernism
❖ Artistic Modernism (pg. 356): Used to describe the characteristic features of
Western visual art, literature and music in the period between the world Wars
of the twentieth century.
❖ Philosophical Modernism: Broader definition that refers to the specific
characteristics of modern philosophy, as inaugurated by the French
philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and finally expressed in the
Enlightenment thought by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
o Philosophical modernism incorporates the belief in objectivity,
rationality, universality and the liberating potential of the knowledge
produced in the Western world.
Postmodernism
❖ Attached to each of these meanings of ‘modernism’ there is a corresponding
meaning of ‘post-modernism’.
❖ Postmodernism understood as an artistic or cultural phenomenon (aesthetic
or cultural postmodernism – the artistic and cultural developments in the
Western world after the World War II) and postmodernism understood as
philosophical critique (philosophical postmodernism – a critique of modern
❖ Prescribed: Textbook pg. 354-381
❖ Postmodernist legal scholarship in South Africa – Can postmodernism
contribute anything to the democratic transformation of the South African legal
order? (pg. 373)
Definition
❖ Although he term postmodernism is widely used, it has no fixed meaning and
signifies different things to different people in different fields of study.
o Definition is problematic
❖ Postmodernism literally means that which has come after or moved beyond
modernism.
Modernism
❖ Artistic Modernism (pg. 356): Used to describe the characteristic features of
Western visual art, literature and music in the period between the world Wars
of the twentieth century.
❖ Philosophical Modernism: Broader definition that refers to the specific
characteristics of modern philosophy, as inaugurated by the French
philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and finally expressed in the
Enlightenment thought by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
o Philosophical modernism incorporates the belief in objectivity,
rationality, universality and the liberating potential of the knowledge
produced in the Western world.
Postmodernism
❖ Attached to each of these meanings of ‘modernism’ there is a corresponding
meaning of ‘post-modernism’.
❖ Postmodernism understood as an artistic or cultural phenomenon (aesthetic
or cultural postmodernism – the artistic and cultural developments in the
Western world after the World War II) and postmodernism understood as
philosophical critique (philosophical postmodernism – a critique of modern
