Postmodern Theory

Many scholars associate postmodern theory with a historical era called postmodernity, which represents a certain time frame following modernity or even manifests as late modernity. Postmodernism represents a critique of and resistance to the normative and universal value systems developed during the Enlightenment. The overriding critique of modernism, which is what led to postmodern theory, is that it positions the Western male and Western philosophy as representing “the civilized and universal (European) human being as the incarnation of humanitas” (Erber, 2013, p. 36). Thus, its major focus is the critique of Western power in all its manifestations and the way in which power is used to marginalize the “other”—that is, women, people of color and diverse ethnicities, and people who live outside approved social norms, ...