To... Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable
To... Comfort the afflicted, afflict the Comfortable
A Selected Critical Annotated Bibliography of Postmodern Thought and Nursing
By C. E. Betts
Professor of Nursing
Health Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada
© 2007
– Granted we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? – The problem of the value of truth stepped before us – or was it we who stepped before this problem? – (Nietzsche, 1990, p. 33)
Introduction:
Although most agree that “postmodern thought” begins with Nietzsche near the end of the nineteenth century, it was not until the middle of the twentieth that one witnesses the explosion of literature, criticism, art, culture, architecture, and virtually everything nameable discipline, that would make heavy use, willingly or not, of the term postmodernism. There are conflicting accounts as to the origin of the term, Toybee has been suggested as has Ihab Hassan, Federico de Onis, Fredic Jamison and no doubt others. The answer to the question, who was it that first used the term is much less important than to what it was referring (it might well have been coined by several individuals independently and moreover each may have been characterizing a different phenomenon with it). However, this turns out to be a rather tricky affair to negotiate simply because the term has been used in so many ways, and to express so many different sentiments that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to determine what it is, or what it means. Lyotard’s famous, or infamous, “incredulity toward meta-narratives” hardly helps the work of clarifying. Nevertheless, its popularity, both in academic and popular culture, at the mid-point of the twentieth century was rather astounding (on the strength of such philosophers, writers and critics as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Derrida and others of course). It represented for many a much needed emancipation from the ridged strictures of
A Selected Critical Annotated Bibliography of Postmodern Thought and Nursing
By C. E. Betts
Professor of Nursing
Health Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada
© 2007
– Granted we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? – The problem of the value of truth stepped before us – or was it we who stepped before this problem? – (Nietzsche, 1990, p. 33)
Introduction:
Although most agree that “postmodern thought” begins with Nietzsche near the end of the nineteenth century, it was not until the middle of the twentieth that one witnesses the explosion of literature, criticism, art, culture, architecture, and virtually everything nameable discipline, that would make heavy use, willingly or not, of the term postmodernism. There are conflicting accounts as to the origin of the term, Toybee has been suggested as has Ihab Hassan, Federico de Onis, Fredic Jamison and no doubt others. The answer to the question, who was it that first used the term is much less important than to what it was referring (it might well have been coined by several individuals independently and moreover each may have been characterizing a different phenomenon with it). However, this turns out to be a rather tricky affair to negotiate simply because the term has been used in so many ways, and to express so many different sentiments that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to determine what it is, or what it means. Lyotard’s famous, or infamous, “incredulity toward meta-narratives” hardly helps the work of clarifying. Nevertheless, its popularity, both in academic and popular culture, at the mid-point of the twentieth century was rather astounding (on the strength of such philosophers, writers and critics as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Derrida and others of course). It represented for many a much needed emancipation from the ridged strictures of
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