Knowledge and the limits of postmodernism: Social constructionism in film and media studies.

摘要

Social constructionism is the idea that all knowledge, including science and history, is deeply imbued with the biases and preconceptions of the person who holds the knowledge and the society in which that person lives, so that knowledge can be said to be created rather than discovered. This dissertation examines the influence of social constructionism in film and media studies with reference to the humanities more generally, and argues that social constructivist arguments have, in general, been accepted too readily. Careful attention to the substance of social constructivist arguments and to the practice of knowledge gathering in the humanities reveals the significant flaws in social constructionism as an epistemology.;This work traces the history of social constructionism from the philosophy of science and from theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. It considers the ways in which the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the rise of social constructionism in the academic humanities. The particular uses of social constructionism in 1970s film theory are then described and considered.;The argument for epistemological realism herein is based on three broad principles, laid out in chapters three through five. In chapter three I consider the work of theorists whose work has been influential in the rise of social constructionism---Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and Richard Rorty---arguing that despite the varying benefits of the projects these theorists undertake, they either fail to fully consider the implications of their position or are unable to account for its weaknesses.;In chapter four I consider the implications of the social construction of history and argue that social constructionism is not necessarily apolitically progressive epistemology, drawing on Oliver Stone's JFK and D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to demonstrate my point. In this section I also analyze the work of Hayden White and Vivian Sobchack;In chapter five I argue that the theory of social constructionism is not reflected in the practice of knowledge gathering in the humanities and is useless for that practice. The limits of postmodern concepts of knowledge are best revealed in their inappropriateness for fundamental academic research.