The Challenge of Critical Reflexivity through a
Postmodern Paradox

FABIO AKCELRUD DURÃO
University of Campinas (Unicamp)

Abstract
This paper is divided into three main parts. In the first one it characterizes the challenge of critical reflexivity in theoretical discourse today. It then proceeds to explore a paradox that is congenial to postmodernism as a whole, which can be approached as a disjunction between its discourse and its effects, i.e. postmodernism as a description versus as an event. This state of affairs is finally interpreted in the third part of the paper as resulting from a peculiar tension between Theory’s freedom and the limitations in the world of objects, a conflict that points to the specificity of Theory’s material conditions of production. That there is no theoretical way out of this impasse is what would closest resemble a conclusion.

Keywords: Postmodernism, Modernism, Theory, reflexivity, capitalism

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