Authors
Valerie Malhotra Bentz, Wade Kenny
Publication date
1997/3
Journal
Sociological Theory
Volume
15
Issue
1
Pages
81-96
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Description
Postmodernism charges that sociological methods project ways of thinking and being from the past onto the future, and that sociological forms of presentation are rhetorical defenses of ideologies. Postmodernism contends that sociological theory presents reified constructs no more based in reality than are fictional accounts. Kenneth Burke's logology predates and adequately addresses postmodernism's valid charges against sociology. At the same time, logology avoids the idealistic tendencies and ethical pitfalls of radical forms of postmodernist deconstruction, which acknowledge neither pre-textual and extratextual worlds nor the ways in which experience is embodied. While not fully articulated, Burke's logology gives primacy to an embodied, social world prior to text (Body-as-World). Sociology can strengthen both its theoretical arsenal and its response to postmodernism by reacknowledging and reclaiming …
Total citations
199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018232121114111121