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Barth and Postmodernism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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There has been a resurgence of interest in Karl Barth’s work over the last decade in both this country and the States. It has been an interest paralleling a growing recognition that ‘postmodemity’ best characterizes (if such an chameleon noun can characterize anything) our cultural situation. It is no surprise, then, to find studies of Karl Barth’s work which interpret him as a deconstructionist avant la lettre and interpret his Weimar culture as “a first postmodemity”.But, in the main, what is understood by ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodemity’ in these studies is left inadequately defined. Therefore, there is a certain lack of clarity about why it is that Karl Barth’s theology resonates with contemporary culture. Furthermore, the majority of studies comparing Barth’s work with postmodern thinking concentrate upon his early, dialectical theology, in particular his metaphor of ‘crisis’ in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. In this essay, then, I wish to attempt two things. First, to try and provide a clarity concerning Barth’s relatedness to postmodernism and establish the rationale for the interest in Barth’s work today. Secondly, to show that the profundity of the parallels between Barth’s work and postmodernism lies not in the similar use of the ‘crisis’ metaphor, but in respective approaches to the nature of discourse itself.
Read positively, postmodernism is concerned with liberation; a liberation from self-legitimating structures. Postmodern thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard problematize this legitimation. They ask, what or who authorizes the power certain discourses have to explain the world ?
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- Copyright © 1993 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 These studies began with Stephen G. Smith's Argument to the Other (Chico, California: Scolars Press, 1983), which outlined the parallels between Barth's cultural situation and the subsequent development of his theology and the work of the contemporary French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. The approach was taken up and extended by relating Barth's work to Jacques Derrida's in a stimulating article by Walter Lowe, ‘Barth as a Critic of Dualism: re‐reading’Der Römerbrief Scottish Journal of Theology, 41, pp. 377–95Google Scholar). The substance of the article was incorporated into Lowe's recent book Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. The case for Barth as a proto‐deconstructionist has also been made by Stephen H. Webb in Re‐Figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
2 Webb draws out the cultural parallels between post‐Great War Weimar and contemporary society, but the explicit use of ‘first postmodernity’ is Richard Roberts'. He employs it in his chapter ‘Barth and the Eschatology of Weimar: A Theology on its Way?’ in his book A Theology on Its Way? (Edinburgh: T.& T. ClarkGoogle Scholar).
3 This particularly so in Lowe's article and book, Webb's book, Roberts' book and also David Klemm in his article ‘Toward a Rhetoric of Postmodern Theology: Through Barth and Heidegger’, Journal of the Academy of Religion, LV/3, pp. 443–69.Google Scholar
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5 Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, Lyotard, and Foucault have all written important books on signification and its relationship to knowledge.
6 Margins of Philosophy, tr. Bass, Alan, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), p.232–3Google Scholar.
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11 Vattimo suggests the parallel, but Webb draws it out in some detail (pp.8–18).
12 Roberts, p. 190.
13 I examine this in ‘The Revelation of the Holy Other as the Wholly Other: Between Barth's Theology of the Word and Levinas's Philosophy of Saying’, Modern Theology, 9.2 (1993)Google Scholar. This is part of an extended study, The Language of Theology: Karl Barth and Jacques Derrida (forthcoming).
14 See Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, tr. Bennington, G. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p.79Google Scholar and Vattimo, p.xlviii and chapter 10.
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21 Psyché, p.539.
22 Cf Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion, ed. Berry, Philippa and Wernick, Andrew (London: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 The titles of the two sections comprising section 25 of Church Dogmatics.
24 Margins of Philosophy, p.65.
25 I.1, p.210.
26 Psyché, p.390.
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