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Recent writings in communication studies have tended to represent the relationship between modernist and postmodernist thought as bifurcated and oppositional in character. Such representations, I argue, result from inadequate characterizations of both the modernist and postmodernist projects and of the various conceptions of communication therein. I therefore suggest a move beyond a simple modern-postmodern dichotomy and articulate in its place four discursive positions that embody different assumptions about the relationships among communication, identity, and knowledge formation. These discourses are: (a) a discourse of representation (positivist modernism), (b) a discourse of understanding (interpretive modernism), (c) a discourse of suspicion (critical modernism), and (d) a discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism). Finally, I adumbrate a set of “postmodern communication conditions” as a way of illustrating the connections between postmodern thought and communication studies.
Dennis K. Mumby (Sat,) studied this question.