Notes: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies (Mumby, 1997)
Introduction and Framework
Dennis K. Mumby (February 1997) argues that recent discussions in communication studies often frame modernism and postmodernism as oppositional binaries. He proposes moving beyond a simple modernist vs. postmodernist dichotomy and outlines four discursive positions that shape how communication, identity, and knowledge are constructed.
The four discourses are:
(a) a discourse of representation (positivism)
(b) a discourse of understanding (interpretivism)
(c) a discourse of suspicion (critical theory and neo-marxism)
(d) a discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism)
Mumby also sketches postmodern communication conditions to illustrate how postmodern thought connects to communication studies.
The paper places these discourses in the context of debates about the status and trajectory of communication as a discipline, and it critiques the oversimplified view that modernism equals positivism and postmodernism equals social constructionism.
Key aims and approach
Examine the relationships among modernism, postmodernism, and communication studies.
Show that four discourses each engage the Enlightenment project differently and carry distinct ethical, political, and epistemological implications.
Emphasize that knowledge is in flux and transformation, and that four discourses offer a productive way to contextualize communication issues.
Position the author within the debates: trained in critical theory, sympathetic to some postmodern insights, wary of relativism and totalizing tendencies, and committed to a democratic, power-aware approach to communication.
Core concepts introduced
The term discourse (Foucault’s sense): a system of possibilities for knowledge production, including implicit rules about what counts as knowledge, who can speak it, and how subjects are constituted.
The idea of “games of truth”: different discourses enact different rule-governed practices that shape who can speak, what counts as knowledge, and how subjects are formed.
The Enlightenment project remains a reference point: four discourses each engage with reason, critique, and emancipation in distinctive ways.
The crisis of representation (Jameson, 1984) as a touchstone for understanding shifts in knowledge claims and the destabilization of the representational paradigm.
The Four Discourses in Brief
Discourse of Representation (positivism):
knowledge and truth tied to scientific method; Comte’s articulation of a “positive sociology,” “the scientific method.’’
Stewart (1991) spoke of the modernist proclivity for “the three c’s: closure, certainty, and control” (p. 356), it is this iteration of modernity to which he refers. Much of the research that has taken place in the social sciences, as well as in communication studies, fits comfortably within this framework.
subject–object bifurcation; In this model, communication is at best ancillary to, and at worst obstructive of, the production of truth claims.;
Similarly, Deetz’s (1992) critique of the “politics of expression” suggests how historically our field has operated with models that leave unproblematized relations among communication,
identity, and democratic processes.
democracy reduced to voices competing in a marketplace of ideas; communication as conduit or hindrance to truth rather than a constitutive process.
Discourse of Understanding (interpretive modernism): emphasizes the knowing mind as an active constitutor of knowledge; rooted in Kantian, Hegelian, hermeneutic traditions; truth emerges from dialogic engagement within a lifeworld, not from method alone.
Discourse of Suspicion (critical modernism): questions surface meanings and deep structures; focuses on power, ideology, and domination; influenced by neo-Marxism (Gramsci, Lukács, Voloshinov) and the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer) with a skeptical stance toward Enlightenment rationality.
Discourse of Vulnerability (postmodernism): challenges the idea of a sovereign speaking subject and emphasizes decentered or subjectless notions of discourse; highlights instability of meaning, power/knowledge relations, and the politics of truth; foregrounds resistance, marginal voices, and the ethics of reflexivity.
The Modernist Project and Communication Studies
Discourse of Representation (positivist modernism)
Core features:
Cartesian dualism: radical separation of subject (researcher) and object (of knowledge).
Knowledge equated with the scientific method; language as a neutral conduit.
Representational paradigm: truth via correspondence between language and an external world; research emphasizes measurement, control, and closure.
Implications for communication studies:
Communication seen as a conduit for transmitting pre-formed ideas or a hindrance to clear perception; lacks ontological grounding for communication as something that can shape reality.
Democracy reduces to contestation of ideas rather than constitutive processes of understanding; emphasis on effectiveness metrics (the “three C’s”: closure, certainty, and control).
Key critiques and examples:
Pfeffer (1981) on language, symbols, and power: language contributes to legitimation of decisions but power rests on resource control and interdependence, not purely on communication.
The conduit model historically pervades organizational studies (Axley, 1984) and Deetz (1992) critiques of politics of expression; communication is treated as a neutral vehicle rather than a constitutive force in democratic life.
Shepherd (1993) argues that modernist bifurcation of subject and world leaves the field as the “handmaiden” of other disciplines; research often focuses on tests and surveys rather than actual communication behavior.
Discourse of Understanding (interpretive modernism)
Rooted in German idealism: Kantian active role of the mind in constituting knowledge; dialectics (Hegel), hermeneutics (Schleiermacher, Dilthey), and later phenomenology and symbolic interactionism.
Core ideas:
Truth is not simply mirrored; it is produced through language and dialogic engagement within a lifeworld; understanding emerges from participants’ horizons of experience.
Language is constitutive of being (not merely a tool); truth eludes purely methodical capture; communities provide the horizons that ground understanding.
Gadamer and Habermas:
Gadamer: truth emerges from being embedded in a dialogic, culturally-laden horizon; truth eludes methodical manipulation and is grounded in communicative action within a community.
Habermas (as a modernist reformer): emphasizes a dialogic, intersubjective rationality; seeks to reclaim Enlightenment reason through a linguistic model of rationality and a critique of domination.
Implications for communication studies:
Interpretive modernism foregrounds communication as constitutive of social life and identity; moves away from universal knowledge claims toward understanding how meanings arise in communities of discourse.
Organizational culture research emerges as a major interpretive project: stories, rituals, metaphors, and discourse constitute organizing and identity; culture seen as a constitutive ontology of organizing (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo; Smircich & Calhs)(note): Smircich & Calhs later argued culture became co-opted by functionalist views, illustrating the persistence of positivist influence.
Ethical orientation: critique of instrumental rationality; emphasis on democratic dialogue and the possibility of transformed communities through understanding.
The Critical Modernist Project (Discourse of Suspicion)
Core claims
Shares a social-constructivist view of knowledge but foregrounds power, ideology, and domination; questions interpretive approaches for overlooking structural inequalities.
Two major streams:
Neo-Marxism (Gramsci, Lukács, Volosinov): critiques economistic explanations; emphasizes superstructural, cultural/ideological dimensions of power.
Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer): analyzes systems of reason, capitalism, and the Enlightenment’s ambiguous emancipatory potential; skeptical about Enlightenment as a universal guarantee of freedom.
Key insights:
Enlightenment rationality has been instrumentalized; “the Enlightenment must consider itself” to avoid self-destruction (Horkheimer & Adorno).
Habermas attempts to redeem modernity by reconstructing it with a linguistic model of communicative rationality and intersubjective emancipation, but critical modernists critique the limits of purely rational discourses when power structures distort dialogue.
Power-knowledge and domination:
Power and knowledge are intertwined; discursive practices produce social reality and shape who counts as a legitimate speaker.
Critical modernists stress the importance of uncovering how discourse sustains domination and how democratic possibilities can be realized through reflexive critique and institutional redesign.
Applications in organization studies:
Focus on how organizations produce and reproduce domination through discursive practices (Deetz, 1992; Deetz & Kersten, 1983); the aim is to democratize Lifeworlds through discursive closure and alternative self-definitions.
Theoretical lineage influences mass media studies, rhetoric, and organizational politics by highlighting ideology and the political nature of meaning-making.
Habermas’s contribution and beyond
Habermas’s theory of communicative action presents a more optimistic modernist project by rooting rationality in communicative processes that can emancipate and empower participants, while acknowledging system domination.
The modernist project is reframed as incomplete rather than dead; truth emerges from discursive practice free from coercion, but power structures can distort discourse, requiring ongoing critique and reform.
Postmodernism and the Discourse of Vulnerability
Postmodern critique and motivation
The postmodern turn foregrounds crisis of representation and challenges the authority of a single, unified epistemology.
The text distinguishes between different postmodern streams (affirmative vs. skeptical, resistance vs. ludic), focusing on an affirmative form that resonates with communication studies and shares continuities with critical modernism.
Postmodernism interrogates the sovereign subject, the signifier–signified distinction, and the link between truth and power; it questions universal claims and foregrounds context, multiplicity, and contingency.
Postmodernism’s central tenets in communication studies
Decentered subject: the traditional self is destabilized; individuals are produced by discursive practices and power relations.
Power/knowledge: truth is inseparable from power; discourses constitute subjects and realities in ways that reproduce or resist domination.
The signifier–signified dilemma is destabilized: Derrida’s hauntings of textual meaning (nothing outside the text) and Baudrillard’s simulacra/hyperreality challenge straightforward references to “reality.”
Subjectless communication: meaning is not located purely in individuals’ heads but in the discursive systems that shape interpretation; intent exists but is always mediated by discursive contexts.
Feminist postmodern contributions (Butler, Weedon, Bordo) illuminate how gender and identity are discursively constituted and politically policed within discourses of knowledge.
Political and ethical implications
Postmodern research emphasizes the politics of truth and the everyday power-knowledge regimes that regulate who can speak and what counts as knowledge.
It foregrounds marginal voices and resistance practices (e.g., subaltern counter-publics, hidden transcripts, textual poaching) and examines how discourse creates and sustains subjectivity and power relations.
The postmodern stance on self-de(con)struction: communication can deconstruct fixed identities and open space for alternative subjectivities, while recognizing the persistence of sedimented systems that confine and empower differently.
The stance on social change: aims to reveal how discourses constrain or enable democratic action; seeks to empower marginalized groups and critique masculinist or hegemonic knowledge practices.
Postmodern Communication Conditions: What This Means for Research and Practice
Core idea: communication is (im)possible
The postmodern framework asserts that society is not a fixed totality but a suturing of discourses that are always partial and unstable; meaning is continually deferred, centers are precarious, and social totalities cannot be fully fixed.
Key theoretical anchors:
Hall (1985): ideologies set limits on how dominant groups reproduce themselves; there is no fixed, necessary correspondence between signification and reality.
Laclau & Mouffe (1985): society is articulated through discourses that attempt to fix meaning, yet centers are inherently unstable and open to challenge.
Derrida (1976) and deconstruction: there is no ultimate closure; meaning is deferred through endless differences.
Chang (1988): meaning disseminates endlessly; a sense of closure is inherently unstable.
Postmodern research examples and themes
Textual poaching and fan cultures (Jenkins, 1988): Star Trek fans create subversive storylines by reinterpreting dominant narratives.
Office resistance and gendered practices (Bell & Forbes, 1994): women co-opt bureaucratic structures (e.g., office graffiti) to carve spaces of resistance within oppressive systems.
Oppressed groups and resistance transcripts (Scott, 1990): hidden transcripts reveal creative acts of resistance that undermine domination beyond public displays of power; infrapolitics of subordinate groups.
Subaltern counter-publics (Fraser, 1989, 1990-1991; Conquergood, 1991): counter-discourses organize alternate spheres of political legitimacy.
Distinctions between critical modernism and postmodernism in postmodern studies
Critical modernists traditionally analyze public transcripts and capital-based domination with a totalizing logic; acts of resistance are interpreted within larger structural explanations.
Postmodern studies emphasize instability, openness, and resistance beyond totalizing structures; foregrounds the politics of truth and the affirmative potential of diverse discourses.
Implications for communication studies
Communication is inherently political and constitutive of subjectivity; researchers should analyze how discourses fix or unsettle identities and how power relations shape who participates in dialogue.
The discipline should cultivate genealogical analyses of truth-claims, exposing how different power-knowledge regimes regulate what counts as knowledge and who is authorized to speak.
The postmodern lens invites more inclusive, reflexive, and experimental approaches to studying communication, identity, and power.
Connections to Enlightenment, Power, and Practice
Enlightenment re-visited by four discourses
Each discourse engages Enlightenment aims (reason, emancipation, critique) in different ways:
Representation: emphasizes scientific method and universalizing claims, with potential epistemic arrogance and political caution about democracy.
Understanding: reclaims reason through dialogic, language-centered rationality that foregrounds communities of meaning.
Suspicion: critiques Enlightenment as complicit in domination; seeks emancipation through critical theory and culture-centered analyses.
Vulnerability: redefines reason and truth as contingent and power-influenced, focusing on plural, context-bound knowledge production and the ethics of discourse.
Habermas as a bridge in the modernist project
Habermas’s theory of communicative action links modernism with emancipation via a linguistic model of rationality and intersubjective legitimacy.
Core ideas:
Rationality is not reduced to sovereign cognition; it is constituted through dialogic exchanges free from coercion.
The Lifeworld, System, and the possibility of recolonizing the Lifeworld with practical and emancipatory rationalities to resist system dominance.
The Lifeworld’s colonization by System (money and power) is a central concern; communicative action is a means to restore democratic, participatory life.
This approach remains modernist but is attuned to power, ideology, and the politics of discourse.
Implications for organizational communication and beyond
Critical modernist and interpretive modernist insights have shaped organizational studies as sites where power, identity, and discourse intersect—e.g., Deetz (1992) on corporate colonization and discursive closure; the rise of organizational culture (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo; Smircich & Calhs) as a contested interpretive project.
Postmodern insights push toward more reflexive, anti-essentialist approaches to identity, power, and resistance in organizations, highlighting gender, race, and other axes of difference in discursive practices.
Feminist scholarship (Butler, Weedon, Bordo) demonstrates how gendered power operates through discourse and how discursive shifts can transform social meanings and practices.
Practical and Ethical Implications for Researchers
Four-discourse framework offers a comprehensive map for understanding how knowledge is produced in communication studies and how this production intertwines with power, identity, and community.
Ethical orientation across discourses:
Representational: value neutrality or instrumental use in service of existing political relations; concern for democratic participation.
Interpretive: ethics of dialogue, openness to others’ horizons, and the maintenance of a shared lifeworld.
Critical: commitment to emancipation, critique of domination, and the politics of knowledge that foreground marginalized voices.
Postmodern: responsibility to reveal how discourses discipline and empower; attention to marginalization, representation, and the politics of truth.
Key Thinkers and Concepts to Remember
Foucault: games of truth; discursive regimes; power/knowledge; discourses shape who can speak and what counts as knowledge.
Gadamer: truth and dialogic understanding; the horizon as condition for interpretation.
Habermas: Theory of Communicative Action; Lifeworld vs. System; three forms of rationality (instrumental, practical, emancipatory); ideal speech situation; recolonization of the Lifeworld.
Derrida: deconstruction; nothing outside the text; meaning as deferred through différance.
Baudrillard: simulacra and hyperreality; the signifier can become more real than the signified.
Lyotard: postmodern condition; knowledge as a product of social narrative; skepticism about grand narratives.
Scott (Domination and the arts of resistance) and Fraser (subaltern counter-publics): hidden transcripts and alternative discourses of resistance.
Jenkins (textual poaching), De Certeau (practice of everyday life, poetics of ethnography): resistant practices within everyday culture.
Butler (gender as performative), Weedon (subjectivity and discourse), Bordo (feminist postmodernism): gendered power in knowledge construction.
Summary Takeaways
Modernism and postmodernism are not monolithic, mutually exclusive camps; they comprise four interrelated discourses that illuminate different relationships among communication, identity, and knowledge.
Representational (positivist), Understanding (interpretive), Suspicion (critical), and Vulnerability (postmodern) each offer a distinct set of ontological, epistemological, and ethical commitments, with concrete implications for research methods, organizational studies, and democratic life.
Postmodernism does not abandon the Enlightenment project but retools it through critical reflexivity, politics of discourse, and attention to power relations; it invites ongoing negotiation about what counts as knowledge and who gets to speak.
A nuanced, multi-voiced approach to communication studies—one that acknowledges continuities and differences across these discourses—can better address issues of power, identity, and social justice in contemporary societies.