Chapter I - RDU - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

17neighbour’s truth and we are expected to accept as many versions of it as there mightbe. Relativism prevails then. As a consequence of this frame within which we move andlive, individualism and selfishness blossom and are promoted but they only bringloneliness in the end. There is little commitment in relationships and our lifesavers thesedays go from drugs, to oriental religions, going through hedonistic excesses or plainindifference.Finally, and in order to round up this section in an affirmative tone, I will saythat in 1987, when Ihab Hassan wrote his essay “Toward a concept of Postmodernism”he chose to end it with a question:One may well wonder: is some decisive historical mutation – involving art and science,high and low culture, the male and the female principles, parts and wholes, the One andthe Many as Pre-Socratics used to say – active in our midst? Or does thedismemberment of Orpheus prove no more than the mind’s need to make but one moreconstruction of life mutabilities and human mortality? And what construction liesbeyond, behind, within, that construction? (Docherty 154)Years later, already within the XXIst century, in 2006, Juan José Sebreli, goes afew steps further. In El olvido de la razón (2006), he deconstructs many postmodernaxioms and describes for us some of the new schools of thought that are emerging as acontinuation and at the same time a discontinuation of Postmodernism. After this, andmaking a brief summary of the many ideas that Postmodernism has concerned itselfwith, he concludes in an affirmative frame of mind saying that:The relationship between society and philosophy, between history and reason, betweenaction and theory and the search for meaning or the immanent rationality of the socialand historical process do not imply the acceptance of teleologies, escatologies,millenarisms or providentialisms; on the contrary, they all reconfirm freedom within theboundaries of a given situation, reject determinism (...) and deny a predetermined futureas our fatal destiny. They rely on the ability of humans (...) to understand, select amongdifferent alternatives, transform their situation in the world and grant a rational meaningto historical development and to their own existences. 6 (350)In her book Poetics of Postmodernism, (1988) Linda Hutcheon also appears asone who sees Postmodernism under a positive light and one who tries to reach abalanced viewpoint of the whole matter. She seems to think that despite all the6My own translation