THE POSTMODERN READING IN THE DEBATE ABOUT SOCIETY AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Postmodernism is a class movement that begins in the golden age of “well-being” capitalism and is currently in crisis with the fall in capital profit rates. Among the diverse faces that the movement presents, this article aims to clarify its conceptions about society and development, from a bibliographic research, from the perspective of historical materialism. The text is divided beyond the introduction into six more parts: the first situates the dissent between modernity versus postmodernity; the second presents the main postmodern premise, society conceived as “language games”; the third discusses the implications of considering society as “language games” in postmodern reading on epistemology, culture, identity, economics and politics; the fourth part relates the critique of modernity to the critique of development; the fifth presents the characteristics of the “postmodern left” today and its implications for discussions on political economy and development prospects; and at the end the final considerations are presented. It was found that postmodern reading seeks simply to renounce debates about society and development, proposing individualized and segmented solutions. Based on a tangle of contradictions, postmodern theories do not contribute to the construction of a socioeconomic development project, on the contrary, they end up damaging any possibility of criticism of the exploitation of workers by capital.