Epistemology

Epistemology
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the
source and status of knowledge. Thus, the question of what constitutes truth is an
epistemological issue. The most significant debate concerning epistemology within
cultural studies has been between representationalism (realism) and those opposed
to it (poststructuralism, postmodernism and pragmatism). Thinkers who maintain
a realist stance argue that a degree of certain knowledge about an independent
object world (a real world) is possible even though methodological vigilance and
reflexivity need to be maintained. In contrast, poststructuralism and
postmodernism adopt Nietzsche’s characterization of truth as a ‘mobile army of
metaphors and metonyms’. That is, sentences are the only things that can be true
or false. Knowledge is not a question of true discovery but of the construction of
interpretations about the world that are taken to be true. In so far as the idea of
truth has an historical purchase, it is the consequence of power, that is, of whose
interpretations come to count as truth.

Modern realist truth-claims exhibit contradictory tendencies. On the one hand,
they are universalizing and assert their truths for all people in all places. On the other
hand, they also embody the methodological principle of doubt by which knowledge
is subject to chronic and continual revision. Poststructuralism and postmodernism
emphasize the production of truths within the language-games in which such truths
are founded and as such they accept the legitimacy of a range of truth-claims,
discourses and representations of ‘reality’. This postmodern understanding of
knowledge is on the ascendant within cultural studies but remains disputed.

(The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies, by Chris Baker)