The ethics of pragmatism: politics and post-structuralism in transition after the complexity turn

Post-structuralism currently holds the ethical and political high ground. Its practitioners write with a tone of confidence and expectation that their position is justified and anyone who wants to suggest otherwise better have a very good argument and know what they are taking on; or better, what we all stand to lose if post-structuralism’s authority is overturned. A challenge to what appears to be the best-founded critical paradigm is a serious business with serious consequences. Its dominance is nevertheless in question and, indeed, from within. A sense of transition is obvious in the best writing from that field. Cary Wolfe’s Critical Environments: Post-Modern Theory and the Pragmatics of the ‘Outside’ (1998) is the most informative crystallisation of what is at stake.