The Rhetorical Strategies and the Misleading Nature of Attacks on `Postmodernism': A Reply to Østerud

As a reaction to Østerud's attack on `postmodernism', it is argued that post-structuralism, Critical Theory and critical realism should be seen as important responses to the crisis of positivism and modernity. Even the few `postmodernists' who would be willing to defend the idea that it is only thought and discourses that matter or that `anything goes' or that we should stop talking about truths have been able to contribute to transformations of understandings in a constructive way. Even though some of the actual critical-reflective analyses have been rather conventional, there is much room for producing even better critical-reflectivist studies in the future. However, Østerud's loaded terms have effects of power: there is an unjustified tendency to silence the emerging latemodern interpretative and explanatory possibilities.