Postmodern Criticism

Not least due to the so-called postmodern critique, there has been a shift in thinking towards a discursive paradigm in field research and in the generation of KSA texts. This means moving away from purely descriptive research based on observations and narratives, which were merely interpreted by the researcher, to a dialogic, interactive, and communicative approach to research.

Thus, in the production of texts, important insights emerge that researchers and researched are equally involved in the generation of texts, and that the researched must also be heard with their own interpretations, perspectives, and concerns, just as the researcher has to reflect on his/her own role and the related influences on the results[3] (own ideas and theories influencing the view, researcher as "action-carrying element" and not as invisible observer in the research process).

Instead of the all-covering voice of the Western researcher, from now on there should be the polyphony, the polyphony of all actors. Thus, KSA works can no longer be written and understood as an objective, neutral, distanced text based on scientific models, as previously assumed, but are paper help the manifestation of well-founded research work, in which the entire research process and the relationship of the actors is also reflected and included.

It is important to note that there were also some problems associated with the so-called postmodern critique, and to some extent still are (although it certainly had its justification and the rethinking that took place in research only made serious and meaningful research, as we know and practice it today, possible).

The scholarly essay became increasingly close to the literary text. Literary theoretical approaches actually made up the origin of postmodernism, which, after all, did not start in the USA but in France. Important representatives of this philosophical current of literary criticism include Jacques Derrida, Francois Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard.

Analogous to these approaches in literary theory, KSA was also increasingly concerned with the producers of the text and their intentions. There was a growing concern with making visible the writing, the research process, and the researchers themselves with all their emotions. Comparative representations were rendered impossible, as each text was seen as relative and subjective. A superordinate, quasi "meta-instance" such as that of a universal reason was rejected - like all so-called metanarratives (in German "grand narratives") - as failed projects of modernity.