Peter Blum

The two sets of song lyrics with which I open these ruminations are separated in time by about a quarter of a century. They are separated in mood—or perhaps we should say “attitude”—by a distance not so easily measurable. One is a children’s song that has been sung in countless Bible School sessions since the late 1970s. The other is a recent song by a so-called “alternative” rock band, the sort of band whose compact discs are often decorated with stickers warning parents of “explicit” content, or in some cases have had alternate packaging in plain white in

My purpose in this essay is to share with you my experience, as a selfidentified Anabaptist Christian, of reading some so-called postmodern social thought, especially that of Michel Foucault. I would like to begin, however, with some comments on the problematic terms of my title. I have very little interest in clarifying exactly what postmodernism is , partly because I simply find that project uninteresting, and partly because I don’t believe postmodernism is anything, exactly. It seems fair, nonetheless, that we allow that there are postmodernists, inasmuch as there are a bunch of scholarly folk nowadays who refer to themselves