POLITICIZING THE POLITICS OF POSTMODERN SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY

The paper considers the postmodern turn in social psychology, offering an account of similarities and differences between postmodern social psychology and more 'standard' versions of social psychology. Various possible versions of postmodern social psychology are put to the test. The argument is made that the institutional construction of postmoder n social psychology forces it to keep separate the following themes: t he human and the non-human, the biological and the social, surveillanc e and self-realization, government and forms of ethical comportment. T hese dualisms can be understood in new ways through a reconceptualizat ion of technology in postmodern social psychology. Our critique is int ended to focus attention on the political implications of a postmodern social psychology which understands itself as a self-consciously 'bet ter' psychology.