The theories in the social sciences are presently confined by numerous statements as peremptory as they are immodest about their finitude. The nomenclature of these deaths overwhelms the intellectual landscape of the turning point of this century since one must include therein those of the ideologies (Bell, Aron), of the political (Birnbaum), of the social (Baudrillard), of religion (Gauchet), of culture (Henry), of modernity (Vattimo), of grand narratives (Lyotard), of socialism (Touraine), of history (Gehlen, Heidegger), and, of Marxism-Leninism which is without a doubt the most recent. The discourses of post-modernity appear precisely as attempts to think out the breaking up of the foundations of the philosophical and political theories in a context of a questioning of paradigmatic certitudes and the heritage of truths that were once attached to it. While the theories of social sciences were in turn subordinated to the Mathesis with Descartes and Leibniz, to Science with the positivism of Comte and his successors, to Politics with Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, now, with the discourses of post-modernity, they seem to be attached to the post-structuralist hegemony of the Narrative. This article proposes to study this notion in a critical manner while, at the same time, examining how the rehabilitation of the rhetoric from which it proceeds serves to profoundly redefine the status and the impact of theory in the social sciences.
 
 
 
 
 

Gilbert Larochelle
555, bl. de l'Université
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
Chicoutimi (Québec)
Canada G7H 2B1
Téléphone: (418) 549-3452 / (418) 549-6906
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