Nothing is trustworthy,
> whether they are words or things. Therefore, one is unable to distinguish
> between words and things. This is the nihilistic base-line of much of
> phenomenological and post-structuralist thought and what Baudrillard means,
> in part, when he writes of the simulacra.
>
> I still don¹t see any argument beyond that position except through a leap
> of faith that there is an objective reality. I am not keen on leaping before
> looking, which leaves me stuck on one side of the argument. The difference
> between scepticism and nihilism is too fine.
>
I don't see the reason of opposing relativism and universalism here. Nor do I lament the loss of what existed before simulacra (what?), or postmodernism (and posthumanism).
The alternative to believing in essential truth is not declaring that objectivity is pure rhetoric, but rather trying to escape this dualistic trap still dictated by an essentialist presupposition (binary thinking!!!).
Standpoint Epistemology, for example, sustains a symmetry between the subject and the object of knowledge equating strong reflexivity with "strong objectivity"(Sandra Harding, "Strong Objectivity and Socially Situated Knowledge", 1991). Haraway, then, redefines relativism as partiality so as to transform it into an epistemic device ( as noted by F. García Selgas, in "Feminist Epistemologies for Critical Social Theory",2004).
...
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