The Ubaya FBE Postgraduate once again held a seminar with Cynthia Ciptadi as chair on Friday, March 10th, 2017. The seminar theme was “Critical Thinking” and took the title “CRITICAL THINKING OF INDEPENDENCE TOWARDS THE GRAND NARRATIVES OF CAPITALISM THROUGH THE CRITICAL-POSTMODERNIST PARADIGM”. The seminar was delivered by a speaker who is a lecturer, trainer, journal and book writer, and director of the Rumah Peneleh Foundation, Dr. Ari Kamayanti, S.E., M.M., MSA, Ak., CA. He gave a new insight and also justified the existing paradigm of the participants. Dr. Ari threw a statement about the instability of texts, symbols, and narration that invites participants to rethink and evaluate the existing paradigms, something that has only been heard in journals and papers.
Many of the figures mentioned in this seminar are philosophers who have influence in the world’s postmodernist movements such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard. Their great ideas were also shared in this seminar, such as “Derrida’s deconstruction” which sees critically the relationship between the text and meaning and “Baudrillard’s Simulacra” which seeks to examine the relationship between reality, symbols, and society. The thought found that there are copies describing something false, something that had never existed before, or something that had no more authenticity while looking at how the philosophers’ paradigms in criticizing capitalism.
Capitalism is deeply discussed in this seminar. In this seminar, it is explained that the capitalist power will create the grand narratives that affect history and science. Such grand narratives created an impression that all is tangible, although based on the postmodernist paradigm there is nothing real, such as the events of G-30S PKI, Enron, WorldCom, Freeport McMoran, as well as concepts in economics such as Total Quality Management ( TQM).
The phenomenon leads to what is called the crisis of narrative, so there is a need for an understanding and expression of the game of words, symbols, and narrations so that we can uncover the hidden truths. One way to overcome the crisis is to bring up other narratives to destroy the lies from the great narratives. In addition, the speaker concluded the result of the postmodernist paradigm is that they will never have a conclusion because postmodernists tend to make truth. Before the speaker concluded the material session and proceeded to the question and answer session, he presented a poem delivered with the strains of the song and “challenged” the participants to be able to create narratives that benefit others. The speaker hoped that the participants, especially students who will make the paper, can provide critical narratives and can benefit others.
A participant namely Adi who is Master of Accounting student said, “This seminar is very interesting because the topic is indeed booming these days. Speakers understand the material well and his delivery is easily accepted by everyone in the room. This is evidenced by the many questions asked by participants in the Question and Answer session.” The seminar ended with a souvenir presentation by Dr. Bonnie Soeherman (the Head of Maksi study program) to speakers and photo session with seminar participants.
