POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism is a
term applied to a variety of artistic, architectural, philosophical, and cultural movements that are said to arise after and in reaction to modernism.
The term and its use have a wide variety of different meanings in
different disciplines, and the existence of post-modernism as a coherent set of
ideas is often debated. The most commonly cited area of disagreeement comes
from disagreements over what the basis for knowledge and political philosophy
should have.
Modernism is usually said to frame itself as the culmination of the Enlightenment's quest for an authoritatively-rational aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge. In
contrast postmodernism is usually held to be concerned with how the authority
of those would-be-ideals, sometimes called metanarratives, are subverted through fragmentation, consumerism, and deconstruction. This dichotomy is somewhat problematic, since it ignores the strong
emphasis on irrationalism and fragmentation within modernism. For this reason
postmodernism can equally be seen as a development of aspects of modernism
while rejecting others, in particular the emphasis on authenticity.
Jean-François Lyotard famously described postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives"
(Lyotard, 1984). Postmodernism attacks the notions of monolithic universals and
encourages fractured, fluid and multiple perspectives and is marked by an
increasing importance in the ideas from the Sociology of knowledge.
A related term is postmodernity, which refers to the state of things after modernity. This
includes a focus on the sociological, technological, and other conditions that
distinguish the Modern Age from what is thought to have arisen thereafter.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, denotes intellectual, cultural,
artistic, academic, and philosophical responses to the condition of
postmodernity. Another related term is postmodern, an adjective used to
describe either a condition of, or a response to, postmodernity. For example,
one may refer to postmodern architecture, postmodern literature, postmodern culture, postmodern music and postmodern philosophy.
Features of postmodern culture begin to arise in the 1920s with
the emergence of the dada
movement, which featured collage and a focus on the framing of objects and
discourse as being as important, or more important, than the work itself.
Another strand which would have tremendous impact on post-modernism would be
the existentialists, who placed the centrality of the individual narrative as being the
source of morals and understanding. However, it is with the end of the Second World War that recognizably post-modernist attitudes begin to emerge.
Central to these is the focusing on the problems of any knowledge which
is founded on anything external to an individual. Post-modernism, while widely diverse in its forms, almost invariably
begins from the problem of knowledge which is both broadly disseminated in its
form, but not limited in its interpretation. Post-modernism rapidly developed a
vocabulary of anti-enlightenment rhetoric, used to argue that rationality was neither as sure or as clear as rationalists supposed, and
that knowledge was inherently linked to time, place, social position and other
factors from which an individual constructs their view of knowledge. To
escape from constructed knowledge, it then becomes necessary to critique it,
and thus deconstruct the asserted knowledge. Jacques Derrida argued that to defend against the inevitable self-deconstruction of
knowledge, systems of power, called hegemony would have to postulate an original utterance, the logos. This
"privileging" of an original utterance is called "logocentrism".
Instead of rooting knowledge in particular utterances, or "texts",
the basis of knowledge was seen to be in the free play of discourse itself, an
idea rooted in Wittgenstein's idea of a language game. This emphasis on the allowability of free
play within the context of conversation and discourse leads postmodernism to
adopt the stance of irony, paradox, textual manipulation, reference and tropes.
Armed with this process of questioning the social basis of assertions,
postmodernist philosophers began to attack unities of modernism, and
particularly unities seen as being rooted in the Enlightenment. Since Modernism had
made the Enlightenment a central source of its superiority over the Victorian and
Romantic periods, this attack amounted to an indirect attack on the
establishment of modernism itself. Perhaps the most striking examples of this
skepticism are to be found in the works of French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. In his book Simulations, he contends that social 'reality' no
longer exists in the conventional sense, but has been supplanted by an endless
procession of simulacra. The
mass media, and other forms of mass cultural production, generate constant
re-appropriation and re-contextualisation of familiar cultural symbols and
images, fundamentally shifting our experience away from 'reality', to 'hyperreality'.
Along this line, it is significant that the beginning of postmodern
architecture is not considered to be the construction of any great building,
but the destruction of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe
housing project (see Minoru Yamasaki).
Postmodernism therefore has an obvious distrust toward claims about
truth, ethics, or beauty being rooted in anything other than individual
perception and group construction. Utopian ideals of universally applicable truths or aesthetics give way to
provisional, decentered, local petit recits which, rather than
referencing an underlying universal truth or aesthetic, point only to other ideas and cultural artifacts, themselves subject to interpretation and re-interpretation. The
"truth", since it can only be understood by all of its connections is
perpetually "deferred", never reaching a point of fixed knowledge
which can be called "the truth" This emphasis on construction and
consensus is often used to attack science, as the Sokal Affair
shows.
Postmodernism is often used in a larger sense, meaning the entire trend
of thought in the late 20th century, and the social and philosophical realities
of that period. Marxist critics argue that post-modernism is symptomatic of
"late capitalism" and the decline of institutions, particularly the
nation-state. Other thinkers assert that post-modernity is the natural reaction
to mass broadcasting and a society conditioned to mass production and mass
political decision making. The ability of knowledge to be endlessly copied
defeats attempts to constrain interpretation, or to set "originality"
by simple means such as the production of a work. From this perspective, the
schools of thought labelled "postmodern" are not as widely at odds
with their time period as the polemics and arguments appear, pointing, for
example, to the shift of the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional
consensus of scientists, as posited by Thomas Kuhn. Post-modernism is seen, in this view, as being conscious of the nature
of the discontinuity between modern and post-modern periods which is generally
present.
Postmodernism has manifestations in many modern academic and
non-academic disciplines: philosophy, theology, art,
architecture, film, television, music, theatre, sociology, fashion, technology, literature, and
communications are all heavily influenced by postmodern trends and ideas, and
are thoroughly scrutinised from postmodern perspectives. Crucial to these are
the denial of customary expectations, the use of non-orthogonal angles in
buildings such as the work of Frank Gehry, and the shift in arts exemplified by the rise of minimalism in
art and music. Post-modern philosophy often labels itself as critical theory and grounds the construction of identity in the mass media.
(Note: "post-modern" tends to be used by critics,
"postmodern" by supporters. This may be because postmodern is
considered merely a symbol and its meaning (as obtained through simple
linguistic analysis) can be ignored.)
Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the 1980s, but
as a cultural movement it predates them by many years. Exactly when modernism
began to give way to postmodernism is difficult to pinpoint, if not simply
impossible. Some theorists reject that such a distinction even exists, viewing
postmodernism, for all its claims of fragmentation and plurality, as still
existing within a larger 'modernist' framework. The philosopher Jürgen
Habermas is a strong proponent of this view, which has aspects of a lumpers/splitters problem: is the entire 20th century one period, or two distinct
periods?
The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French
academia. In 1979 Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short but influential
work The Postmodern Condition : a report on
knowledge. Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes (in his more post-structural work) are also strongly influential in
postmodern theory. Postmodernism is closely allied with several contemporary
academic disciplines, most notably those connected with sociology. Many of its
assumptions are integral to feminist and post-colonial theory.
Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s as
the earliest trend out of cultural modernity toward postmodernism.
Tracing it further back, some identify its roots in the breakdown of
Hegelian idealism, and the impact of both World Wars (perhaps even the concept
of a World War). Heidegger and Derrida were
influential in re-examining the fundamentals of knowledge, together with the
work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of action, Soren Kierkegaard's and Karl Barth's important fideist approach to theology, and even the nihilism of Nietzsche's philosophy. Michel Foucault's application of Hegel to thinking about the body is also identified as an important landmark.
While it is rare to pin down the specific origins of any large cultural shift,
it is fair to assume that postmodernism represents an accumulated
disillusionment with the promises of the Enlightenment project and its progress
of science, so central to modern thinking.
The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its
anti-ideological insights appear conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements, homosexual rights movements, most forms of
late 20th century anarchism, even
the peace movement and various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. Unsurprisingly, none of these institutions entirely embraces all
aspects of the postmodern movement, but reflect or, in true postmodern style,
borrow from some of its core ideas.
In an essay From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global
Context, http:www.ihabhassan.com/postmodernism_to_postmodernity.htm Ihab Hassan points out a number of instances in which the term
postmodernism was used before the term became popular:
Also, many cite Charles Jencks' 1977
"The Language of Postmodern Architecture" among the earliest works
which shaped the use of the term today.