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Postmodernism's manifestations

Postmodernism in language

Postmodern philosophers are often regarded as difficult to read, and the critical theory that has sprung up in the wake of postmodernism has often been ridiculed for its stilted syntax and attempts to combine polemical tone and a vast array of new coinages. However, similar charges could be levelled at the works of previous eras, such as the works of Immanuel Kant.

More important to postmodernism's role in language is the focus on the implied meaning of words and forms, the power structures that are accepted as part of the way words are used, from the use of the word "Man" with a capital "M" to refer to the collective humanity, to the default of the word "he" in English as a pronoun for a person of gender unknown to the speaker, or as a casual replacement for the word "one". This, however, is merely the most obvious example of the changing relationship between diction and discourse which postmodernism presents.

An important concept in postmodernism's view of language is the idea of "play". In the context of postmodernism, play means changing the framework which connects ideas, and thus allows the troping, or turning, of a metaphor or word from one context to another, or from one frame of reference to another. Since, in postmodern thought, the "text" is a series of "markings" whose meaning is imputed by the reader, and not by the author, this play is the means by which the reader constructs or interprets the text, and the means by which the author gains a presence in the reader's mind. Play then involves invoking words in a manner which undermines their authority, by mocking their assumptions or style, or by layers of misdirection as to the intention of the author.

This view of writing is not without harsh detractors, who regard it as needlessly difficult, and a violation of the implicit contract of lucidity between author and reader: that an author has something to communicate, and shall choose words which transmit the idea as transparently as possible to the reader.

Postmodernism in art

Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art, postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction. A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and high art forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favors eclecticism, the mixing of ideas and forms. Partly due to this rejection, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness, commonly referred to as jouissance by postmodern theorists. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not approach this fragmentation as somehow faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates it. As the gravity of the search for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced with 'play'. As postmodern icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said: 'Stop making sense'.

Post-modernity, in attacking the perceived elitist approach of Modernism, sought greater connection with broader audiences. This is often labelled 'accessibility' and is a central point of dispute in the question of the value of postmodern art. It has also embraced the mixing of words with art, collage and other movements in modernity, in an attempt to create more multiplicity of medium and message. Much of this centers on a shift of basic subject matter: postmodern artists regard the mass media as a fundamental subject for art, and use forms, tropes, and materials - such as banks of video monitors, found art, and depictions of media objects - as focal points for their art. Andy Warhol is an early example of postmodern art in action, with his appropriation of common popular symbols and "ready-made" cultural artifacts, bringing the previously mundane or trivial onto the previously hallowed ground of high art.

Postmodernism's critical stance is interlinked with presenting new appraisals of previous works. As implied above the works of the "Dada" movement received greater attention, as did collagists such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works were initially considered unimportant in the context of the modernism of the 1950s, but who, by the 1980s, began to be seen as seminal. Post-modernism also elevated the importance of cinema in artistic discussions, placing it on a peer level with the other fine arts. This is both because of the blurring of distinctions between "high" and "low" forms, and because of the recognition that cinema represented the creation of simulacra which was later duplicated in the other arts.

Postmodernism in architecture

Stuttgart State Gallery - by James Stirling (1984)

As with many cultural movements, one of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional, and formalized, shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics; styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

Classic examples of modern architecture are the Empire State building or the Chrysler building in commercial space, and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or the Bauhaus movement in private or communal spaces. A transitional example of postmodern architecture is the ATT building in New York, which, like modernist architecture, is a skyscraper relying on steel beams and with lots of windows, but, unlike modern architecture, it borrows elements from classical Greek style as well. A prime example of postmodern art through an architectural medium lies along the Las Vegas Strip. The buildings along this strip of road reflect innumerable art periods as well as cultural references all in a very playful collage.

Postmodern architecture has also been described as "neo-eclectic", where reference and ornament have returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles as, for example, in this building from Boston Massachusetts. This electicism is often combined with the use of non-orthagonal angles and unusual surfaces, most famously in the Stuttgart State Gallery and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Modernist architects regard post-modern buildings as vulgar and loaded with "gee-gaws". Post-modern architects often regard modern spaces as soulless and bland. The basic aesthetic differences reach down to the level of the tectonicity of architecture, with Modernism rooted in the desire to reduce the amount of material and cost of a structure, and standardize its construction. Post-modernism has no such imperative, and seeks exuberance in the use of building techniques, angles, references.

Postmodern architects include: Philip Johnson (later works), John Burgee, Robert Venturi, Ricardo Boffil, James Stirling and Frank Gehry.

Postmodernism in literature

In some ways, it can be said that postmodern literature does not so much set itself against modernist literature, as develop and extend the style, and make it self-conscious and ironic. Both modern and postmodern literature represent a break from 19th century realism, in which narrative told a story from an objective or omniscient point of view. In character development, both modern and postmodern literature explore subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples in the "stream of consciousness" styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In addition, both modern and postmodern literature explore fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction, often reference back to the works of Swedish dramatist August Strindberg and the Italian author Luigi Pirandello.

Unlike postmodern literature, however, modernist literature saw fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict. In postmodern literature, however, this crisis is avoided. The tortured, isolated anti-heroes of, say, Knut Hamsun or Samuel Beckett, and the nightmare world of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, make way in postmodernist writing for the self-consciously deconstructed and self-reflexive narrators of novels by Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir Sorokin, Gerhard Anna Concic-Kaucic, John Fowles, John Barth, or Julian Barnes. Meanwhile, authors such as David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, satirise the paranoid system-building of the kind associated, by postmodernists, with Enlightenment modernity. This shift in the role of the "inner narrative of the self", from the self at war with itself, to the self as arbiter points back to the phenomenological roots of post-modern thought.

Dubbed maximalism by some critics, the sprawling canvas and fragmented narrative of such writers as David Eggers has generated controversy on the "purpose" of a novel as narrative and the standards by which it should be judged. The post-modern position is that the novel must be adequeate to that which it depicts and represents, and points back to such examples in previous ages as Gargantua by François Rabelais and the Odyssey of Homer, which Nancy Felson-Rubin hails as the exemplar of the polytropic audience and its engagement with a work. Many modernist critics attack the maximalist novel as being disorganized, sterile and filled with language play for its own sake, empty of value as a narrative, and therefore empty of value as a novel.

The post-modern novel was also part of a larger social project: integration and ending discrimination against women. From the perspective of post-modern writers such as Maya Angelou, the life experiences of women had been systematically suppressed, either by men who did not understand them, or by women who engaged in self-censorship. The hard version of this critique was that this suppression came from the use of rape and incest as tools for the subjugation of women, and their suppression in literature was designed, in an Orwellian sense, to create an absence of language and meta-narrative to shape a response to these realities. The softer version of this critique takes a more modernist shape: that sexism and racism are hold overs from another, less enlightened age, and need to be stamped out by exposure and the creation of normative art.

This social project has also been the root of a great deal of controversy. Proponents see it as part of the progressive removal of barriers to social participation in power and art. Opponents deride it as political correctness, where moralizing takes the place of literary merit. This debate reflects larger political conflicts, not only over what is to be done, but how it is to be accomplished.

Postmodernism in music

Main article: Postmodern music