Postmodernism DR S Lourdunathan

nathanlourdu1960@gmail.
com
S. Lourdunathan
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AN INTRODUCTION TO
POSTMODERNISM(S) & POSTMODERNITY

Course material to students of Philosophy, St. Josephs Philosophical College,

Friary, June & Arul Anandar College
5- 10, 2006

Dr. S. Lourdunathan
Head, department of Philosophy
Arul Anandar (Autonomous) College
Karumathur 625 514
Madurai-Dt

nathanlourdu1960@gmail.com
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Postmodernism & Postmodernity: An Introduction
Waging War against any violence of Totality is postmodern action

1.0. Introducing the postmodern trends

1.1 Postmodernism (Postmodernism) describes major intellectual and cultural movement of the
20
th
century historical period which has made a major impact on philosophy, art, critical
theory, literature, architecture, history, and culture, especially.
1.2 Postmodernism is one of those elusive academic terms applied to many different fields of
study. Many seem to understand what it means individually, but few agree collectively. If we
ask at least ten people of what is meant by post-modernism, we might get ten different
reactions or responses. Academicians often use this term in discussions such as post-
structuralism, post colonialism, post-industrial, transnational capitalism, deconstructionism
etc. All these terms share a certain amount of similarity as well as dissimilarities and are
sometimes interchanged with one another. The bottom line is that any comments about Post
Modernism by anyone should be understood with their peculiar interpretation in mind. It is
marked by difference and disagreements.
1.3 Postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
However, it was greatly influenced by the writings of several earlier 20th century
philosophers, including phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger,
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, and the sometimes logician
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts,
particularly Marcel Duchamp and artists who practiced collage.
1.4 The term postmodernism can be used in a broad cultural sense, or more specifically for
theories perceived as relativist, nihilist, counter-Enlightenment or antimodern; particularly
while in opposition to rationalism, universalism, foundationalism or science. It is also
sometimes used to describe social changes which are held to be antithetical to traditional
systems of philosophy, religion, and morality.
1.5 Postmodern philosophy is an eclectic and elusive movement characterized by its criticism of
Western philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily
influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including both Soren
Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. It was also influenced to some degree by Ludwig
Wittgenstein's later criticisms of philosophy. For the most part, postmodern philosophy has
spawned a huge literature of critical theory. Several realms beginning with the prefix "post-",
such as post-structuralism, post-Marxism, and post-feminism are inclusive of the postmodern
trends
1.6 There are is no singular version of postmodernism, nevertheless, most definitions of
postmodernism are undoubtedly related as to enable a meaningful summary. It is better to
describe the postmodern philosophy as postmodern trends rather than postmodernism as a
system of a single unified philosophy.
1.7 To begin with we can understand that postmodernism as a reaction to Modernism.
Modernism harps on the emphasis of grand establishments (narratives), such as human as
rational, the world as objectively cognizable, grand values like equality, justice etc, grand
programmes of development, rationality as enlightenment, society as democratic, progress as
economic and technological, value as utility, truth as scientific objectivity etc.
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Postmodernism is the belief that all such grand establishments are not devoid of some myth
and cultural bios.
1.8 Post modernism believes that the Modernism and its research technique are not sufficiently
capable of addressing cultural and emotional and psychological factors (Carolyn Ellis: crisis
of representation). It is sense of loss of faith in scientific paradigms of inquiries
Postmodernism suspect all truth claims of masking and serving particular interests in local,
cultural and political struggles...No method has a privileged status. The superiority of [social]
science over literature-or from another vantage point literature over [social] science
[research]-is challenged.
1.9 Postmodernism a paradigm shift: As an historical epoch, postmodernism parallels the shift
from premodern society to modernity in the 15th to 17th centuries. Following from the work
of Thomas Kuhn, postmodernism espouses a belief that modern society and contemporary
culture are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift. The cosmology of the premodern world
gave way to reason, positivism, bifurcation, linear logic, enlightenment, and scientism.
Humanity developed a new view of itself in relation to the universe.
1.10 Postmodernism is a form of skepticism and to some extent is a sort of nihilism regarding
the illegitimacy of knowledge and identity.
1.11 Postmodern philosophy claims to be especially skeptical about simple binary oppositions
that allegedly dominate western metaphysics such as the expectation that the philosopher
may cleanly isolate knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance
from submission, or presence from absence.
1.12 To some critics, postmodern skepticism appears similar to relativism or even nihilism.
Defenders of post-modernism would argue that there is a distinct difference, however: while
relativism and nihilism are generally viewed as an abandonment of meaning and authority,
postmodern philosophy is generally viewed as an openness to meaning and authority from
unexpected places, so that the ultimate source of authority is the "play" of the discourse
itself.
1.13 The core of postmodernism is the doubt that any method or theory, discourse or genre,
tradition or novelty, has a universal and general claim as the "right" or privileged form of
authoritative knowledge. Multiplicity is the fact and one has to recognize it.
1.14 Postmodernism is a sort of a turning away from the modernist obsession of rationality. It
is Reactionary & Nostalgic, Pastiche, discontinuity, indeterminacy, Schizophrenic, over
production, Inflation etc. it is marked by social and technological realism, discontinuity,
escapism, Pluralism, relativism, contextuality. Anti positivism, anti representationism, anti
coherency, anti formalism etc.
1.15 Postmodernism asserts that experience is personal (cannot be generalized) and that
meaning is only for the individual to experience, not for an author to dictate.
1.16 Postmodernism holds that since society is culturally pluralistic and profoundly
interconnected, any single or ruling or dominant center of political power, communication, or
intellectual production needs to be resisted. Postmodernism holds that in a mass media
dominated society there are only inter-referential representations with no real original
referent.
1.17 Postmodernism asserts that experience is personal and therefore not objective (cannot be
generalized) and that meaning is only for the individual to experience, not for someone to
dictate.
1.18 Postmodernists assert the consumer of a cultural product (artwork, piece of writing, user
of architecture) is free to "deconstruct" the meaning of a work, and that different users will
come to very different, but equally valid, conclusions of what that meaning is.
1.19 Postmodernists tend to emphasize the cultural contingency or relativity of different forms
of intellectual production and are critical of those who attempt "pure," "objective," or
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"disinterested" intellectual endeavours. One aspect of this is the claim that there is no way for
human beings to communicate in a language completely devoid of myth, metaphor, cultural
bias or political content.
1.20 Postmodernists hold that All our communications are political; Postmodernist artworks
sometimes assert the inherently politicized nature of communication, calling attention to the
ideological underpinnings of their own representations through representational play and
irony.
1.21 Postmodernism connotes the idea that knowledge has become commodified. With the
"computerisation of society" and the dominance of a mass-media, knowledge becomes fluid.
The true seat of power lies in the hands of those who produce knowledge and control it and
distribute it to their ends. Democratic State becomes less powerful as mere agents/carriers of
such knowledge producing companies. The State itself is subject to that which it controls.
1.22 Postmodernism hypothesizes that all knowledge is merely a discourse, that no knowledge
is different from any other as they are all legitimized by the same processes. Ipso facto,
religion is no more valid than science.
1.23 Any categorization of knowledge (for example "Marxist theory" or, ironically
"postmodernism" (hence the term, "postmodern irony") and, in fact, the idea of originality
are falsities; all ideas are versions of other discourses (inter-textuality) and no idea is better
than any other. (Jean Francois Lyotard's seminal text, "The Postmodern Condition: A Report
on Knowledge). The book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"(1979) by Richard Rorty is
a noted postmodern text. Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the
1970s. For a thorough historical overview distinguishing the threads of development in
different decades, cultural realms, and academic disciplines, (see, Hans Bertens' The Idea of
the Postmodern: A History, (New York: Routledge, 1995).

John M. Barry (1997) describes the modern era of the nineteenth century as a time of "iron and
steel, certainty and progress, and the belief in physical laws as solid and rigid as iron and steel
governed nature, possibly every man's [sic] nature, and that man had only to discover these laws
to truly rule the world" (21). (Mechanistic worldview). Just as Copernicus and Galileo provided
a new perspective on the position of the Earth in the universe, the postmodern twentieth century
space exploration and photographs of the Earth from space have provided a stunning perspective
of the relation of human life to the cosmos. Silencing and excommunicating Galileo did not
eliminate the emergence of the modern cosmology. Refusing to engage in the postmodern debate
or insisting on a return to the narrow tenants of a modern worldview are futile attempts to silence
a cosmology that has already emerged.

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2. Foundations of Modernity and Postmodernity

2.1 The term modernism designates the philosophical or theoretical positions that emerged
during 17
th
to early 20
th
centuries. The term modernity is designated of the culture that
emerged in relation to these theoretical positions. Modernity is generally identified with the
times of Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment epoch.
2.2 The usage of the term modernity is ascribed the philosophers Jean-Franois Lyotard and Jean
Baudrillard.
2.3 Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the
pursuit of progress, and postmodernity to represent the culmination of this process, where
constant change has become a status quo and the notion of progress, obsolete.
2.4 Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge,
Lyotard also further argued that the various "master-narratives" of progress, such as positivist
science, Marxism, and Structuralism, were defunct as a method of achieving progress.
2.5 One of the "projects" of modernity is said to foster of progress, achievable by incorporating
principles of rationality, scientific applications.
2.6 The notion of universality or totality is important in modernity. While modernist thinkers
aimed to capture universality or totality in some sense, postmodernists have rejected these
ambitions as metanarratives.
2.7 Writers such as John Ralston Saul among others have argued that postmodernism represents
an accumulated disillusionment with the promises of the Enlightenment project and its
progress of science, so central to modern thinking.
2.8 The Roots of Modernism: As an historical term, "modern" refers to a period dating from
roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and is used to describe the style and the ideology that
were produced during this times. The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history in the
middle of the 19th century. For historians the modern period actually begins with the period
of Renaissance. In purely chronological terms, we can see cultures and belief systems as
having passed from the premodern era into the modern era beginning in the very late 17th
century. The postmodern era has only begun to dawn since the middle of the 20th century.
The term modernism means the philosophical position emerged during modern times and the
term modernity refers to the culture of modern times. Some times we may use these terms
interchangeably.
2.9 The modern period saw the rise of the new religion of "scientism" out of the mechanistic
view of the world derived from Isaac Newton's mathematical physics. An additional impetus
was given to the widespread acceptance of scientism among the wealthy and powerful
classes by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which they self-servingly interpreted to
justify their "fitness" for economic and cultural dominance. At the cusp of the modern and
postmodern eras, nation-states guided by the priests of scientism unleashed their own
"burning times" or their own times as signs of the times via colonial imperialism.
2.10 Some major events in modernity
2.10.1. Declaration of I ndependence
Declaration of Independence of the newly founded United States. It is Enlightenment
thinking that informs such phrases as "we hold these truths to be self-evident" and which
underpins the notion "that all men are created equal." Its worldly character is clearly reflected
in its stated concern for man's happiness and welfare in this lifetime, a new notion that runs
counter to the Christian focus on the afterlife. Fundamental, too, is the notion of freedom,
liberty; it was declared one of man's inalienable rights.
2.10.2. The French Revolution
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In 1789, the French also attempted through bloody revolution to create a new society,
with the revolutionaries rallying to the cry of equality, fraternity, and liberty. The French
Revolution, however, failed to bring about a radically new society in France.
2.10.3.
The Russian Revolution
Mention may be made here of a third major attempt to create a new society along with
Enlightenment lines that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian
Revolution, perhaps the most idealistic and utopian of all, has also failed.

Grand themes of modernity
Anthropocentrism
Modern philosophy considered the Rational Man as the centre stage of discourse. It upheld the
assumption that Man not God is the centre of the Universe. This position seems to be extension
of Sophist thinking that Man is the measure of all things.
Modernity believed that Man can master the Natural World. In retrospect, the Renaissance
period of modernity recognized confidence that humankind can learn to understand, and then
master, nature and natural forces, that we can grasp the nature of the universe, and even shape
our individual destinies and the future of the world.
The Age of Enlightenment (18
th
century) or (the age of reason) Belief in Reason: Modernism
reinforced the modernist thinking that began to take shape as a larger pattern of thought in the
18th century. The 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, saw the intellectual maturation of the
humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of humankind. Through
reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints
of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up. (Ref: Descartes, Spinoza
Francis Bacon)
Heliocentric worldview (Scientific Revolution) its replacement of Geocentrism: The
Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for which the most immediate stimulus was the so-
called Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries when men like Galileo Galilee
and Isaac Newton, through the application of reason to the study of Nature (i.e. our world and the
heavens) had made spectacular scientific discoveries in which were revealed various scientific
truths. These truths more often than not flew in the face of conventional beliefs, especially those
held by the Church. For example, contrary to what the Church had maintained for centuries, the
"truth" was that the earth revolved around the sun. The idea that "truth" could be discovered
through the application of reason was tremendously exciting.
Real is Rational and Rational is Real (Hegel): The open-minded 18th-century thinkers believed
that virtually everything could be submitted to tradition of reason in terms of absolute idealism,
inclusive of customs, history, society and even art. The rational is extended to the sphere of the
real. And the real is subverted to the realm of the rational.
Rational is Social and Political: Modernists believed that the "truth" revealed by scientific
outlook (positivism) thereby could be applied in the political and social spheres to "correct"
problems and "improve" the political and social condition of humankind to solve problems of
human society. This kind of thinking quickly gave rise to the exciting possibility of creating a
new and better society. Colonialism is the extension of rational is political. New types utopians
were constructed.
Truth of Reason shall set the world Free (Reason >Freedom): Modernism gave rise to the
opinion that "truth" discovered through reason would free people from the shackles of corrupt
institutions such as the Church, landlordism and the monarchy whose misguided traditional
thinking and old ideas had kept people subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The belief was
that the rational truth shall set you free. The concept of freedom became central to the vision of
modern society. Through truth and freedom, the world would be made into a better place.
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Free from Religious authorities: Progressive 18th-century thinkers believed that the lot of
humankind would be greatly improved through the process enlightenment Science, Reason,
scientific social order, historical materialism, rational reorganization of economy, politics and
society etc. With reason and truth in hand, the individual would no longer be at the mercy of
religious and any traditional authorities which had constructed their own truth-space(politics)
and manipulated them to their own self-serving ends.
At the root of this thinking is the belief in the perfectibility of humankind. The vision that began
to take shape in the 18th century was of a new world, a better world. For example, in 1763, Jean-
Jacques Rousseau proposed a new society for the individual in his Inquiry into the Nature of the
Social Contract. Rousseau declared the right of liberty and equality for all men. Such
declarations were found not only in books but also in social constructions or political ordering.
Since the enlightenment, the Western world has existed in what has been known as a "Modern
Worldview" or modern mind-set. For centuries, people have felt that through science and
intellectual reason, the world's problems could be solved. Scientific method was king.
Modernism in Social and Political Action -The Period of Revolution: In the 18th century, major
attempts were made to put the ideas modernity into practice. Such ideas, of course, were not
popular with conservative and traditional elements, and their resistance had to be overcome in
both cases through bloody revolution.
The Means to achieve the goals of modernity: What were the means by which this goal was to be
reached? If the desire of the 18th century was to produce a better society, how was this to be
brought about? How does one go about perfecting humankind and creating a new world? As we
have seen, it was the 18th-century belief that only the enlightened mind can find truth; both
enlightenment and truth were discovered through the application of reason to knowledge, a
process that also created new knowledge. The individual acquired knowledge and at the same
time the means to discover truth in it through proper education and instruction.
The role of rational education away from religious education: Cleansed of the corruptions of
religious and political ideology by open-minded reason, education brings us the truth, or shows
us how to reach the truth. Rational Education enlightens us and makes us better people. Educated
enlightened people will form the foundations of the new society, a society which they will create
through their own efforts. This concept of the role of education has remained fundamental to
western modernist thinking. Enlightened thinkers, and here might be mentioned for example
Thomas Jefferson, constantly pursued knowledge, sifting out the truth by subjecting all they
learned to reasoned analysis. Jefferson, of course, not only consciously cultivated his own
enlightenment, but also actively promoted education for others, He believed that the search for
truth should be conducted without prejudice, and, mindful of the Enlightenment suspicion of the
Church, deliberately did not include a chapel in his plans on the campus. The Church and its
narrow-minded influences, he felt, should be kept separate not only from the State, but also from
education.
Emphasis on the role of the art and architecture: Many Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson,
saw a clear role of modern art and architecture in building up modern society.

The Two Types of Modernism: In modernity there emerged two types of modernism named as
Conservative Modernism and Progressive Modernism: Conservative modernism remained
fettered to old ideas and which tended to support the status quo, yet adapting to the signs of the
times. But Progressive modernism adopted an antagonistic position towards traditional forms of
society and its established institutions. It challenged all authorities in the name of freedom and,
intentionally or not, affronted conservative bourgeois values. Progressive modernism tended to
concern itself with political and social issues, addressing aspects of contemporary society,
especially in its poorer ranks, that an increasingly complacent middle class, once they had
achieved a satisfactory level of comfort for themselves, preferred to ignore. Philosophical
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modernism was increasingly transported into political modernism. Progressive modernism took
Political and Economic, and Racial Forms: With in Progressive Modernism, in the period
between World War One and World War Two, there emerged different shades of it and each
continued to pursue its goals. The major themes of progressive modernism include:
All Are politically Equal (political democracy of Modern capitalism, USA)
All are economically equal (economic democracy, The Russian Revolution, Communism:
offered the vision of universal freedom predicated on freedom of ideas.)
All are equal but Some class are more equal (Hitlers Nazi Germany) (Modernism persisted,
however, but in a state-manipulated and controlled form, called Social Realism)
Postmodernism uphold that that Modernism is a Failed Social and Political Philosophy:
Because the so-called the age of reason also witnessed the two world wars. World War I left
progressive modernism dazed and confused. World War II was again a deathblow to human race
and its alleged claims of Reason, Truth and Progress of mankind. World War Two effectively
destroyed the spirit of modernism. After Auschwitz, Theodor Adorno asks if any art has a right
to exist. The Nazi holocaust reduced the modernist dream to ashes. The Germans, after all, were
a civilized people who had actively participated in the modernist enterprise from the beginning.
Transition: The basic Enlightenment assumption that Reason, Education and Secularism,
Humanism, Revolution, Independence declaration, Art etc., improves people warranted serious
re-examination. As we have seen, the Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an
effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization. It was believed that reason
allowed access to truth, and knowledge of the truth would better humankind. These tenets were
fundamental to the notion of Modernism, the goal of which was the creation of a new world
order but the Promised Land remains farfetched. Modernism destroys the human in order to save
it. Destroy the village in order to save it. In June 1970, the French writer Jean Clay observed: "It
is clear that we are witnessing the death throes of the cultural system maintained by the
bourgeoisie in its galleries and its museums." However, over the past 15 or 20 years a transition
has begun to take place from a "Modern" worldview to a Postmodern Worldview.
Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. Relativity, not reason, has become king. Friedrich
Nietzsche said it this way, "There are no facts - only interpretations."
Post-Modernists pursue the freedom to express themselves. Here are a few examples of the way
the two worldviews differ: In the later half of the 20th century there has been mounting evidence
of the failure of the Modernist enterprise. Progressive modernism is riddled with doubt about the
continued viability of the notion of progress. Conservative modernism, in the United States at
least, has fallen prey in the political realm to the influences of the Church in the form of the so-
called religious right which in recent years especially has seriously undermined the very
constitutional foundations of the whole American experiment. If the mass slaughter of the Great
War, achieved through the advances made in science and technology, was the result of the
modernist commitment to "progress," then one might begin question the value of the modernist
enterprise. Nonetheless, between the wars, progressive modernism managed to sustain a vision
of a better future. It continued to see tradition and the past as stifling the expression of freedom.
After the Second World War, however, such optimism in the future was difficult to sustain. And
to make things worse, with the advent of the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear
destruction, any sort of future looked doubtful. The Civil Rights movement, opposition to the
Vietnam War, the emergence of a widespread women's movement, and the transformations in
societies are the signs of postmodern movement. Modernism was seriously at stake. Progressive
modernism is that riddled with doubt about the viability of human progress. On the contrary
what we witnessed is loss of human lives and rise of colonialism under the coverage of trade and
industrialization. Promised economic equality become a misnomer. Modernity witnessed the
erosion of Soviet Russia. Starvation death, Poverty and exploitation on the rise - In the late part
of 20
th
centre we do witness the emergence of Fundamentalism the Christian, The Islamic and
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the Hindu. Fundamentalism is in nearly all of the world's major organized religions (Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism) has risen sharply in recent years in direct opposition to modernism. American
Christian fundamentalists still agree with Martin Luther who recognized that "Reason is the
greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that
emanates from God."
A growing number of people believe the modernist enterprise has failed. In the search for
reasons to explain this failure, questions have necessarily been raised about the whole Western
humanist tradition. It has become apparent to many that the worldview fostered through
Modernism (and by the Western humanist tradition) is flawed, corrupt, and oppressive. Both
recent events (i.e. since the World War Two), and the perception of those events, have given rise
to the notion that Modernism has played itself out and is now floundering and directionless. If
Modernism is at an end, we are now facing a new period. The name given to this new period is
Postmodernism, and its culture is post modernity.
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3. Differences in the themes of Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism Postmodernism
Truth is objective and can be found. Truth must be not necessarily objective
There is an absolute standard for right
and wrong
There is no absolute. Everything is
relative
Facts and Formalism Stories, multiple representations
Arche, strategic Anarchy
Derivation Creative engagement
Values are either subjective or objective Intersubjective (not detachable)
Egoism (self interest) Friendship associationship go beyond
national territorial geopolitics.
Survival of the fittest Of all in relationship
Appropriation Let be
Anthropocentrism Non centrism
Authoritarian Panoptican
In favor of the Powerful projection of
Impartiality perfection
In favour of the particular partiality
perfection is an utopia
Monologue - dialogue Multilogue
Metaphor of debate Metaphor of discourse
Reason Emotion
Moral Ethical
Theory to Application Experience to Theories to Experience
Monistic dualistic Pluralistic stand points (there are
different ways of talking about values)
War often pronounced for the ends of
Peace
War against forms of Violence
Knowledge is rational, beyond the
context
Knowledge or perceptions as contextual
Saints of/for singular worldviews Sages of pluralism
Universality Ethical particularity

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Modernism/Modernity Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and Metanarratives of
history, culture and national identity; myths of
cultural and ethnic orgin.
Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives;
local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master
narratives: counter-myths of origin.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explantions
in history, science and culture) to represent all
knowledge and explain everything.
Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of
localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity,
hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national
values, seemingly clear bases for unity.
Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear
bases for social/national/ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science
and technology.
Skepticism of progress, anti-technology reactions,
neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self;
"individualism," unified identity.
Sense of fragmentation and decentered self;
multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social
order: model of the middle-class, nuclear
family.
Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-
class marriage model, multiple identities for
couplings and childraising.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.
Subverted order, loss of centralized control,
fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics
(Nation-State, party).
Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity
politics, local politics, institutional power
struggles.
Root/Depth tropes.
Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the
signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the
superficial, the signifier).
Rhizome/surface tropes.
Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers
without concern for "Depth".
Faith in the "real" beyond media and
representations; authenticity of "originals"
Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem
more powerful than the "real"; images and texts
with no prior "original".
"As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more
powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs.
popular culture);
imposed consensus that high or official culture
is normative and authoritative
Disruption of the dominance of high culture by
popular culture;
mixing of popular and high cultures, new
valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms
cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass
marketing.
Demassified culture; niche products and
marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work
authenticated by artist and validated by agreed
Art as process, performance, production,
intertextuality.
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upon standards. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by
audience and validated in subcultures sharing
identity with the artist.

Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a
totality.
The encyclopedia.
Navigation, information management, just-in-
time knowledge.
The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-
to-many communications.
Interactive, client-server, distributed, many-
to-many media (the Net and Web).
Centering/centeredness,
centralized knowledge.
Dispersal, dissemination,
networked, distributed knowledge
Determinancy Indeterminancy, contingency.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-
class earnestness.
Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness,
subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and
wholeness (art, music, and literature).
Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant
culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York and
Boston.
Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and
inorganic, human and machine
cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic,
human and machine and electronic
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified
sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of
pornography
androgyny, queer sexual identities,
polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of
pornography
the book as sufficient bearer of the word;
the library as system for printed knowledge
hypermedia as transcendence of physical limits of
print media;
the Web or Net as information system

4.0 Some Postmodern thinkers: Early influences in postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
However, it was greatly influenced by the writings of several earlier 20th century philosophers,
including phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, and the sometimes logician Ludwig Wittgenstein.
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12
Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts, particularly Marcel Duchamp and
artists who practiced collage.
Early postmodern philosophers
The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Michel Foucault, Jean-Franois
Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Foucault approached postmodern philosophy from a historical
perspective, building upon structuralism, but at the same time rejecting structuralism by re-
historicizing and destabilizing the philosophical structures of Western thought. He also
considered how knowledge is defined and changed by the operation of power.
In America, the most famous postmodernist is Richard Rorty. Originally an analytic philosopher,
Rorty believed that combining Davidson's criticism of the dualism between conceptual scheme
and empirical content with Quine's criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction allowed for an
abandonment of the view of the mind as a mirror of a reality or external world. He argued that
truth was not "out-there", but was in language and language was whatever served our purposes in
any particular time; ancient languages are sometimes untranslatable into modern ones. Donald
Davidson is not usually considered a postmodernist, although he and Rorty have both
acknowledged that there are few differences between their philosophies1.
The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and
particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a "postindustrial"
or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized their truth-claims not
(as they themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather on the grounds of
accepted stories (or "metanarratives") about knowledge and the world -- what Wittgenstein
termed "language-games." He further argued that in our postmodern condition, these
metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He suggested that in the wake of the
collapse of modern metanarratives, people are developing a new "language game" -- one that
does not make claims to absolute truth but rather celebrates a world of ever-changing
relationships (among people and between people and the world). Derrida, the father of
deconstruction, practiced philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He criticized Western
philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed to absence and markings
or writings. Derrida thus claimed to have deconstructed Western philosophy by arguing, for
example, that the Western ideal of the present logos is undermined by the expression of that ideal
in the form of markings by an absent author. Thus, to emphasize this paradox, Derrida
S. Lourdunathan
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reformalized human culture as a disjoint network of proliferating markings and writings, with the
author being absent.
Though Derrida and Foucault are cited as postmodern philosophers, each has rejected many of
the other's views. Like Lyotard, both are skeptical of absolute or universal truth-claims. Unlike
Lyotard, however, they are (or seem) rather more pessimistic about the emancipatory claims of
any new language-game; thus some would characterize them as post-structuralist rather than
postmodernist.
The developostmodernisment of postmodernism
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 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 nor 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, or breaking down, 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.
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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 Simulacra and
Simulation(1981), 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".
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
rcits 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 often breeds antagonism with scientific thinking, 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 to point, 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.
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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.Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the
1970s, but as a cultural movement it predates them by many years. Exactly when modernism
began to give way to postmodernism depends on the observer and the theoretical framework.
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 Jrgen 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-
Franois 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 language, Sren 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, writers such as John Ralston Saul among others have
argued that postmodernism represents an accumulated disillusionment with the promises of the
Enlightenment project and its progress of science, so central to modern thinking.
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The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological ideas appear
conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements,
gay 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 in its most
concentrated definition, but reflect, or in true postmodern style, borrow from some of its core
ideas.
The Influences on Postmodernism:
There are four influences that are worth noting, in order of their appearance. First, the
philosophy of existentialism and its own related earlier influence from libertarianism
(existentialism having been articulated in its earliest form by SorenKierkegaard in the mid 19th
century and libertarianism by John Locke and others in the late 17th century). The notion of the
primacy of the individual in exercising free will to create meaning and determine morality ("do
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law") derives very directly from these traditions.
Existentialism in the 20th century has especially grown to encompass resistance to all forms of
"blind faith" and authoritarianism by forcing the individual to arrive at meaning and purpose
without any respect for societal mores and institutional pronouncements. Second, the discipline
of comparative religion in a psychological context, as explored first by Carl G. Jung and later by
Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, has underscored both the importance of spirituality to the
human psyche and the commonality of certain forms (archetypes) of spiritual experience to far-
flung human populations. The eclectic attitude of contemporary Religionists or Contemporary
Pagans is very much mirrored in the respectful attitude of comparative religionists to the
common themes and unique expressions of religious belief around the world. Third, what is
often called "process thought". Based on the writings of Alfred North Whitehead and some later
members of his philosophical school (such as David Ray Griffin and Charlene Spretnak), process
thinking recognizes that time is not a series of discrete states that can be frozen and viewed as the
logical end of what has come before. Rather time is a fluid, ongoing process in which the agency
of will creatively participates. Most of traditional morality is based upon a notion that there is
some "end-state" at which various "rights" and "wrongs" can be tallied to arrive at a neat
summation of whether a given choice is "good" or "evil" (in the JCI tradition there is an "end-of-
the-world" or Armageddon at which this is supposed to happen in a very final sense). By
rejecting the end-state model, Whitehead and his followers force us to constantly re-examine our
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17
choices and grow in our moral decision-making based on each dynamic "present" that we help to
bring into being. Fourth and closely related to process thought are the new disciplines of
"systems thinking". As process thought forces us not to think of time as a series of discrete
states, systems thinking forces us to look at space not as a grouping of discrete entities or objects
but rather as a whole in which various levels of organization and connectedness can be
envisioned for any apparently discrete object. Systems thinking has largely grown out of
computer science, but it embraces many other holistic disciplines such as ecology and the
"chaos-and-complexity" studies of Ilya Prigogine.
Notable contributors to postmodernism
The existentialists like Nietzsche brought a new nihilism and atheism which influenced culture.
Post-colonialism after World War-II contributed to the idea that one cannot have an objectively
superior lifestyle or belief. This idea was taken further by the anti-foundationalist philosophers:
Heidegger, then Ludwig Wittgenstein, then Derrida, who re-examined the fundamentals of
knowledge; they argue that rationality was neither as sure nor as clear as modernists or
rationalists assert. Psychologists also assert a cognitive bias, which points at the human bias of
truth.
Features of postmodern culture begin to arise in the 1920s with the emergence of the Dada art
movement. Both World Wars (perhaps even the concept of a World War), contributed to
postmodernism; it is with the end of the Second World War that recognizably post-modernist
attitudes begin to emerge. Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the
1960s as an early trend toward postmodernism. The theory gained some of its strongest ground
early on in French academia. In 1979 Jean-Franois Lyotard wrote a short but influential work
The Postmodern Condition : a report on knowledge. Also, Richard Rorty wrote "Philosophy and
the Mirror of Nature" (1979). Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes are also
strongly influential in 1970s postmodern theory.
Marxist critics argue that postmodernism is symptomatic of "late capitalism" and the decline of
institutions, particularly the nation-state. The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer
David Harvey have also identified post-modernity with "late capitalism" or "flexible
accumulation". This situation, called finance capitalism, is characterized by a high degree of
mobility of labor and capital, and what Harvey called "time and space compression." They
suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which they believe
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18
defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also Consumerism, Critical
theory). Other thinkers assert that post-modernity is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting and
a society conditioned to mass production and mass politics.
The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological ideas appear
conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements,
gay 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 in its most
concentrated definition, but reflect, or in true postmodern style, borrow from some of its core
ideas.
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term, which is used to denote the application of post-modern ideas of
criticism, or theory, to a "text" or "artifact". A deconstruction is meant to undermine the frame of
reference and assumptions that underpin the text or the artifact. In its original use, a
"deconstruction" is an important textual "occurrence" described and analyzed by many
postmodern authors and philosophers. They argued that aspects in the text itself would
undermine its own authority or assumptions, that internal contradictions would erase boundaries
or categories which the work relied on or asserted. Post-structuralists beginning with Jacques
Derrida, who coined the term, argued that the existence of deconstructions implied that there was
no intrinsic essence to a text, merely the contrast of difference. This is analogous to the scientific
idea that only the variations are real, that there is no established norm to a genetic population, or
the idea that the difference in perception between black and white is the context. A
deconstruction is created when the "deeper" substance of text opposes the text's more
"superficial" form. This too is not an idea isolated to post-structuralists, but is related to the idea
of hermeneutics in literature, and was asserted as early as Plato, and by modern thinkers such as
Leo Strauss. Derrida's argument is that deconstruction proves that texts have multiple meanings,
and the "violence" between the different meanings of text may be elucidated by close textual
analysis.
Popularly, close textual analyses describing deconstruction within a text are often themselves
called deconstructions. Derrida argued, however, that deconstruction is not a method or a tool,
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19
but an occurrence within the text itself. Writings about deconstruction perhaps are referred to in
academic circles as deconstructive readings, in conformance with this view of the word.
Deconstruction is far more important to postmodernism than its seemingly narrow focus on text
might imply. According to Derrida, one consequence of deconstruction is that the text may be
defined so broadly as to encompass not just written words, but the entire spectrum of symbols
and phenomena within Western thought. To Derrida, a result of deconstruction is that no
Western philosopher has been able to successfully escape from this large web of text and reach
the purely text-free "signified" which they imagined to exist "just beyond" the text.
The more common use of the term is the more general process of pointing to contradictions
between the intent and surface of a work, and the assumptions about it. A work then
"deconstructs" assumptions when it places them in context. For example, someone who can pass
as the opposite sex is said to "deconstruct" gender roles, because there is a conflict between the
superficial appearance, and the reality of the person's gender.
Postmodernism's manifestations
In Lifestyle
As a cultural movement, features that have contributed to postmodernity include globalization,
consumerism, the fragmentation of authority, and the commodification of knowledge. In the era
of postmodern culture, people have rejected the grand, supposedly universal stories and
paradigms such as religion, conventional philosophy, capitalism and gender that have defined
culture and behavior in the past, and have instead begun to organize their cultural life around a
variety of more local and subcultural ideologies, myths and stories. The result of accepting
postmodernism is the view that different realms of discourse are incommensurable and incapable
of judging the results of other discourse. It is the idea that all such metanarratives and paradigms
are stable only while they fit the available evidence, and can potentially be overturned when
phenomena occur that the paradigm cannot account for, and a better explanatory model (itself
subject to the same fate) is found. See: "The Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge"
by Lyotard in 1979
Postmodernism in visual art
S. Lourdunathan
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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. The postmodern creator, in turn, is free to
combine any elements or styles in a work, even in ways that are counter to or irrelevant to the
apparent function of the object. Postmodern style is often characterized by eclecticism,
digression, collage, pastiche, irony, the return of ornament and historical reference, and the
appropriation of popular media. Some artistic movements commonly called postmodern are pop
art, architectural deconstructivism, magical realism in literature, maximalism, and neo-
romanticism. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and 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. With his "invention" of "readymade", Marcel Duchamp is often seen as a forerunner on
postmodern art. Where Andy Warhol furthered the concept 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. Davor Dzalto, for example, attacks the
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21
postmodern positions in art and culture generally, confronting a sustainable personal identity,
together with notions of creativity, freedom and communion, to the postmodern deconstruction
of any metaphysical identity. But in the critique he stresses a positive role of postmodern views
for a further historical, cultural and artistic developostmodernisment.
Postmodernism in music
Postmodern music is both a musical style and a musical condition. As a musical style,
postmodern music contains characteristics of postmodern artthat is, art after modernism (see
Modernism in Music); eclecticism in musical form and musical genre, combining characteristics
from different genres, or employing jump-cut sectionalization (such as blocks). It tends to be
self-referential and ironic, and it blurs the boundaries between "high art" and kitsch. Daniel
Albright (2004) summarizes the traits of the postmodern style as bricolage, polystylism, and
randomness.
As a musical condition, postmodern music is simply the state of music in postmodernity, music
after modernity. In this sense, postmodern music does not have any one particular style or
characteristic, and is not necessarily postmodern in style or technique. The music of modernity,
however, was viewed primarily as a means of expression while the music of postmodernity is
valued more as a spectacle, a good for mass consumption, and an indicator of group identity. For
example, one significant role of music in postmodern society is to act as a badge by which
people can signify their identity as a member of a particular subculture.
Postmodernism in graphic design
Postmodernism in graphic design for the most part has been a visual and decorative movement.
Many designers and design critics contend that postmodernism, in the literary or architectural
sense of the term, never really impacted graphic design as it did these other fields. Alternatively,
some argue that it did but took on a different persona. This can be seen in the work produced at
Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan during the late 1980s to late 1990s and at the MFA
program at CalArts in California. But when all was said and done, the various notions of the
postmodern in the various design fields never really stuck to graphic design as it did with
architecture. Some argue that the "movement" (if it ever was one) had little to no impact on
graphic design. More likely, it did, but more in the sense of a continuation or re-evaluation of the
modern. Some would argue that this continuous re-evaluation is also just a component of the
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22
design process - happening for most of the second half of the 20th century in the profession.
Since it was ultimately the work of graphic designers that inspired pop artists like Warhol and
Liechtenstein, and architects like Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, it could be argued that
graphic design practice and designs may be the root of Postmodernism. Graphic design saw a
massive popular raising at the end of the seventies in form of Graffiti and Hip Hop culture's rise.
Graphic forms of expression became a vast everyday hobby among school kids all around the
developed western countries. Along side this 'movement', that took rebellious and even criminal
cultural forms, was born the mass hobby of coding computer graphics. This phenomenon worked
as a stepping stone towards the graphic infrastructure that is applied in the majority of computer
interfaces today.
Postmodernism in literature
Postmodern literature argues for expansion, the return of reference, the celebration of
fragmentation rather than the fear of it, and the role of reference itself in literature. While
drawing on the experimental tendencies of authors such as Ernest Hemingway and William
Faulkner in English, and Jorge Luis Borges in Spanish - writers who were taken as influences by
American postmodern authors such as Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Don
DeLillo, John Barth, William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, and Paul Auster - the advocates of
postmodern literature argue that the present is fundamentally different from the modern period,
and therefore requires a new literary sensibility.
Post Modernism in Cinema (Postmodernist film)
Post modernism in film can loosely be used to describe a film in which the audience's suspension
of disbelief is destroyed, or at the very least toyed with, in order to free the audiences
appreciation of the work, and the creators means with which to express it. The cornerstones of
conventional narrative structure and characterisation are changed and even turned on their head
in order to create a work who's internal logic forms it's means of expression. Though a popular
movement in theatre, particularly with Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre and verfremsdungeffekt, post
modernist film didn't break into the mainstream until the advent of the French New Wave in the
1950's and 60's, with such films as Jean-Luc Godard's bout de souffle. Luis Buuel and
Salvador Dal's 1928 surrealist short Un Chien Andalou could be argued as a post modernist film
however it's extreme deconstruction of structure and character make it's meaning almost entirely
arbitrary, and thus to still convey some desired meaning post modernist films still maintain some
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23
conventional elements in order for the audience to grasp them. Two such examples are Jane
Campion's Two Friends, in which the story of two school girls is showed in episodic segments
arranged in reverse order; and Karel Reisz's The French Lieutenant's Woman, in which the story
being played out on the screen is mirrored in the private lives of the actors playing it, which we
also see. By making small but significant changes to the conventions of cinema the artificiality of
the experience and the world presented is emphasised in the audience's mind, in order to remove
them from the conventional emotional bonds they have to the subject matter, and to give them a
new view of it.
Postmodern architecture
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.Architects generally
considered postmodern include: Peter Eisenman, Philip Johnson (later works), John Burgee,
Robert Venturi, Ricardo Bofill, James Stirling, Charles Willard Moore, and Frank Gehry.
Postmodernism in planning and urban design
Post modern landscapes in contemporary cities can be understood better in the context of
globalization which can be described as a variant form of capitalism where a growing proportion
of all economic activity is being progressively organised at the international rather than the
national, spatial scale.
[2]
This international scope not only influences economic patterns, but also
induces a multicultural ambience to metropolitan cities, effectively blending cultures into an
altered context. David Harvey, in his seminal work, The Condition of Postmodernity argues that
postmodernism, by way of contrasts, privileges heterogeneity and difference as liberative forces
in the redefinition of cultural discourse and rejects metanarratives and overarching theories.
[3]
It
purports an existence of multi-visionary thinking within the mosaic of the contemporary
metropolis. It heralded the shift from modernism to a "perspectivism that questions how radically
different realities may co-exist, collide and interpenetrate."
[4]

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Postmodernism in landscape and garden design
Modernist landscape and garden design, like modernist architecture, was characterised by the use
of modern materials (eg concrete, steel and glass), an adherence to functionalism and the
avoidance of ornaments, meanings and historic styles. Postmodern landscape and garden design
turns away from these principles, relishing in meaning, ornament and high style. Charles Jencks
wrote a pioneering book on The language of postmodern architecture and went on to become a
notable practitioner of postmodern garden and landscape design. In City as landscape: a post-
postmodern view of design and planning, Tom Turner wrote essays on 'Revolutions in the
garden' and 'Gardening with ideas' arguing that 'Structuralism can infuse gardens with post-
postmodern ideas and beliefs' (p.225).
Postmodernism in society
In sociology, postmodernity is described as being the result of economic, cultural and
demographic changes (related terms in this context include post-industrial society and late
capitalism) and it is attributed to factors such as the rise of the service economy, the importance
and ubiquity of the mass media and the rise of an increasingly interdependent world economy.
Postmodernism believes that there is no society as such but there are social phenomena and
sociability. It is because if we brand a particular society as the 'X' society, it is expected that the
people belonging to the same would exhibit uniformity in social behaviour. But each individual
is sui generis, that is, unique in himself/herself. Everyone is endowed with a kaleidoscopic view
of reality. Therefore the whole of the cognition process is endowed with variety. Generation Y is
the most heterogeneous generation in terms of social groups and values. See also postmodern,
information age, globalization, global village, media theory.
Postmodernity and digital communications
Technological utopianism is a common trait in Western history from the 1700s when Adam
Smith essentially labelled technological progress as the source of the Wealth of Nations, through
the novels of Jules Verne in the late 1800s (with the notable exception of his then-unpublished
Paris in the 20th Century), through Winston Churchill's belief that there was little an inventor
could not achieve. Its manifestation in post-modernity was first through the explosion of analog
mass broadcasting of television. Strongly associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan who
argued that "the medium is the message", the ability of mass broadcasting to create visual
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25
symbols and mass action was seen as a liberating force in human affairs, even though at the same
time Newton N. Minow was calling television "a vast wasteland".
The second wave of technological utopianism associated with postmodern thought came with the
introduction of digital internetworking, and became identified with Esther Dyson and such
popular outlets as Wired Magazine. According to this view digital communications makes the
fragmentation of modern society a positive feature, since individuals can seek out those artistic,
cultural and community experiences which they regard as being correct for themselves.
The common thread is that the fragmentation of society and communication gives the individual
more autonomy to create their own environment and narrative. This links into the postmodern
novel, which deals with the experience of structuring "truth" from fragments.
Postmodernism in political science
According to postmodernist political theorists, there are many situations which are considered
political in nature that can not be adequately discussed in traditional realist and liberal
approaches to political science. Some examples they cite include the situation of a draft-age
youth whose identity is claimed in national narratives of national security and the
universalizing narratives of the rights of man, of the woman whose very womb is claimed by
the irresolvable contesting narratives of church, paternity, economy, and liberal polity.
They argue that in these cases, there are no fixed categories, stable sets of values, or common
sense meanings to be understood in their scholarly exploration. They contend that liberal
approaches do not aid in understanding these types of situations; arguing that there is no
individual or social or institutional structure whose values can impose a meaning or interpretive
narrative.
Postmodernists argue that meaning and interpretation in these types of situations is always
uncertain and arbitrary. They contend that the power in effect here is not that of oppression, but
that of the cultural and social implications around them, which they say creates the framework
within which they see themselves, which creates the boundaries of their possible courses of
action. Postmodern political scientists, such as Richard Ashley, claim that in these marginal sites
it is impossible to construct a coherent narrative, or story, about what is really taking place
without including contesting and contradicting narratives, and still have a true story from the
perspective of a sovereign subject, who can dictate the values pertinent to the meaning of the
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situation. By regarding them in this way, deconstructive readings attempt to uncover evidence of
ancient cultural biases, conflicts, lies, tyrannies, and power structures, such as the tensions and
ambiguity between peace and war, lord and subject, male and female, which serve as further
examples of Derrida's binary oppositions in which the first element is privileged, or considered
prior to and more authentic, in relation to the second. Examples of postmodern political scientists
include post-colonial writers such as Frantz Fanon, feminist writers such as Cynthia Enloe, and
postpositive theorists such as Ashley and James Der Derian.
Postmodernism in language
Important to postmodernism's view of language is the focus on the implied meaning of words
and 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 humanity collectively, to the default of the word "he"
in English as a pronoun for a person of gender unknown to the speaker. However, this 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" text. 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. Roland Barthes argued this concept, and coined it 'Death of the Author'; this allows
for 'freedom of the reader'. Barthes is well known for having stated, "It is language that speaks,
not the author". Another key concept is the view that people are, essentially, blank slated
linguistically, and that social acclimation, cultural factors, habituation and images are the
primary ways of shaping the structure of how people speak. This view of writing is criticised by
some who regard it as needlessly difficult and obscure, 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.
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Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy is a radical criticism of Western philosophy, because it rejects the
universalizing tendencies of philosophy. It applies to movements that include post-structuralism,
deconstruction, multiculturalism, neo-relativism, neo-marxism, gender studies and literary
theory. It emerged beginning in the 1950s as a rejection of doctrines such as positivism,
Darwinism, materialism and objective idealism.
Postmodern philosophy emphasizes the importance of power relationships, personalization and
discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. In this context it has been used by
critical theorists to assert that postmodernism is a break with the artistic and philosophical
tradition of the Enlightenment, which they characterize as a quest for an ever-grander and more
universal system of aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge. Postmodern philosophy draws on a
number of approaches to criticize Western thought, including historicism, and psychoanalytic
theory.
Many figures in the 20th century philosophy of mathematics are identified as "postmodern" due
to their rejection of mathematics as a strictly neutral point of view. Some figures in the
philosophy of science, especially Thomas Samuel Kuhn and David Bohm, are also so viewed.
Some see the ultimate expression of postmodernism in science and mathematics in the cognitive
science of mathematics, which seeks to characterize the habit of mathematics itself as strictly
human, and based in human cognitive bias.Postmodern philosophy is criticised for prizing irony
over knowledge, and giving the irrational equal footing with the rational.
The term "Neo-liberalism" has been used in a theological sense as a drive to deliberately modify
the beliefs and practices of the church (especially evangelical) to conform to postmodernism.
(See also emergent church)
Postmodernism and post-structuralism:
Postmodern philosophy is very similar to post-structuralism; whether one considers the two
identical or fundamentally different generally depends on how invested one is in the issues.
People who are opposed to either postmodernism or poststructuralism often lump them together;
advocates on the other hand make finer distinctions.
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In terms of frequently cited works, postmodernism and post-structuralism overlap quite
significantly. Some philosophers, such as Jean-Franois Lyotard, can legitimately be classified
into both groups. This is partly due to the fact that both modernism and structuralism owe much
to the Enlightenment project.
Structuralism has a strong tendency to be scientific in seeking out stable patterns in observed
phenomena an epistemological attitude which is quite compatible with Enlightenment
thinking, and incompatible with postmodernists. At the same time, findings from structuralist
analysis carried a somewhat anti-Enlightenment message, revealing that rationality can be found
in the minds of "savage" people, just in forms differing from those that people from "civilized"
societies are used to seeing. Implicit here is a critique of the practice of colonialism, which was
partly justified as a "civilizing" process by which wealthier societies bring knowledge, manners,
and reason to less "civilized" ones.
Post-structuralism, emerging as a response to the structuralists' scientific orientation, has kept the
cultural relativism in structuralism, while discarding the scientific orientations. One clear
difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism is found in their respective attitudes
towards the demise of the project of the Enlightenment: post-structuralism is fundamentally
ambivalent, while postmodernism is decidedly celebratory. Another difference is the nature of
the two positions. While post-structuralism is a position in philosophy, encompassing views on
human beings, language, body, society, and many other issues, it is not a name of an era. Post-
modernism, on the other hand, is closely associated with "post-modern" era, a period in the
history coming after the modern age.
Post-structuralism is generally considered to have three main features:
1. Every critic must be able to utilize any theory, position or critical practice to form an
understanding of the text. By applying various theories to the text, the critic creates an
understanding of different meanings and interpretations thereby contributing to a greater
understanding of the text and the shifting meanings it contains.
2. Post-structuralism questions our perceptions of ourselves. The post-structuralist viewpoint is
that the concept of the self as a single coherent entity is illogical, and instead sees individuals
as being Decentered.
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3. Post-structuralism shifts the emphasis away from the meaning the author intended to the
meaning that the reader interprets from the text in the act of reading it. Post-structuralism rejects
the idea of a literary text having one purpose, one meaning or one singular existence. (For
example, a writer could have written a single word like dog, imagining a strong German
Shepherd, but due to individual experience the reader may envisage a small frightened
Chihuahua. Although there are many other aspects of post-structuralism, these three
characteristics those is its foundation.
Criticism
The term post-modernism is often used pejoratively to describe tendencies perceived as
Relativist, Counter-enlightenment or antimodern, particularly in relation to critiques of
Rationalism, Universalism or Science. It is also sometimes used to describe tendencies in a
society that are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality. The criticisms of
postmodernism are often made complex by the still fluid nature of the term, in many cases the
criticisms are clearly directed at poststructuralism and the philosophical and academic
movements that it has spawned rather than the broader term postmodernism.
The most prominent recent criticism of postmodern art is that of John Gardner. Gardner wrote
that the classification "post-modern" / "modern" applied to the art of his time was an evasion, a
stab at nothing - i.e., a move to elude the basic function of criticism, which, according to
Gardner, is to judge art's moral value.The Stuckist art movement have issued a series of
manifestos denouncing postmodernism for what they see as its "scientific materialism, nihilism
and spiritual bankruptcy"
Charles Murray, a critic of postmodernism, defines the term: By contemporary intellectual
fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come to mind when one hears the words
multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense,
contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain circles
for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility to the idea that
discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that
hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the
overarching label that is attached to this perspective.
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Central to the debate is the role of the concept of "objectivity" and what it means. In the broadest
sense, denial of the practical possibility of objectivity is held to be the postmodern position, and
a hostility towards claims advanced on the basis of objectivity its defining feature. It is this
underlying hostility toward the concept of objectivity, evident in many contemporary critical
theorists, that is the common point of attack for critics of postmodernism. Many critics
characterise postmodernism as an ephemeral phenomenon that cannot be adequately defined
simply because, as a philosophy at least, it represents nothing more substantial than a series of
disparate conjectures allied only in their distrust of modernism.
As a false distinction
This antipathy of postmodernists towards modernism, and their consequent tendency to define
themselves against it, has also attracted criticism. It has been argued that modernity was not
actually a lumbering, totalizing monolith at all, but in fact was itself dynamic and ever-changing;
the evolution, therefore, between "modern" and "postmodern" should be seen as one of degree,
rather than of kind - a continuation rather than a "break." One theorist who takes this view is
Marshall Berman, whose book All That is Solid Melts into Air (1982) (a quote from Marx)
reflects in its title the fluid nature of "the experience of modernity."
As noted above, some theorists such as Habermas even argue that the supposed distinction
between the "modern" and the "postmodern" does not exist at all, but that the latter is really no
more than a developostmodernisment within a larger, still-current, "modern" framework. Many
who make this argument are left academics with Marxist leanings, such as Seyla Benhabib, Terry
Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and David Harvey (social geographer), who are concerned that
postmodernism's undermining of Enlightenment values makes a progressive cultural politics
difficult, if not impossible. For instance, "How can 'we' effect any change in people's poor living
conditions, in inequality and injustice, if 'we' don't accept the validity of underlying universals
such as the 'real world' and 'justice' in the first place?" How is any progress to be made through a
philosophy so profoundly skeptical of the very notion of progress, and of unified perspectives?
The critics charge that the postmodern vision of a tolerant, pluralist society in which every
political ideology is perceived to be as valid, or as redundant, as the other, may ultimately
encourage individuals to lead lives of a rather disastrous apathetic quietism. This reasoning leads
Habermas to compare postmodernism with conservatism and the preservation of the status quo.
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Such critics often argue that, in actual fact, such postmodern premises are rarely, if ever, actually
embraced that if they were, we would be left with nothing more than a crippling radical
subjectivism. They point to the continuity of the projects of the Enlightenment and modernity as
alive and well, as can be seen in science, in political rights movements, in the very idea of
universities, and so on.
To some critics, there seems, indeed, to be a glaring contradiction in maintaining the death of
objectivity and privileged position on one hand, while the scientific community continues a
project of unprecedented scope to unify various scientific disciplines into a theory of everything,
on the other. Hostility toward hierarchies of value and objectivity becomes problematic to them
when postmodernity itself attempts to analyse such hierarchies with, apparently, some measure
of objectivity and make categorical statements concerning them.
As empty rhetoric
Some see postmodernism as essentially a kind of semantic gamesmanship, more sophistry than
substance. Postmodernism's proponents are often criticised for a tendency to indulge in
exhausting, verbose stretches of rhetorical gymnastics, which critics feel sound important but are
ultimately meaningless. In the Sokal Affair, Alan Sokal, a physicist, wrote a deliberately
nonsensical article purportedly about interpreting physics and mathematics in terms of
postmodern theory, which was nevertheless published by the Left-leaning Social Text, a journal
which he and most of the scientific community considered as postmodernist. Interestingly, Social
Text never acknowledged that the article's publication was a mistake, but supported a counter-
argument defending the "interpretative validity" of Sokal's false article, despite the author's
rebuttal of his own article. (see the online Postmodernism Generator)
Although Ken Wilber embraces many aspects of post-modernism, he distinguishes between a
healthy form and an unhealthy 'extreme' form. Inherent in the extreme version is the
irreconcilability of the performative contradiction. Wilber argues postmodernism must take the
stance that its view is 'better' than what preceded it (modernity, Enlightenment (concept),
metanarratives, positivism, etc.). This intrinsic and silent judgement that postmodernism imposes
on its predecessors is in itself not only a value judgement (a thing it often rejects), but a
hierarchy in itself (a hierarchy of values). Wilber claims his recent work in integral theory
addresses these performative contradictions, while retaining many of the important contributions
of postmodernism. Wilber's approach is distinguished from other critiques by asking a different
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32
question. It does not ask whether postmodernism, or modernism, or any other system of thought
is 'correct' or 'not correct'. Rather, it asks what are the emergent qualities of 'consciousness' that
allow all of these systems of thought to arise in the first place? And, what important aspect of
truth do they have to contribute? Jorge Ferrer responds to Wilber's criticisms.
In response to the critics of postmodernism, it has been suggested that no "postmodern" ethos or
movement has actually taken practical form, and that the term "postmodernism" has been used
by traditionalist intellectuals as a catch-all term serving to condemn trends in thought without
adequately addressing their content.
Some Quotes about postmodernism
"Postmodernism is incredulity towards metanarratives" Jean-Francois Lyotard
"Postmodernist fiction is defined by its temporal disorder, its disregard of linear
narrative, its mingling of fictional forms and its experiments with language." - Barry Lewis,
Kazuo Ishiguro
"a new kind of superficiality" - "depthlessness" - Fredric Jameson
"Weird for the sake of weird." - Moe Szyslak [2]
Jacques Derrida attempted to explain postmodernism when he said "il n'y a pas de hors-
texte". Roughly translated from French, meaning, "there is not an after-text".
Clement Greenberg defined post-modernism in 1979 as the antithesis of everything he
loved.
The assumptions of the emerging postmodern discourses include the following:
A commitment to spiritual and moral dimensions of society
Promotion of phenomenological approaches to realities, the investigation of the lived world
experience of people in their context.
It is an incredulity toward metanarratives, rational enlightenment thinking, and other efforts to
create unified explanations of reality (Lyotard, 1989);
Denounces dualism, exposes deification and reification
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It is a belief that the creation of a holistic, just, and ecologically sustainable educational culture
is not only possible but essential to the survival of human life (Griffin, 1988; Kesson, 1993);
A fundamental option for the poor and marginalized in society as part of a larger movement
toward radical democracy in an anti-racist and post-colonial world (Freire, 1985; Kincheloe,
1993; Lather, 1991; McCarthy, 1990; McLaren, 1989);
a strong sense of the central role of imagination and aesthetics that leads to the conclusion that
ultimately we must see ourselves as expressions of of art (Greene, 1995; Nietzsche, 1968);
It is a sense of urgency about environmental, economic, and social issues that necessitates the
inclusion of ecological sustainability, multiculturalism, and cooperative practices in the
construction of research methodologies and curricular practices (Daly and Cobb, 1989);
It is a strong belief in the prophetic dimension of teaching and learning that requires bold
initiatives to address social, political, economic, spiritual, racial, and gender issues in the
schooling process (Kozol, 1991, Books and Slattery, 1997);
I believe that postmodern philosophies-especially when interfacing with complexity theory,
critical theory, post structural psychology, phenomenological aesthetics, and prophetic
eschatology-are emerging as a viable and exciting alternative forms of meaning and
representation in educational research that move well beyond progressive education and social
reconstruction.
Constructively postmodernism paradigms an opportunity to offer hope for a global community
that has endured tragedies of modernity --the holocaust, slavery, genocide, environmental
degradation, racism, Apartheid, homophobia, nuclear destruction, religious persecution,
colonialization, economic class warfare, and the other absurdities of the modern era.
As we explore postmodern alternatives, we must constantly be reminded of Derrida's caution, "I
was quite explicit about the fact that nothing of what I have said had a destructive meaning.
[Deconstruction] has nothing to do with destruction. [I]t is simply a question of...being alert to
the implications, to the historical sedimentation in the language we use-and that is not
destruction" (1972, p. 271).
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Dialectics: Premodernity as Thesis modern scientism as Antithesis and Postmodernism as
Synthesis
Clarifying the heap of Postmodernism: (Expose the different shades of Postmodernism)
Postmodernism contains different schools of thought. Some academic postmodernists (such as
the well-publicized deconstructionists) embrace what we can think of as a "relativistic"
postmodernism, in which each person is an isolated interpreter of a reality with no intrinsic
meaning or spiritual basis or any underlying meaning of life. This is really a view that comes
from the nihilistic excesses of existentialism. Of more interest to us is what could be called
"holistic" postmodernism, in which each person is a unique contributor to the whole unfolding of
spiritual purpose in the world. This is the postmodernism of Griffin and Spretnak.
Why Postmodernism at all?
The postmodern movement in art, architecture, philosophy, and literary theory in recent decades
has emphasized eclecticism, deconstruction, and multiple forms of representation. Postmodern
philosophies have articulated concepts such as the following, that are rich in their application.
The death of the subject (cogito as presence is destroyed and remains as a decentered
identity)
The repudiation of depth models of reality,
The rejection of grand narratives or universal explanations of history,
The illusion of the transparency of language,
The impossibility of any final meaning,
The effects of power on the objects it represents,
The failure of pure reason to understand the world, the de-centering of the Western logos
and with it the de-throning of the "first world,"
The end of a belief in progress as a natural and neutral panacea,
Moreover, a celebration of difference and multiplicity.
In recent decades, humanity has begun the process-albeit with resistance and struggle-of
developing a new cosmology that recognizes the limitations of the modern worldview and
celebrates postmodern multiplicity and deconstruction as an avenue to overcome injustice.
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Post-Modernism, as a worldview, transcends generational lines. Postmodernism in a nutshell is a
way of viewing the world around us devoid of any overarching theory.
In every generation, there are certain events that take place that begin to formulate the way that
particular generation or group of people sees the world, it's leaders, it's politics, and it's way of
dealing with life.
Postmodernism understood in multiple ways as Poststructuralism and deconstruction, associated
with Foucault, Derrida, and Kristiva (among others), open the possibility of criticizing the
theories, institutions, and practices that are culpable in the brutalization of contemporary life.
Critical theorists utilize postmodern theory to promote anti-racist, feminist, anti-homophobic,
and liberatory social practices.
Constructive postmodernism, as associated with Griffin, Kung, Doll, and Jencks, interfaces with
emerging ecumenical and liberation theologies to construct a just, caring, and ecologically
sustainable global culture in the emerging historical epoch.
There are different versions of postmodernism. For some it means anti-modern; for others it
means the revision of modernist premises. The seemingly anti-modern stance involves a basic
rejection of the tenets of Modernism; that is to say, a rejection of the doctrine of the supremacy
of reason, the notion of truth, the belief in the perfect-ability of man, and the idea that we could
create a better, if not perfect, society. This view has been termed deconstructive postmodernism.
Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or
eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose,
meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview
comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.) Deconstructive
postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that
nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless). Constructive
postmodernism: An alternative understanding, which seeks to revise the premises of Modernism,
has been termed constructive postmodernism. Deconstructive postmodernism seeks to overcome
the modern worldview, and the assumptions that sustain it, through what appears to be an anti-
worldview. It "deconstructs" the ideas and values of Modernism to reveal what composes them
and shows that such modernist ideas as "equality" and "liberty" are not "natural" to humankind
or "true" to human nature but are ideals, intellectual constructions and are lopsided. This process
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of taking apart or "unpacking" the modernist worldview reveals its constituent parts and lays
bare fundamental assumptions. Questions are then frequently raised about who was responsible
for these constructions, and their motives. Who does modernism serve?
Constructive postmodernism exposes and evaluates the facts that modernist culture is Western in
its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class character,
white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender. Constructive
postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional
concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine
legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims
to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science
as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences
are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.
Constructive postmodernism in some important sense desires a return to premodern notions of
divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include
an acceptance of nonsensory perception. Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and
values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism
wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life
on the planet.
The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist
desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine. Postmodernism partakes of
uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form
and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with
process and "becoming." In the postmodern spirit, some researchers utilize an eclectic mixture of
these and other theories to propose a radically new vision of art, music, literature, philosophy,
and educational research. Critics who attempt to universalize all postmodern theories are
operating within the modern obsession with linear bifurcation. Postmodernism is a complex set
of reactions to modern philosophy and its presuppositions rather than any agreement on
substantive doctrines.
Social Logic of Late modernity: it follows logic of Elimination and/or Integration: Elimination
is Exclusivity of those who are unfit to capitalistic technocratic culture and integration of those
who are potentials of fitting into it. However, both the process of elimination and integration is
S. Lourdunathan
37
unlashed in gradation according to the status, power space / time categories by adopting specific
strategies relevant to situations.
Postmodernism typically challenges foundationalism, essentialism, and realism.
For Richard Rorty (1989) the presuppositions to be set aside are foundationalist assumptions
shared by 16th to 18th century philosophers. For Nietzche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the
presuppositions to be set aside are as old as metaphysics and Plato.
Some, such as Lyotard and Griffin, have even suggested that postmodern philosophy preceded
modern philosophy in the sense that the presuppositions of philosophical modernism emerged
out of a disposition whose antecedent beliefs are postmodern. For Lyotard this might include a
sense of the interconnectedness of the universe rather than the fragmentation of information.
In modernism Success is apriori constructed, in favor of the system. Postmodernism is an
exposition of the logic of modernism and its arche of success. Lyotard affirms Maxine Greene's
(1995) conclusion that "the principles and the contexts have to be chosen by living human beings
against their own life-worlds and in the light of their lives with others, by persons able to call, to
say, to sing, and-using their imaginations, tapping their courage-to transform" (p. 198).
Postmodern research seeks such transformation.
(Forerunners of postmodern spirit) While the postmodern movement in educational research and
philosophy certainly has affinities with opposition to the spectator theory of knowledge that
emerged in Europe long before the term "postmodern" became commonplace-such as Dewey's
early opposition to positivism, Wittgenstein's insistence on the language-game character of
representation, and Sellars critique of "the myth of the given"
Current postmodern thought moves beyond any binaries or categorical oppositions. Releasing
the Imagination from the clutches of binaries provide illustrations of a new transformation in the
postmodern epoch. The post-modern education, knowledge process is an artistic ("reflexive")
expression to demask pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and
accelerating the process of self-consciousness. The all-knowing teacher is challenged by
postmodernist approach in education. Agreeing with Lyotard (1989) that modern movements-in
society and in curriculum-are efforts to return to terror. It must be clear that it is our business
not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.We
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38
have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation
of the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. We can hear the mutterings
for a desire for a return of terror. let us wage war on totality.
Postmodern curriculum, in Lyotards spirit, wages war on totality of representation that reduces
learning to information transmission, disciplinary structures, grand narratives, and concepts of
reason that continue to foster the bifurcations that ignite racism, patriarchy, homophobia,
colonialism, and classism. It is a critical awareness that we live in a culture of imposition and
degradation. Postmodern search refuses to be bound by rigid modern bifurcations and the
divisive linear logic. It is the celebration of the Face-to-Face relationship; it is a restoration of the
broken-particular to restore the whole an ethical primacy and urgency in our times.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_developostmodernisment_of_postmodernism

-------------------
Consensus of educated Western people about history, identity, core
cultural values.

Jean-Franois Lyotard: Postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition"
based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives, a crisis in
ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (see The Post-
Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge)

Frederic Jameson: Postmodernism as a movement in arts and culture
corresponding to a new configuration of politics and economics, "late
capitalism": transnational consumer economies based on global scope of
capitalism. (See Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism)

Uses of the term "postmodern"
S. Lourdunathan
39
1. after modernism (subsumes, assumes, extends the modern or
tendencies already present in modernism, not necessarily in strict
chronological succession)
2. contra modernism (subverting, resisting, opposing, or countering
features of modernism)
3. equivalent to "late capitalism" (post-industrial, consumerist, and
multi- and trans-national capitalism)
4. the historical era following the modern (an historical time-
period marker)
5. artistic and stylistic ecclecticism (hybridization of forms and
genres, mixing styles of different cultures or time periods, de- and
re-contextualizing styles in architecture, visual arts, literature)
6. "global village" phenomena: globalization of cultures, races,
images, capital, products ("information age" redefinition of
nation-state identities, which were the foundation of the modern
era; dissemination of images and information across national
boundaries, a sense of erosion or breakdown of national, linguistic,
ethnic, and cultural identities; a sense of a global mixing of
cultures on a scale unknown to pre-information era societies)
Postmodernity and the Crisis of the Referent
(Representationism)
Postmodern historians and philosophers question the representation of
history and cultural identities: history as "what 'really' happened"
(external to representation or mediation) vs. history as a "narrative of
what happened" with a point of view and cultural/ideological interests.

Jameson: "history is only accessible to us in narrative form". History
requires representation, mediation, in narrative, a story-form encoded as
historical.

Dissolution of the transparency of history and tradition: Can we get to
the (unmediated) referents of history?

Multiculturalism, competing views of history and tradition.

S. Lourdunathan
40
Shift from universal histories, from the long dure, to local and
explicitly contingent histories. History and identity politics: who can
write? For whom? From what standpoint?

Walter Benjamin's recognition of the non-neutrality of history:
"Where are the empathies of traditional historicism?] The answer is
inevitable: with the victor. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably
benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means.
Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal
procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying
prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along
in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical
materialist views them with cautious detachment... They owe their
existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have
created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries.
There is no document of civilization, which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism... [A historical materialist] regards it as his task
to brush history against the grain."
"For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one
of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably."
(From "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt)
Working with Frederic Jameson's categories
("Postmodernism and Consumer Society")
(1) "the transformation of reality into images" (cf. Debord and
Baudrillard)
(2) "the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents"
"The erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-
called mass or popular culture" (Jameson).
Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: old forms of "content"
become mere "styles"
stylistic masks, image styles, without present content: the meaning
is in the mimicry
S. Lourdunathan
41
"in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all
that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and
with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum" (Jameson).
No individualism or individual style, voice, expressive identity.
All signifiers circulate and recirculate prior and existing
images and styles. (TV Programmes)
Discuss postmodern attempts to provide illusions of individualism
(ads for jeans, cars, etc.) through images that define possible
subject positions or create desired positions (being the one who's
cool, hip, sexy, desirable, sophisticated...).
"our advertising...is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and is
inconceivable without it" (Jameson)
Po-Mo as late capitalism: transnational capitalism without borders,
only networks and information flows.
Some features of postmodern styles:
Nostalgia and retro styles, recycling earlier genres and styles in
new contexts (film/TV genres, images, typography, colors,
clothing and hair styles, advertising images)
"History" represented through nostalgic images of pop culture,
fantasies of the past. History has become one of the styles;
historical representations blend with nostalgia.
"the disappearance of a sense of history, the way in which our
entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose
its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual
present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the
kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or
another to preserve... The information function of the media would
thus be to help us to forget, to serve as the very agents and
mechanisms of our historical amnesia" (Jameson).
Jameson's own nostalgia? Did this ever exist?
Culture on Fast Forward: Time and history replaced by speed,
futureness, accelerated obsolescence.

Postmodernism DR S Lourdunathan

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Postmodernism DR S Lourdunathan

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Course material to students of Philosophy, St. Josephs Philosophical College,

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