According to Wikipedia:
Postmodernism literally means ‘after the modernist movement’. While “modern” itself refers to something “related to the present”, the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives. It is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure for works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema and design, as well as in marketing and business and the interpretation of history, law and culture in the late 20th century.
Postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, which was the basis of the attempt to describe a condition, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions (as in Giddens, 1990) as postmodernity. In other words, postmodernism is the “cultural and intellectual phenomenon”, especially since the 1920s’ new movements in the arts, while postmodernity focuses on social and political outworkings and innovations globally, especially since the 1960s in the West.
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary refers to postmodernism as “a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.”[1]
The term postmodern is described by Merriam-Webster as meaning either “of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one” or “of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)”, or finally “of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language”.
Reaction to modernism
Postmodernism was originally a reaction to modernism. Largely influenced by the Western European “disillusionment” induced by World War II, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, interconnectedness or interreferentiality,[4] in a way that is often indistinguishable from a parody of itself. It has given rise to charges of fraudulence.[5]
Postmodernity is a derivative referring to non-art aspects of history that were influenced by the new movement, namely developments in society, economy and culture since the 1960s.[6] When the idea of a reaction or rejection of modernism was borrowed by other fields, it became synonymous in some contexts with postmodernity. The term is closely linked with poststructuralism (cf. Michel Foucault) and with modernism, in terms of a rejection of its bourgeois, elitist culture.[7]
Influence and distinction from postmodernity
Postmodernist ideas in philosophy and the analysis of culture and society expanded the importance of critical theory and has been the point of departure for works of literature, architecture, and design, as well as being visible in marketing/business and the interpretation of history, law and culture, starting in the late 20th century. These developments — re-evaluation of the entire Western value system (love, marriage, popular culture, shift from industrial to service economy) that took place since 1950’s and 1960’s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968 — are described with the term postmodernity,[14] as opposed to postmodernism, a term referring to an opinion or movement. Whereas something being “postmodernist” would make it part of the movement, its being “postmodern” would place it in the period of time since the 1950s, making it a part of contemporary history.
Notwithstanding the foregoing distinctions, both terms can be synonymous and interchangeable in common parlance, given the fluidity and ongoing evolution of their definitions.
The usage and extent of the concept of ‘postmodernism’
Whether ‘postmodernism’ is seen as a critical concept or merely a buzzword, one cannot deny its range. Dick Hebdige, in his ‘Hiding in the Light’ illustrates this:
When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’ a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament of reflexitivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of ‘placelessness’ (critical regionalism) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates: when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.[15]
That last bit succinctly sums up why I’m opposed to using the terms “postmodern” or “postmodernistic.” When I mention “modern times” and “modern technology,” the last 150 years is what’s being referred to. Sorting by chronology is a quirk or habit of mine and has nothing to do with the movements and philosophies described above.
After reading a bunch pertaining to postmodernism on the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s website, I’m more convinced than ever that there’s no place for me up in those discussions. Philosophy courses blew my mind in college, particularly a Philosophy of Religion course that had to be dropped. Oh sure, the study of philosophy puts forth lots of useful stuff to chew and reflect on, but you can get lost in its maze of words for years if you let it suck you in, probably only to be spit out more confused and less wise than before. Because the academic pursuit of philosophical understandings and explanations is a complex, sordid affair argued from perspectives influenced by whatever era bore them. Philosophy doesn’t tend to be a poor man’s field either.
Philosophy absolutely has relevance and value, just that the philosophy community and its so-called experts are better left to argue and hash out the fine details and semantics. The average person doesn’t have the time or uncommitted brain cells to delve deep into the debates and controversy of this academic discipline, myself firmly included. Some of the stuff Nietzsche says makes sense, but other parts lose me completely. Somewhere along the way he veers right, I veer left.
Reminds me that to find information useful and relevant doesn’t require accepting all conjectures the author puts forward. That’s how I view the realm of philosophy in a nutshell: taking pieces and parts that make the most sense, rolling ideas around to try to ascertain what value they may have, caring more for the concepts than the people who dreamed them up. Caring more for the outcome than the intricate process required to carry us collectively into the next stage of cognitive and intellectual understanding. Though I also appreciate philosophy’s importance.
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