What is post-modernism?

Question

What is post-modernism?

Answer 1

Its easier to understand by stating the two terms involved here :

Postmodernity; as a stage in history

Post modernism: as the culture, the set of ideas and values of this period

Post modernity: the historical stage period following on from modernity. The difference between the two stages are:

Modernity (late 18th century to mid twentieth century)

- developed as scientific technology led to urban industrial societies. It featured:

massive improvements in productivity,  

a central commitment to rationality, individualism, and progress and

nationally based political economies

the core of the people work as industrial workers producing goods

cultural move from ‘tradition’ to the idea of ‘change as progress’

Post modernity (from 1960s on….)

- is structured around consumption and consumerism

globally based  economic structures

majority of workers in the West work in the post-industrial information and consumer industries

greater cynicism about rationality and ‘progress’

rate of change occurring at a much faster pace

Post modernism is the very mixed bag of the changes in architecture, literature, social and political theory.

These have all been affected by the increased cynicism about ‘progress’ and ‘rationality’

Architecture: the move away from designing the ‘new,‘ to using pastiche, layers of old styles.

Literature:  a greater emphasis on the meaning of texts resulting from the partnerships between the author and the reader.  Different readers’ different  interpretations of books/films/poetry means that no stable meaning  can be ascribed to any of these literary productions.

Social theory: the ‘modernist’ beliefs in large scale theories of society like Liberal Democracy/Marxism/Feminism are replaced .  These modernist ‘grand narratives’  give way to (or are affected by and blend with) semiotic theories that explore the always continuing shifts in the ways that meaning is constructed in  culture and society.  Sexuality, in modernist discourses a biological constant, is redefined as being a cultural construct, and thus potentially changeable,  aspect of the human condition.

The postmodern theorists are many but include Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, Lauclau &Moffe, Baumann, Jameson, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler.

Answer 2

You know you got to do what you do and do everyday.

Answer 3

Basically, post modernism is also called post-structuralism.  It means a belief that there is no one single 'truth' about society - every viewpoint is valid, and things are always studied in their relation to other things.  Lots of people disagree with this viewpoint, so some people refer to 'now' as post-modernity and some refer to it as late modernity :-)

Answer 4

Postmodernism is a term originating in architecture, literally 'after the modern', denoting a style that is more ornamental than modernism, and which borrows from previous architectural styles, often in a playful or ironic fashion. Later, the term was used in painting, music and philosophy for any pluralistic style that is a reaction against the pretensions of high modernism[1]. It is used in critical theory and has been the point of departure for works of literature, architecture, and design, as well as in marketing and business and the interpretation of history, law and culture in the late 20th century.

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, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality.[2]

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.[3] 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. Jacques Derrida) and with modernism, in terms of a rejection of its bourgeois, elitist culture.[4]

The term was used as early as 1914 in an article in The Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review) written by J.M.Thompson. In this context it was used to describe fundamental changes in attitudes and beliefs within Christian society of the time ('Post-Modernism, J.M.Thompson, The Hibbert Journal Vol XII No.4 July 1914 p.733). It was then recoined in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, leading to the postmodern architecture movement.[5] Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, and non-orthogonal angles. It may be a response to the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style.

Later, the term was applied to several movements, including in art, music, and literature, that reacted against modernism, and are typically marked by revival of traditional elements and techniques.[6] Walter Truett Anderson identifies postmodernism as one of four world views. These four worldviews are the postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed, the scientific-rational in which truth is 'found' through methodical, disciplined inquiry, the social-traditional in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilisation and the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self.[7]

The term was used as early as 1914 in an article in The Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review) written by J.M.Thompson. In this context it was used to describe fundamental changes in attitudes and beliefs within Christian society of the time ('Post-Modernism, J.M.Thompson, The Hibbert Journal Vol XII No.4 July 1914 p.733). It was then recoined in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, leading to the postmodern architecture movement.[5] Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, and non-orthogonal angles. It may be a response to the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style.

Later, the term was applied to several movements, including in art, music, and literature, that reacted against modernism, and are typically marked by revival of traditional elements and techniques.[6] Walter Truett Anderson identifies postmodernism as one of four world views. These four worldviews are the postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed, the scientific-rational in which truth is 'found' through methodical, disciplined inquiry, the social-traditional in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilisation and the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self.[7]