"The Postmodern," 
"Postmodernism," 
"Postmodernity": 
 

Approaches to Po-Mo

 
Postmodernity vs. the postmodern vs. postmodernism
  • Differentiate: historical (political/economic/social) condition vs. intentional movement in arts, culture, philosophy, politics.
     
  • What was Modernism? Consensus of educated Western people about history, identity, core cultural values. Scientific Method. In order to understand something, explore the depths.
     
  • Jean-François Lyotard: Postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition" based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives.

  • 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)

  • Sherry Turkle describes the postmodern world as "a world without depth, a world of surface. If there is no underlying meaning, or a meaning we shall never know, postmodern theorists argue that the privileged way of knowing can only be through an exploration of surfaces. This makes social knowledge into something that we might navigate much as we explore the Macintosh screen and its multiple layers of files and applications.

  • Simulation offers us the greatest hope of understanding. When our world is far too complex for the human mind to build it as a mental construct from first principles, then it defies human intellect to define its truth.
     

    • Ways of working with the idea of the "postmodern"

     

    Andy Warhol

    Home Pages

    Macintosh

    The Simpson's

    MTV

     

    		 Uses of the term "postmodern" 
    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 eclecticism (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)
    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). Andy Warhol
    • Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: old forms of "content" become mere "styles" : film grain
    • stylistic masks, image styles, without present content: the meaning is in the mimicry
    • "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). bell bottoms and swing dancing?
    • 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)

    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. (Barthes illusion of naturalness)
    • Pastiche and Bricolage borrowing from other styles; defining yourself in terms of other cultural pieces (example: what you link to on your homepage)
    • Culture on Fast Forward: Time and history replaced by speed, futureness, accelerated obsolescence.
    • Nonlinear, nonhierarchical- meaning comes through relationships
    • Surface over Depth
    • Transparency as being shielded from the inner workings of the machine
    The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendancies The features in the table below are only tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism. For heuristic purposes only; don't try this at home.
    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.
    Master narrative of progress through science and technology. Skepticism of progress
    Sense of unified, centered self; 
    "individualism," unified identity.    		 Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; 
    multiple, conflicting identities.
    Hierarchy, order, centralized control. Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
    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"

    Absolute Reality

    		 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. Warhol
    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 upon standards. Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. 
    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
    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.
    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