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Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by
skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
toward the "
grand narratives A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; french: métarécit) is a narrative ''about'' narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet ...
" of
modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
, opposition to
epistemic Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
certainty or stability of meaning, and emphasis on
ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objective fact are dismissed as
naïve realism In philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, naïve realism (also known as direct realism, perceptual realism, or common sense realism) is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are. When refer ...
, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of
knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality,
epistemological relativism Factual relativism (also called epistemic relativism, epistemological relativism, alethic relativism or cognitive relativism) argues that truth itself is relative. This form of relativism has its own particular problem, regardless of whether one i ...
,
moral relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
, pluralism,
irony Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...
, irreverence, and
eclecticism Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in ...
; it rejects the "universal validity" of
binary opposition A binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one ...
s, stable
identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
,
hierarchy A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
, and
categorization Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as Object (philosophy), objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by a ...
. Initially emerging from a mode of
literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
, postmodernism developed in the mid-twentieth century as a rejection of modernism and has been observed across many disciplines. Postmodernism is associated with the disciplines
deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...
and
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
. Various authors have criticized postmodernism as promoting
obscurantism In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. There are two ...
, as abandoning Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and as adding nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge.


Definition

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse which challenges worldviews associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century. Postmodernism is associated with
relativism Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...
and a focus on ideology in the maintenance of economic and political power. Postmodernists are "skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person". It considers "reality" to be a mental construct. Postmodernism rejects the possibility of unmediated reality or objectively-rational knowledge, asserting that all interpretations are contingent on the perspective from which they are made; claims to objective fact are dismissed as naive
realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...
. Postmodern thinkers frequently describe
knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
claims and
value system In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...
s as
contingent Contingency or Contingent may refer to: * Contingency (philosophy), in philosophy and logic * Contingency plan, in planning * Contingency table, in statistics * Contingency theory, in organizational theory * Contingency theory (biology) in evoluti ...
or socially-conditioned, describing them as products of political, historical, or cultural
discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
s and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-referentiality,
epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
and
moral relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
, pluralism, and irreverence. Postmodernism is often associated with
schools of thought A school of thought, or intellectual tradition, is the perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement. H ...
such as
deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...
and
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
. Postmodernism relies on
critical theory A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...
, which considers the effects of ideology, society, and history on culture. Postmodernism and critical theory commonly criticize universalist ideas of
objective reality In philosophy, objectivity is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination). A proposition is considered to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met witho ...
,
morality Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...
,
truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...
,
human nature Human nature is a concept that denotes the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally. The term is often used to denote the essence of humankind, or ...
,
reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
, language, and
social progress Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
. Initially, postmodernism was a mode of discourse on literature and literary criticism, commenting on the nature of literary text, meaning, author and reader, writing, and reading. Postmodernism developed in the mid- to late-twentieth century across many scholarly disciplines as a departure or rejection of modernism. As a critical practice, postmodernism employs concepts such as
hyperreality Described by Jean Baudrillard, the concept of hyperreality captures the inability to distinguish "The Real" (a term borrowed from Jacques Lacan) from the signifier of it. This is more prominent in technologically advanced societies. Hyperreality ...
,
simulacrum A simulacrum (plural: simulacra or simulacrums, from Latin '' simulacrum'', which means "likeness, semblance") is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, u ...
,
trace Trace may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * ''Trace'' (Son Volt album), 1995 * ''Trace'' (Died Pretty album), 1993 * Trace (band), a Dutch progressive rock band * ''The Trace'' (album) Other uses in arts and entertainment * ''Trace'' ...
, and
difference Difference, The Difference, Differences or Differently may refer to: Music * ''Difference'' (album), by Dreamtale, 2005 * ''Differently'' (album), by Cassie Davis, 2009 ** "Differently" (song), by Cassie Davis, 2009 * ''The Difference'' (al ...
, and rejects abstract principles in favor of direct experience.


Origins of term

The term ''postmodern'' was first used in 1870. John Watkins Chapman suggested "a Postmodern style of painting" as a way to depart from French
Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
. J. M. Thompson, in his 1914 article in ''
The Hibbert Journal ''The Hibbert Journal'' was a large, quarterly magazine in softback book format, issued since 1902 by the Hibbert Trust, best described by its subtitle: ''A Quarterly Review of Religion, Theology and Philosophy''. In the early years it was publish ...
'' (a quarterly philosophical review), used it to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion, writing: "The raison d'être of Post-Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of
Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
by being thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition." In 1942 H. R. Hays described postmodernism as a new literary form. In 1926,
Bernard Iddings Bell Bernard Iddings Bell (October 13, 1886 – September 5, 1958) was an American Christian author, Episcopal priest, and conservative cultural commentator. His religious writings, social critiques, and homilies on post-war society were acclaimed in t ...
, president of St. Stephen's College (now
Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...
), published ''Postmodernism and Other Essays'', marking the first use of the term to describe the historical period following Modernity. The essay criticizes the lingering socio-cultural norms, attitudes, and practices of the Age of Enlightenment. It also forecasts the major cultural shifts toward Postmodernity and (Bell being an Anglican Episcopal priest) suggests orthodox religion as a solution. However, the term postmodernity was first used as a general theory for a historical movement in 1939 by
Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Colleg ...
: "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914–1918". In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with
modern architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...
and led to the postmodern architecture movement in response to the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style. Postmodernism in architecture was initially marked by a re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban settings, historical reference in decorative forms (eclecticism), and non-orthogonal angles. Author
Peter Drucker Peter Ferdinand Drucker (; ; November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business co ...
suggested the transformation into a post-modern world that happened between 1937 and 1957 and described it as a "nameless era" characterized as a shift to a conceptual world based on pattern, purpose, and process rather than a mechanical cause. This shift was outlined by four new realities: the emergence of an Educated Society, the importance of
international development International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications ...
, the decline of the nation-state, and the collapse of the viability of non-Western cultures. In 1971, in a lecture delivered at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London,
Mel Bochner Mel Bochner (born 1940) is an American conceptual artist. Bochner received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in New York City. Life Bochner was born in Pittsb ...
described "post-modernism" in art as having started with
Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
, "who first rejected sense-data and the singular point-of-view as the basis for his art, and treated art as a critical investigation". In 1996, Walter Truett Anderson described postmodernism as belonging to one of four typological world views which he identified as: * Neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature or spiritual exploration of the inner self. * Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed. * Scientific-rational, in which truth is defined through methodical, disciplined inquiry. * Social-traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization.


History

The basic features of what is now called postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s, most notably in the work of artists such as
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
. However, most scholars today agree postmodernism began to compete with modernism in the late 1950s and gained ascendancy over it in the 1960s. The primary features of postmodernism typically include the ironic play with styles, citations, and narrative levels, a metaphysical skepticism or
nihilism Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...
towards a " grand narrative" of Western culture, and a preference for the virtual at the expense of the Real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes). Since the late 1990s, there has been a growing sentiment in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion". Others argue that postmodernism is dead in the context of current cultural production.


Theories and derivatives


Structuralism and post-structuralism

Structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
was a philosophical movement developed by French academics in the 1950s, partly in response to French
existentialism Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
, and often interpreted in relation to modernism and
high modernism High modernism (also known as high modernity) is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent duri ...
. Thinkers who have been called "structuralists" include the anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...
, the linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
, the Marxist philosopher
Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser ...
, and the semiotician Algirdas Greimas. The early writings of the psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
and the literary theorist
Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...
have also been called "structuralist". Those who began as structuralists but became post-structuralists include
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
, Roland Barthes,
Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as w ...
, and
Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
. Other post-structuralists include
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
,
Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...
,
Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
,
Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, bg, Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has ...
,
Hélène Cixous Hélène Cixous (; ; born 5 June 1937) is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. She is known for her experimental writing style and great versatility as a writer and thinker, her work dealing with multiple genres: theater, literary a ...
, and
Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well know ...
. The American cultural theorists, critics, and intellectuals whom they influenced include
Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler ...
, John Fiske,
Rosalind Krauss Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic ...
,
Avital Ronell Avital Ronell ( ; born 15 April 1952) is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic l ...
, and
Hayden White Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014). Career W ...
. Like structuralists, post-structuralists start from the assumption that people's identities, values, and economic conditions determine each other rather than having ''intrinsic'' properties that can be understood in isolation. Thus the French structuralists considered themselves to be espousing relativism and constructionism. But they nevertheless tended to explore how the subjects of their study might be described, reductively, as a set of ''essential'' relationships, schematics, or mathematical symbols. (An example is Claude Lévi-Strauss's algebraic formulation of mythological transformation in "The Structural Study of Myth"). Postmodernism entails reconsideration of the entire Western value system (love, marriage, popular culture, shift from an
industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...
to a
service economy Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments: * The increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. The current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer ma ...
) that took place since the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968—are described with the term ''
postmodernity Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...
'', as opposed to ''postmodernism'', a term referring to an opinion or movement. Post-structuralism is characterized by new ways of thinking through structuralism, contrary to the original form.


Deconstruction

One of the most well-known postmodernist concerns is ''deconstruction'', a theory for philosophy, literary criticism, and textual analysis developed by
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
. Critics have insisted that Derrida's work is rooted in a statement found in ''Of Grammatology'': "" ('there is nothing outside the text'). Such critics misinterpret the statement as denying any reality outside of books. The statement is actually part of a critique of "inside" and "outside" metaphors when referring to the text, and is a corollary to the observation that there is no "inside" of a text as well. This attention to a text's unacknowledged reliance on metaphors and figures embedded within its discourse is characteristic of Derrida's approach. Derrida's method sometimes involves demonstrating that a given philosophical discourse depends on binary oppositions or excluding terms that the discourse itself has declared to be irrelevant or inapplicable. Derrida's philosophy inspired a postmodern movement called
deconstructivism Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. ...
among architects, characterized by a design that rejects structural "centers" and encourages decentralized play among its elements. Derrida discontinued his involvement with the movement after the publication of his collaborative project with architect Peter Eisenman in ''Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman''.


Post-postmodernism

The connection between postmodernism, posthumanism, and cyborgism has led to a challenge to postmodernism, for which the terms ''
Post-postmodernism Post-postmodernism is a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism. Periodization Most scholars would agree that modernism bega ...
'' and ''postpoststructuralism'' were first coined in 2003: More recently
metamodernism Metamodernism is a term that refers to a range of developments observed in many areas of art, culture and philosophy, emerging in the aftermath of postmodernism, roughly at the turn of the 21st century. To many, it is characterized as mediations bet ...
, post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism" have been widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoberek noted in his introduction to a special issue of the journal ''Twentieth-Century Literature'' titled "After Postmodernism" that "declarations of postmodernism's demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group of critics has put forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism),
Gilles Lipovetsky Gilles Lipovetsky (born September 24, 1944) is a French philosopher, writer, and sociologist, professor at Stendhal University in Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. Life and career Lipovetsky was born in Millau in 1944. He studied phi ...
(
hypermodernity Hypermodernity (supermodernity) is a type, mode, or stage of society that reflects an inversion of modernity. Hypermodernism stipulates a world in which the object has been replaced by its own attributes. The new attribute-driven world is driven ...
),
Nicolas Bourriaud Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) is a curator and art critic, who has curated a great number of exhibitions and biennials all over the world. With Jérôme Sans, Bourriaud cofounded the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where he served as codirector from 199 ...
(
altermodern Altermodern, a portmanteau word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism. It is also the title of the Tate Britain's fourth Triennial ...
), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism). None of these new theories or labels have so far gained very widespread acceptance. Sociocultural anthropologist Nina Müller-Schwarze offers neostructuralism as a possible direction. The exhibition ''Postmodernism – Style and Subversion 1970–1990'' at the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
(London, 24 September 2011 – 15 January 2012) was billed as the first show to document postmodernism as a historical movement.


Philosophy

In the 1970s a group of
poststructuralists Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
in France developed a radical critique of modern philosophy with roots discernible in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and became known as postmodern theorists, notably including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and others. New and challenging modes of thought and writing pushed the development of new areas and topics in philosophy. By the 1980s, this spread to America (Richard Rorty) and the world.


Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French-Algerian philosopher best known for developing a form of
semiotic Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. Derrida re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in general; sought to undermine the language of "presence" or
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
in an analytical technique which, beginning as a point of departure from Heidegger's notion of ''Destruktion'', came to be known as deconstruction.


Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher,
historian of ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...
,
social theorist Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena.Seidman, S., 2016. Contested knowledge: Social theory today. John Wiley & Sons. A tool used by social scientists, social theories rela ...
, and literary critic. First associated with
structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
, Foucault created an oeuvre that today is seen as belonging to
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
and to postmodern philosophy. Considered a leading figure of , his work remains fruitful in the English-speaking academic world in a large number of sub-disciplines. The
Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
Guide described him in 2009 as the most cited author in the humanities. Michel Foucault introduced concepts such as ''discursive regime'', or re-invoked those of older philosophers like ''
episteme In philosophy, episteme (; french: épistémè) is a term that refers to a principle system of understanding (i.e., knowledge), such as scientific knowledge or practical knowledge. The term comes from the Ancient Greek verb grc, ἐπῐ́στ ...
'' and ''genealogy'' in order to explain the relationship between meaning, power, and social behavior within social orders (see ''
The Order of Things ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966) by French philosopher Michel Foucault proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumptions ...
'', ''
The Archaeology of Knowledge ''The Archaeology of Knowledge'' (''L’archéologie du savoir,'' 1969) by Michel Foucault is a treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (''epistemes'') and of knowledge (''discursive formations'') which follo ...
'', ''
Discipline and Punish ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'' (french: Surveiller et punir : Naissance de la prison) is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes tha ...
'', and ''
The History of Sexuality ''The History of Sexuality'' (french: L'Histoire de la sexualité) is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a di ...
'').


Jean-François Lyotard

Influenced by
Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...
, Jean-François Lyotard is credited with being the first to use the term in a philosophical context, in his 1979 work '' ''. In it, he follows Wittgenstein's
language games A language game (also called a cant, secret language, ludling, or argot) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to an untrained listener. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their c ...
model and
speech act theory In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...
, contrasting two different language games, that of the expert, and that of the philosopher. He talks about the transformation of knowledge into information in the computer age and likens the transmission or reception of coded messages (information) to a position within a language game. Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in ''The Postmodern Condition'', writing: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives...." where what he means by
metanarrative A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; french: métarécit) is a narrative ''about'' narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet ...
(in French, grands récits) is something like a unified, complete, universal, and epistemically certain story about everything that is. Postmodernists reject metanarratives because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose. Postmodernist philosophers, in general, argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal—and that truth is always partial and "at issue" rather than being complete and certain.


Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty argues in ''
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' is a 1979 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist ...
'' that contemporary
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
mistakenly imitates scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the traditional epistemological perspectives of
representationalism In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, the question of direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, is the debate over the nature of conscious experience;Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Consc ...
and
correspondence theory In metaphysics and philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world ...
that rely upon the independence of knowers and observers from phenomena and the passivity of natural phenomena in relation to consciousness.


Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard, in ''
Simulacra and Simulation ''Simulacra and Simulation'' (french: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by the philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and soci ...
'', introduced the concept that reality or the principle of the Real is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies. For Baudrillard, "simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal."


Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson set forth one of the first expansive theoretical treatments of postmodernism as a historical period, intellectual trend, and social phenomenon in a series of lectures at the
Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
, later expanded as ''
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism ''Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'' is a 1991 book by Fredric Jameson, in which the author offers a critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. The book began as a 1984 article in the ''New Left Re ...
'' (1991).


Douglas Kellner

In ''Analysis of the Journey'', a journal birthed from postmodernism, Douglas Kellner insists that the "assumptions and procedures of modern theory" must be forgotten. Extensively, Kellner analyzes the terms of this theory in real-life experiences and examples. Kellner used science and technology studies as a major part of his analysis; he urged that the theory is incomplete without it. The scale was larger than just postmodernism alone; it must be interpreted through cultural studies where science and technology studies play a huge role. The reality of the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
on the United States of America is the catalyst for his explanation. In response, Kellner continues to examine the repercussions of understanding the effects of the 11 September attacks. He questions if the attacks are only able to be understood in a limited form of postmodern theory due to the level of irony. The conclusion he depicts is simple: postmodernism, as most use it today, will decide what experiences and signs in one's reality will be one's reality as they know it.


Manifestations


Architecture

Modern Architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...
, as established and developed by
Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...
and
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
, was focused on: * the attempted harmony of form and function; and, * the dismissal of "frivolous ornament." * the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection; They argued for architecture that represented the spirit of the age as depicted in cutting-edge technology, be it airplanes, cars, ocean liners, or even supposedly artless grain silos. Modernist
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
is associated with the phrase " less is more". Critics of Modernism have: * argued that the attributes of perfection and minimalism are themselves subjective; * pointed out
anachronism An anachronism (from the Ancient Greek, Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronology, chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time per ...
s in modern thought; and, * questioned the benefits of its philosophy. The intellectual scholarship regarding postmodernism and architecture is closely linked with the writings of critic-turned-architect
Charles Jencks Charles Alexander Jencks (21 June 1939 – 13 October 2019) was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous i ...
, beginning with lectures in the early 1970s and his essay "The Rise of Post Modern Architecture" from 1975. His ''magnum opus'', however, is the book ''The Language of Post-Modern Architecture'', first published in 1977, and since running to seven editions. Jencks makes the point that Post-Modernism (like Modernism) varies for each field of art, and that for architecture it is not just a reaction to Modernism but what he terms ''double coding'': "Double Coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects." In their book, "Revisiting Postmodernism", Terry Farrell and Adam Furman argue that postmodernism brought a more joyous and sensual experience to the culture, particularly in architecture.


Art

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. Cultural production manifesting as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, deconstructionist display, and multimedia, particularly involving video, are described as postmodern.


Graphic design

Early mention of postmodernism as an element of graphic design appeared in the British magazine, "Design". A characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that "retro, techno, punk, grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. Each had its own sites and venues, detractors and advocates."


Literature

Jorge Luis Borges' (1939) short story " Pierre Menard, Author of the ''Quixote''", is often considered as predicting postmodernism and is a paragon of the ultimate parody.
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
is also considered an important precursor and influence. Novelists who are commonly connected with postmodern literature include
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
,
William Gaddis William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist. The first and longest of his five novels, ''The Recognitions'', was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 and two othe ...
,
Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...
,
Pier Vittorio Tondelli Pier Vittorio Tondelli (14 September 1955 – 16 December 1991) was an Italian writer who wrote a small but influential body of work. He was born in Correggio, a small town in the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy and died in nearby Reggio Em ...
, John Hawkes,
William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
,
Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...
,
John Barth John Simmons Barth (; born May 27, 1930) is an American writer who is best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include ''The Sot-Weed Factor'', a ...
,
Jean Rhys Jean Rhys, ( ; born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resided in England, where she was sent for her ...
,
Donald Barthelme Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houston Post'', was managing ...
,
E. L. Doctorow Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...
,
Richard Kalich Richard Kalich, the author of ''The Nihilesthete'' (1987), ''Penthouse F'' (2010) and ''Charlie P'' (2005) published in 2014 in a single volume as ''Central Park West Trilogy'', ''The Zoo'' (2001) and ''The Assisted Living Facility Library'' (2 ...
, Jerzy Kosiński,
Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, per ...
,
Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
(Pynchon's work has also been described as high modern),
Ishmael Reed Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is '' M ...
,
Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...
, Ana Lydia Vega,
Jáchym Topol Jáchym Topol (born 4 August 1962) is a Czech poet, novelist, musician and journalist who became a laureate of the Czech State Award for Literature in October 2017 for his novel ''Sensitive Man''. Life Jáchym Topol was born in Prague, Czech ...
and
Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), ''Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), ''The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The Broo ...
. In 1971, the American scholar
Ihab Hassan Ihab Habib Hassan (October 17, 1925 – September 10, 2015) was an Egypt-born American literary theorist and writer. Biography Ihab Hassan was born in Cairo, Egypt, and emigrated to the United States in 1946. He was Emeritus Vilas Research Pro ...
published ''The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature,'' an early work of literary criticism from a postmodern perspective that traces the development of what he calls "literature of silence" through
Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine sexuality as well as numerous accusat ...
,
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
,
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
, Samuel Beckett, and many others, including developments such as the
Theatre of the Absurd The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of ...
and the nouveau roman. In ''Postmodernist Fiction'' (1987),
Brian McHale Brian G. McHale is a US academic and literary theorist who writes on a range of fiction and poetics, mainly relating to postmodernism and narrative theory. He is currently Distinguished Humanities Professor of English at Ohio State University. His ...
details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that the former is characterized by an epistemological dominant and that postmodern works have developed out of modernism and are primarily concerned with questions of ontology. McHale's second book, ''Constructing Postmodernism'' (1992), provides readings of postmodern fiction and some contemporary writers who go under the label of
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
. McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007) follows
Raymond Federman Raymond Federman (May 15, 1928 – October 6, 2009) was a French–American novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. He held positions at the University at Buffalo from 1973 to 1999, when he was app ...
's lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism.


Music

Jonathan Kramer has written that avant-garde musical compositions (which some would consider modernist rather than postmodernist) "defy more than seduce the listener, and they extend by potentially unsettling means the very idea of what music is." In the 1960s, composers such as
Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...
,
Henryk Górecki Henryk Mikołaj Górecki ( , ; 6 December 1933 – 12 November 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki. He became a l ...
,
Bradley Joseph Bradley Joseph (born 1965) is an American composer, arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet, and solo piano, while his musical style ranges from "quietly pensive mood music ...
,
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
,
Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...
,
Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...
,
Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his length ...
, and
Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his form ...
reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies, whilst others, most notably
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
challenged the prevailing narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism. Author on postmodernism, Dominic Strinati, has noted, it is also important "to include in this category the so-called '
art rock Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist, experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from entertainment to an art ...
' musical innovations and mixing of styles associated with groups like
Talking Heads Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talkin ...
, and performers like
Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...
, together with the self-conscious 'reinvention of
disco Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
' by the
Pet Shop Boys The Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of primary vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 50 million records worldwide, and were listed as the most successful duo i ...
". In the late-20th century, avant-garde academics labelled American singer
Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...
, as the "personification of the postmodern", with Christian writer
Graham Cray Graham Alan Cray (born 21 April 1947) is a retired British Anglican bishop. He was the Bishop of Maidstone in the Diocese of Canterbury from 2001 to 2009, and was the Archbishops' Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions from 2009 to 2014. ...
saying that "Madonna is perhaps the most visible example of what is called post-modernism", and
Martin Amis Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir '' ...
described her as "perhaps the most postmodern personage on the planet". She was also suggested by assistant professor Olivier Sécardin of
Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...
to epitomise postmodernism.


Urban planning

Modernism sought to design and plan cities that followed the logic of the new model of industrial
mass production Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...
; reverting to large-scale solutions, aesthetic standardisation, and
prefabricated Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The term is u ...
design solutions. Modernism eroded urban living by its failure to recognise differences and aim towards homogeneous landscapes (Simonsen 1990, 57).
Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities ...
' 1961 book ''
The Death and Life of Great American Cities ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States. ...
'' was a sustained critique of urban planning as it had developed within Modernism and marked a transition from modernity to postmodernity in thinking about urban planning (Irving 1993, 479). The transition from Modernism to Postmodernism is often said to have happened at 3:32 pm on 15 July in 1972, when
Pruitt–Igoe The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, known together as Pruitt–Igoe (), were joint urban housing projects first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The complex consisted of 33 eleven-story high rises, ...
, a housing development for low-income people in
St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
designed by architect
Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale projects. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward D ...
, which had been a prize-winning version of Le Corbusier's 'machine for modern living,' was deemed uninhabitable and was torn down (Irving 1993, 480). Since then, Postmodernism has involved theories that embrace and aim to create diversity. It exalts uncertainty, flexibility and change (Hatuka & D'Hooghe 2007) and rejects utopianism while embracing a utopian way of thinking and acting. Postmodernity of 'resistance' seeks to deconstruct Modernism and is a critique of the origins without necessarily returning to them (Irving 1993, 60). As a result of Postmodernism, planners are much less inclined to lay a firm or steady claim to there being one single 'right way' of engaging in urban planning and are more open to different styles and ideas of 'how to plan' (Irving 474). The postmodern approach to understanding the city were pioneered in the 1980s by what could be called the "Los Angeles School of Urbanism" centered on the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
's Urban Planning Department in the 1980s, where contemporary Los Angeles was taken to be the postmodern city par excellence, contra posed to what had been the dominant ideas of the Chicago School formed in the 1920s at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, with its framework of urban ecology and emphasis on functional areas of use within a city, and the concentric circles to understand the sorting of different population groups.
Edward Soja Edward William Soja (; 1940–2015) was a self-described urbanist, a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Ec ...
of the Los Angeles School combined Marxist and postmodern perspectives and focused on the economic and social changes (globalization, specialization, industrialization/deindustrialization, Neo-Liberalism, mass migration) that lead to the creation of large city-regions with their patchwork of population groups and economic uses.


Criticisms

Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the argument that postmodernism is meaningless and promotes
obscurantism In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. There are two ...
. In part in reference to post-modernism, conservative English philosopher
Roger Scruton Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. Editor from 1982 t ...
wrote, "A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't." Similarly,
Dick Hebdige Dick Hebdige (born 1951) is an expatriate British media theorist and sociologist, and a professor of art and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work is commonly associated with the study of subcultures, and its res ...
criticized the vagueness of the term, enumerating a long list of otherwise unrelated concepts that people have designated as postmodernism, from "the décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear armageddon and the "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything that could signify all of those things was "a buzzword".Dick Hebdige, 'Postmodernism and "the other side"', in ''Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A reader'', edited by John Storey, London, Pearson Education, 2006 The linguist and philosopher
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
has said that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals do not respond like people in other fields when asked, "what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc.?...If hese requestscan't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: 'to the flames'." Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has said "The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unliveable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism!" American author
Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
targeted postmodernism as an object of derision in his novels, openly mocking postmodernist discourse. American academic and aesthete Camille Paglia has said: German philosopher Albrecht Wellmer has said that "postmodernism at its best might be seen as a self-critical – a sceptical, ironic, but nevertheless unrelenting – form of modernism; a modernism beyond utopianism, scientism and foundationalism; in short a post-metaphysical modernism." A formal, academic critique of postmodernism can be found in ''Beyond the Hoax'' by physics professor Alan Sokal and in ''Fashionable Nonsense'' by Sokal and Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont, both books discussing the so-called Sokal affair. In 1996, Sokal wrote a deliberately nonsensical article in a style similar to postmodernist articles, which was accepted for publication by the postmodern cultural studies journal, ''Social Text''. On the same day of the release he published another article in a different journal explaining the ''Social Text'' article hoax. The philosopher Thomas Nagel has supported Sokal and Bricmont, describing their book ''Fashionable Nonsense'' as consisting largely of "extensive quotations of scientific gibberish from name-brand French intellectuals, together with eerily patient explanations of why it is gibberish," and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity." Zimbabwean-born British Marxist Alex Callinicos says that postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right." Analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett said, "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster." American historian Richard Wolin traces the origins of postmodernism to intellectual roots in fascism, writing "postmodernism has been nourished by the doctrines of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, and Paul de Man—all of whom either prefigured or succumbed to the proverbial intellectual fascination with fascism." Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry criticised postmodernism for reducing the complexity of the modern world to an expression of power and for undermining truth and reason: Richard Caputo, William Epstein, David Stoesz & Bruce Thyer consider postmodernism to be a "dead-end in social work epistemology." They write: H. Sidky pointed out what he sees as several inherent flaws of a postmodern antiscience perspective, including the confusion of the authority of science (evidence) with the scientist conveying the knowledge; its self-contradictory claim that all truths are relative; and its strategic ambiguity. He sees 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific approaches to knowledge, particularly in the United States, as rooted in a postmodernist "decades-long academic assault on science:"


Criticism by "postmodernists" themselves

The French psychotherapist and philosopher, Félix Guattari, rejected its theoretical assumptions by arguing that the structuralist and postmodernist visions of the world were not flexible enough to seek explanations in psychological, social, and environmental domains at the same time. In an interview with Truls Lie, Jean Baudrillard noted: "[ Transmodernism etc] are better terms than “postmodernism”. It is not about modernity; it is about every system that has developed its mode of expression to the extent that it surpasses itself and its own logic. This is what I am trying to analyze." "There is no longer any ontologically secret substance. I perceive this to be nihilism rather than postmodernism."


See also

;Theory * * * ;Culture and politics * * * ;Philosophy * * ;Religion * ;History * ;Opposed by * *


References


Further reading

* * Alexie, Sherman (2000). "The Toughest Indian in the World" () * Anderson, Perry. ''The origins of postmodernity''. London: Verso, 1998. * Anderson, Walter Truett. ''The Truth about the Truth (New Consciousness Reader)''. New York: Tarcher. (1995) () * Arena, Leonardo Vittorio (2015) ''On Nudity. An Introduction to Nonsense'', Mimesis International. * Ashley, Richard and Walker, R. B. J. (1990) "Speaking the Language of Exile." ''International Studies Quarterly'' v 34, no 3 259–68. * Zygmunt Bauman, Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) ''Liquid Modernity''. Cambridge: Polity Press. * Ulrich Beck, Beck, Ulrich (1986) ''Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity''. * Benhabib, Seyla (1995) "Feminism and Postmodernism" in (ed. Nicholson) ''Feminism Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange''. New York: Routledge. * Berman, Marshall (1982) ''All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity'' (). * Hans Bertens, Bertens, Hans (1995) ''The Idea of the Postmodern: A History''. London: Routledge. (). * Steven Best, Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. ''Postmodern Theory '' (1991
excerpt and text search
* Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. ''The Postmodern Turn'' (1997
excerpt and text search
* Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. ''The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium'' Guilford Press, 2001 () * Bielskis, Andrius (2005) ''Towards a Postmodern Understanding of the Political: From Genealogy to Hermeneutics'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). * Brass, Tom, ''Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism'' (London: Cass, 2000). * Judith Butler, Butler, Judith (1995) 'Contingent Foundations' in (ed. Nicholson) ''Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange''. New York: Routledge. * Alex Callinicos, Callinicos, Alex, ''Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique'' (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). * * Margaret Drabble, Drabble, M. ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', 6 ed., article "Postmodernism". * Farrell, John. "Paranoia and Postmodernism," the epilogue to ''Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau'' (Cornell UP, 2006), 309–327. * Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer culture and postmodernism, London; Newbury Park, Calif., Sage Publications. * Anthony Giddens, Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press. * Gosselin, Paul (2012) Flight From the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West. volume I. Samizda
Flight From the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West. Volume I
() * Pelagia Goulimari, Goulimari, Pelagia (ed.) (2007) Postmodernism. What Moment? Manchester: Manchester University Press () * Grebowicz, Margaret (ed.), ''Gender After Lyotard''. NY: Suny Press, 2007. () * Greer, Robert C. ''Mapping Postmodernism''. IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003. () * Groothuis, Douglas. ''Truth Decay''. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000. * Harvey, David (1989) ''The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change'' () * Ted Honderich, Honderich, T., ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', article "Postmodernism". * Hutcheon, Linda. ''The Politics of Postmodernism''. (2002
online edition
* Jameson, Fredric (1991) ''
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism ''Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'' is a 1991 book by Fredric Jameson, in which the author offers a critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. The book began as a 1984 article in the ''New Left Re ...
'' () *Jarzombek, Mark (2016). ''Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. * Kimball, Roger (2000). ''Experiments against Reality: the Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age''. Chicago: I.R. Dee. viii, 359 p. () * Kirby, Alan (2009) ''Digimodernism''. New York: Continuum. * Lash, S. (1990) ''The sociology of postmodernism'' London, Routledge. * Lucy, Niall. (2016) ''A dictionary of Postmodernism'' () * Lyotard, Jean-François (1984) ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'' () * Lyotard, Jean-François (1988). ''The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence 1982–1985''. Ed. Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas. () * Lyotard, Jean-François (1993), "Scriptures: Diffracted Traces." In: ''Theory, Culture and Society'', Vol. 21(1), 2004. * Lyotard, Jean-François (1995), "Anamnesis: Of the Visible." In: ''Theory, Culture and Society'', Vol. 21(1), 2004. * MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, 2nd edn.). * Magliola, Robert ''On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture'' (Atlanta: Scholars Press of American Academy of Religion, 1997; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; , cloth, , pbk). * Robert Magliola, Magliola, Robert, ''Derrida on the Mend'' (Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1984; 1986; pbk. 2000, ISBN I-55753-205-2). * Manuel, Peter. "Music as Symbol, Music as Simulacrum: Pre-Modern, Modern, and Postmodern Aesthetics in Subcultural Musics," Popular Music 1/2, 1995, pp. 227–239. * McHale, Brian (1992), ''Constructing Postmodernism''. NY & London: Routledge. * McHale, Brian (2007), "What Was Postmodernism?" electronic book review

* McHale, Brian (2008), "1966 Nervous Breakdown, or, When Did Postmodernism Begin?" ''Modern Language Quarterly'' 69, 3:391–413. * McHale, Brian, (1987) ''Postmodernist Fiction''. London: Routledge. * * Murphy, Nancey, ''Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics'' (Westview Press, 1997). * Natoli, Joseph (1997) ''A Primer to Postmodernity'' () * Norris, Christopher (1990) ''What's Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy'' () * Pangle, Thomas L., ''The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age'', Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991 * Park, Jin Y., ed., ''Buddhisms and Deconstructions'' Lanham: Rowland & Littlefield, 2006, ; . * Pérez, Rolando. Ed. Agorapoetics: Poetics after Postmodernism. Aurora: The Davies Group, Publishers. 2017. . * * Powell, Jim (1998). "Postmodernism For Beginners" () * Sim, Stuart. (1999). "The Routledge critical dictionary of postmodern thought" () * Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont (1998) ''Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science'' () * Stephen, Hicks (2014). "Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition)", Ockham's Razor Publishing * Vattimo, Gianni (1989). ''The Transparent Society'' () * Gene Edward Veith, Veith Jr., Gene Edward (1994) ''Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture'' () * Keith Windschuttle, Windschuttle, Keith (1996) ''The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past''. New York: The Free Press. * Woods, Tim, ''Beginning Postmodernism,'' Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, (Reprinted 2002) ( Hardback, Paperback).


External links


Discourses of Postmodernism. Multilingual bibliography by Janusz Przychodzen (PDF file)


* [https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/postmod.tru.htm Postmodernism and truth] by philosopher Daniel Dennett
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on postmodernism
{{Authority control Postmodernism, 1880s neologisms Criticism of rationalism Metanarratives Modernism Philosophical movements Theories of aesthetics Allegations