Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article

7/30/2019 Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article

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Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article 1

Postmodernism

The term postmodernism means, literally speaking, after

modernism. It also can mean moving beyond or opposing. To

understand what postmodernism is we must understand how it differs from

modernism, the period that came before it, which spanned from

approximately 1915 to 1960. In 1924 the writer Virginia Woolf wrote in or

about December, 1910, human character changedAll human relations have

shiftedthose between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents

and children. And when human relationships change there is at the same time

a change in religion, conduct, politics and literature. She was dealing with

what we can characterize as the development of the modernist sensibility.

The term modern comes from the fifth-century Latin word

modernus, which was used by historians and others to differentiate the pagan

era from the Christian era. As Bryan S. Turner explains in his bookTheories

of Modernity and Postmodernity, modernism involves a rejection of history

and of the notion of differentiation. We can see this in modernist architecture

which tends to be stylistically pure while postmodernist architecture often


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blends many different styles in a building. We can compare the modernist

work of the Dutch architect Mies van der Rohe, with his glass curtain walls

and the work of the postmodernist architect Philip Johnson, whose AT&T

skyscraper has a Roman colonnade on the street level, a neoclassical

midsection and a Chippendale pediment on its top. This means that

postmodernism involves a kind of cultural eclecticism and de-differentiation.

After 1960 postmodernism became what might described as a

cultural dominant. This is the term that Frederic Jameson uses to

characterize postmodernism. He argues that postmodernism is actually an

advanced form of modernism and is characterized by the capitalism that

flourished during that period. This is made clear in the title of his book:

Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. As he explains in

this book, postmodernism involves a break from modernism (1991: 2):

[There is] one fundamental feature of all the postmodernisms

namely the effacement in them of the older (essentially high-

modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or

commercial cultureThe postmodernisms have, in fact, been

fascinated precisely by this whole degraded landscape of schlock

and kitsch, of TV series andReaders Digestculture, of advertising

and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-

called paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the

gothic and the romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery,

and the science fiction or fantasy novel.

Postmodernism, he adds, is the culture of figures such as Andy Warhol, Philip

Glass, Thomas Pynchon and Ishmael Reed and movements such as pop art,

photorealism, and the nouveau roman.


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Some theorists argue that postmodernism is not just an advanced or

different form of modernism and is considerably different from it in important

ways. These critics suggest that postmodernism has an identity of its own.

Postmodernism, these theorists assert, helps explain what has been going on

in American culture and in many other cultures since approximately 1960,

when the influence of modernism started fading. The argument that Virginia

Woolf made about the changes brought on by modernism can be made about

postmodernism, who argue that around 1960 another important change

occurred in our sensibilities, as we moved into a postmodern era. There are

some scholars who argue that postmodernism is pass and that we now live in

a post-postmodernism period, but none of them have been able to think up a

suitable name for this period.

There is a considerable amount of debate about modernism and

postmodernism in our universities and some critics of postmodernism suggest

it is or was nothing more than a fad popularized by French and continental

intellectuals while defenders of postmodernism argue that postmodernist

theory is necessary to explain the world we now live in. The defenders of

postmodernism believe that it represents an important cultural mutation that

has occurred in since 1960 and this mutation in beliefs, attitudes, philosophies

and aesthetic sensibilities is what is explained by theorists of postmodernism.

Postmodernism also develops around the same time as capitalism

becomes dominant and thus postmodernism is associated with mass

consumption which dominates fashion and shapes peoples lifestyles.

According to postmodern theorists, we live now in a world dominated by

signs, by simulations, by media, and by images. As a result of this, our sense

of reality has been undermined and our modernist attitudes about elite culture


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and popular culture have been discarded. The pastiche becomes a dominant

mode in postmodernism culture and eclecticism rules. This sensibility is

expressed in Jean-Francois Lyotards bookThe Postmodern Condition: A

Report on Knowledge, when he writes (1984:76):

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one

listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonalds food for lunch

and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and

retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.

It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art

panders to the confusions which reigns in the taste of patrons.

Artists, gallery owners, critics and the public wallow together in the

anything goes, and the epoch is one of slackening. But this realism

of the anything goes is in fact that of money; in the absence of

aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the works of

art according to the profit they yield. Such realism accommodates all

tendencies, just as capital accommodates all needs, providing that

the tendencies and needs have purchasing power. As for taste, there is

no need to be delicate when one speculates or entertains oneself.

Lyotard points out that there is, in fact, a unifying factor beneath the seeming

randomness and eclecticism of postmodern culture, namely that of money.

The question eclecticism raises is whether there can ever be an end to the

eclecticism and experimentation in lifestyles that it reflects.

Let me summarize now some of the differences between

postmodernism and modernism, which have been mentioned or implied in the

discussion above. If modernism involves making distinctions between


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between the elite arts and popular culture, postmodernism involves what can

be described as de-differentiation. It breaks down the distinctions between

the elite arts and popular culture and revels in experimentation and in mass

mediated culture. Modernism involves an attitude of high seriousness

towards life while postmodernism involves an ironic attitude and a kind of

playfulness. In postmodernist societies, people play with their identities,

changing them when they feel bored with their old ones. Postmodernism also

involves stylistic eclecticism with the pastiche as a dominating metaphor.

Modernist believe we can know reality and postmodernists argue that

this is not possible, that we are always being misled by illusions, simulacra,

and hyperreality, the term the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard uses for the

world of images and simulations that pervade everyday life.. Postmodernism

is the realm of consumer culture, in contrast to what we might call the

production culture of modernism. The heroes of postmodernism tend to be

celebrities and entertainment figures, whose tastes and consumption habits are

held up as models to us all.

The British historian Arnold Toynbee is credited with being one of

the first writers to use them term in his multi-volume epic work,A Study of

History whose first volume appeared in 1934. The term started becoming

more popular in the Sixties. Bernard Rosenberg, a sociologist, used the term

in an introduction he wrote toMass Culture. He writes, First besieged with

commodities, postmodern man himself becomes an interchangeable part in

the whole cultural process. (1957: 4) In this passage, Rosenberg ties

postmodernism to the mass media and the rise of consumer culture and

suggests a process of dehumanization is at work in postmodernist cultures.


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This relationship between postmodernism and consumer cultures is

one that many other postmodernist theorists have made. In his essay

Rosenberg connected postmodernism with what has been called cultural

homogenization on a global level which differs from the view of many

postmodern theorists that it leads to the opposite, a kind of anarchic hyper-

differentiation in people.

Charles Jencks, an architect known for designing postmodern

buildings, sees postmodernism as inherently democratic and as a reflection of

the multicultural, multiethnic societies in which we now live. He uses the

term double-coding to mean using different aesthetic styles used in a

building. Thus, in one building you can find styles connected both to

modernism and postmodernism which relate to the many different socio-

economic classes and ethnic groups which will use the building, groups with

different levels of taste and sophistication. The great postmodern architects

such as Robert Venturi, Robert Stern and Michael Graves use both popular

and elitist styles in their buildings to appeal to the varying tastes of people

who see and use their buildings.

One of the most useful characterizations of postmodernism appears in

Ellis Cashmore and Christ Rojeks anthology,Dictionary of Cultural

Theorists. In their introduction to the book, they suggest that in

postmodernity, what seemed to be fixed and universal categories and certainty

found in modernism become replaced by an inability to accept any agreed

upon cultural boundaries or certainties. Under postmodernism, they argue, we

have abandoned a belief in scientific rationality and all-embracing theories of

truth and of progress. (1999: 6)

This notion is found in one of the most celebrated descriptions of


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postmodernism, made by the French philosopher Jean-Franois Lyotard. He

writes in his influential bookThe Postmodern Condition: A Report on

Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press) 1984: xxiv:

Simplifying to the extreme, I definepostmodern as incredulity toward

metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress

in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the

obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation

corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and

of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The

narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great

dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. (1984: xxiv)

According to Lyotard, we no longer have faith in the great all-encompassing,

narratives or systems of thought (as manifested in philosophy, political

ideologies and religions) that have provided us with ways of behaving and

apprehending the world. In a postmodern world, we have many different

narratives fighting for our acceptance and this has led to a crisis of

legitimation. Whose ideas are correct? How do we distinguish between right

and wrong? Our incredulity toward these metanarratives has made it

impossible, it would seem, to answer these questions.

Postmodernism may seem, at first sight, to be relativistic but it may

not actually be relativistic. That is one of the controversies about

postmodernism. The problem can be stated as follows: just because you

dont accept one universal standard doesnt mean you cannot have any

standards at all. Postmodernists may not believe in metanarratives but that

doesnt mean they dont believe in any narratives. This is because we all need


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narratives, of one sort of another, to live. But how does one decide which

narratives are valid?

Nietzsche faced this problem in his bookThe Will to Power. In this

book he wrote that he had an aversion to any one total view of the world.

He added that there are only interpretations, not facts. This notion is basic to

postmodern thought, which argues that there are countless meanings or

ways of looking at things, which is what Nietzsche called perspectivism.

The more perspectives you have on something, he suggested, the closer you

get to apprehending it as it really is.

Postmodernism raises the question of whether we can establish just

societies without universally accepted belief in notions such as equality,

democracy and the rule of law. Many postmodernist theorists, with their

focus on cultural phenomenon, do not answer these questions but it is inherent

in the logic of postmodernist thought that one can have just and democratic

societies in ones characterized by postmodernist culture. We can cite the

examples of America and Japan, which are often held us as exemplars of

postmodern democratic societies.

Some theorists argue that there are two kinds of postmodernism

conservative and critical postmodernism. It is conservative

postmodernist thought that tends towards relativism and an anything goes

attitude while critical postmodernist thought attempts to deal with the

limitations and the failures of modernism and find ways of creating societies

that are more just and more democratic.

If you search for modernism in Google you find there are 9,

370,000 web sites that deal with the subject. If you search for

postmodernism in Google you find there are 5,580,000 web sites devoted to


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it. There is also a program you find on Google called the postmodern essay

generator that creates different parodies of postmodernist thought each time

you click on it. These parodies use the names of well known postmodernist

thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard and the language of postmodernist

thought, such as simulacra, hyperreality, and eclecticism, to ridicule the

subject. They also include titles of make-believe books by make-believe

authors.

Google also informs us that there 18,100 web sites that deal with

post-postmodernism. What the Google searches reveal is that modernism and

postmodernism (and, if it actually exists, post-postmodernism) remain as

subjects of considerable interest, contention, conflict, and perhaps confusion,

to contemporary cultural theorists. We may not be able to define

postmodernism precisely or to everyones satisfaction and we may not be able

to distinguish it from modernism, but as we look around the world we live in,

with its remarkable and strange new buildings, with its shopping malls and

its Disneylands, with films such asRashomon andBlue Velvet, and with our

media saturated societies, we cannot help but think that whatever

postmodernism may be, it certainly has led to profound changes in our

societies. These changes, it can be argued, reflect that impact of

postmodernism on our cultures and character.


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Bibliography

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Postmortem for a Postmodernist.

Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.


The Postmodern Presence: Readings on Postmodernism

in American Culture and Society.



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The Portable Postmodernist


Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. 1991

Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations.

New York: The Guilford Press.

Cashmore, Ellis and Christ Rojek (eds.) 1999.

Dictionary of Cultural Theorists.

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Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article