Definitions and Expressions of "Postmodernism": by Maria I. Martinez

Definitions and Expressions of “Postmodernism”
By Maria I. Martinez
© 2003 American Bible Society
The term Postmodernism made its first appearance in the 1930s. Contrary to popular
opinion, it didn’t make this first appearance in Europe or the United States but rather in
the Hispanic world. Federico de Onis coined the term to describe a move back to
conservatism. In the arts, the term described a point of decline within Modernism.
Seeking to escape the demands of Modernism, Postmodernism sought a less harsh
perfectionism of detail and ironic humor. Its most original feature lay in the new
expression that was afforded to women.
From the 1950s to the 1970s

In 1951, an American poet used the term to talk about a “postmodern” or “post-
West” world that lay beyond the period of the Industrial Revolution, which he delineated
as the first half of the 20th century. In 1954, one of the great English historians used the
term in a newly published work to name a new age or epoch, which he defined as
negative. It included the loss of power of the middle class, the rise of an industrial
working class in the West and a new knowledge of modernity.
The term reappeared again in the late 1950s as a negative description and is considered
by some as the first derogatory version of Postmodernism. An American sociologist used
the term to describe an age in which the ideals of liberalism and socialism collapsed and
reason and freedom were disappearing into a postmodern society of blind drift and empty
conformity
In the 1960s one postmodernist writer saw a new response or sensibility among
younger Americans whose values of nonchalance and disconnection, hallucinogens and
civil rights found expression in a fresh postmodern literature. This literature would cut
across classes, would mix forms, categories and genres. It rejected elements of
modernism, such as the distinction between high and low art. All of this took place in
what he saw as an uninhibited return to the sentimental and burlesque.
In the 1970s Postmodernism began to take shape in ways that are recognized by
the thinkers of today. Some literary expressions included a turning away from modernist
forms to a new international form whose principle lay in dramatic collage. Another
called for getting “literature back into the domain of the world.” One of the more
important expressions urged that Postmodernism cover a much wider spectrum than
literature or the arts. Another thinker defined Postmodernism as a liberating mixture of
new and old, high and low, appealing both to educated taste and popular sensibility. By
the mid 1980s some were celebrating Postmodernism as a world that tolerated pluralities
and provided more choices than ever thought possible. In addition, this new world was
making obsolete such opposites as left- and right wing, capitalist and working class
From the 1980s to the Present
Since the 1980s, wide, sometimes angry, anxious debate has raged about
Postmodernism, and done so across many disciplines, from geography to theology, from
philosophy to political science. In the realms of art, architecture, literary and film
criticism, debate has played even longer. By 1990, the concept of Postmodernism had
gone past the boundaries of “the literary,” and carried with it, wherever it went, the idea
of “telling stories.” But those stories were different from the stories that we once
assumed to constitute knowledge: scientific “truth,” ethics, law, and history, among
others
The Seeds
The seeds of Postmodern thought lie in Modernism, especially in the work of
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and George Simmel
(1858-1918). Nietzsche announced that “nihilism stands at the door.” He wished to
dissolve the Modernist definitions of truth in order to reveal that they were really human
beliefs—not absolute truths—and the opinions of a specific social group.
Nietzsche also proclaimed that God is dead. Heidegger examined the nature of thought
and existence. God is now displaced by human beings. He believed that “being,” not
truth, should concern philosophers. Simmel is recognized as the founding father of
sociology and perhaps the only “true” postmodern thinker of his day. For him, the
widening gap between the objective culture as seen, for instance, in technology and the
increasingly alienated individual, frustrated in his/her quest for genuine individuality
provided the crisis of culture. He emphasized the loss of meaning in the modern world of
industrialism associated with the decline of Christianity.
Postmodernist Thinkers in the USA and Europe

In the USA early postmodernist thinking shows up in the work of pragmatist
philosophers such as John Dewey, Charles Sanders Pierce and William James. For
Pierce, “pragmatism is an account of the way people think—the way they come up with
ideas, form beliefs, and reach decisions.” James’ ideas on pragmatism were based on
Pierce’s thinking. Beliefs are generally rules for action; and the whole function of
thinking is but one step in the production of habits of action.
In Europe, Postmodernist thought informs the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard
(1924-1998), Jacque Derrida (1930- ), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and Jean
Baudrillard (1929- ). Lyotard defines Postmodern as “incredulity toward meta-
narratives” or universal concepts/truths. One universal concept assumed that science
emancipated people. Lyotard believes that we can no longer fall back on such claims
because the scientific basis for knowledge has lost its assumed.
For Derrida, content and information comes to us in “texts,” whether those texts
be words or other cultural objects created by human beings. Cultural life involves texts
that influence us in ways we cannot ever unravel. His strategy is to raise persistent
questions about our own texts and those of others and to deny that any text is settled or
stable. Foucault believes that we should pursue “genealogy” because while a “line of
descent” is traced, there are no connections as a result of cause and no origins are sought.
Foucault also contends that Modernism constitutes “man” as both object (a thing, person,
or matter to which thought or action is directed) and subject (that which thinks, feels,
© 2003 The American Bible Society 2

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perceives). As language becomes detached from what it is representing, the possibilities
of the human sciences are born as well as the seeds of their death
Baudrillard focuses on the media of modern communication. While earlier eras
depended on face-to-face symbolic exchanges or print, the contemporary world is
dominated by images from the electronic mass media. Immediate communication takes
place over vast distances and takes the form of montage—piecing together for effect—
which distinguishes it from print. In the process, our understanding of reality is radically
revised.
Towards definition(s)
Postmodernism has emerged as many-headed, multi-armed, waving in different
incompatible directions, at once old and new. It represents a mix of new ways of
thinking and reactions to Modernism, but it also returns to the old and pre-modern for its
inspiration and models. Postmodernism criticism spans the accumulated experience of
Western civilization, industrialization, urbanization, advanced technology, the national
state, and life in the “fast lane,” among others. And, it challenges modern priorities such
as career, office, individual responsibility, bureaucracy, liberal democracy, tolerance,
humanism, egalitarianism, detached experiment, evaluative criteria, neutral procedures,
impersonal rules and rationality.
Unlike Modernism, which gloried in the new, Postmodernism believes that there
is nothing new to discover. It prefers to look with nostalgia to a pre-modern popular
culture that was “self-managing and self-reproducing.” Pastiche is a good example. This
approach draws from many different and already existing forms, divorces them from their
original meaning, and brings them together, giving them new meaning. Already existing
boundaries between issues and diverse fields of endeavor are beginning to blur, change or
disappear and changes or shifts taking place in the field of the arts (aesthetics) are
influencing, affecting and/or creating changes across fields of endeavor not normally
influenced by the arts.
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Definitions and Expressions of “Postmodernism”

© 2003 American Bible Society

From the 1950s to the 1970s

Postmodernist Thinkers in the USA and Europe

© 2003 The American Bible Society 2

© 2003 The American Bible Society 3

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