Postmodernism

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This article is about the philosophy. For the condition or state of being, see Postmodernity.

Postmodernism is a movement away from the viewpoint of modernism. More specifically it is a tendency in
contemporary culture characterized by the problematization of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global
cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social
constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations,
and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay,
white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Rather, it holds realities to be plural and relative, and dependent on
who the interested parties are and what their interests consist in. It attempts to problematise modernist overconfidence,
by drawing into sharp contrast the difference between how confident a speaker is of their position versus how confident
they need to be to serve their supposed purposes. Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields, including literary
criticism, sociology, linguistics, architecture, visual arts, and music.

Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from modernist approaches that had previously been dominant. The
term "postmodernism" comes from its critique of the "modernist" scientific mentality of objectivity and progress
associated with the Enlightenment.

These movements, modernism and postmodernism, are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives.
"Postmodernism" is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure for works of literature, drama, architecture,
cinema, journalism, and design, as well as in marketing and business and in the interpretation of law, culture, and
religion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.[1] Indeed, postmodernism, particularly as an academic movement, can
be understood as a reaction to modernism in the Humanities. Whereas modernism was primarily concerned with
principles such as identity, unity, authority, and certainty, postmodernism is often associated with difference, plurality,
textuality, and skepticism.

Literary critic Fredric Jameson describes postmodernism as the "dominant cultural logic of late capitalism." "Late
capitalism" refers to the phase of capitalism after World War II, as described by economist Ernest Mandel; the term
refers to the same period sometimes described by "globalization", "multinational capitalism", or "consumer capitalism".
Jameson's work studies the postmodern in contexts of aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and economics.[2]

Contents

[hide]

• 1 History and emergence

o 1.1 Overview of ideas (see also Postmodern philosophy)
• 2 Contested definitions
• 3 Influence on art and aesthetics
o 3.1 Architecture
o 3.2 Literature
o 3.3 Music
• 4 Theories and derivatives
o 4.1 Deconstruction
o 4.2 Structuralism and post-structuralism
o 4.3 Post-postmodernism
• 5 Criticism
• 6 See also
• 7 References
• 8 Further reading

• 9 External links

[edit] History and emergence

The term was first used around the 1870s in various areas. For example, John Watkins Chapman avowed "a
Postmodern style of painting" to get beyond French Impressionism.[3] Then, J. M. Thompson, in his 1914 article in The
Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review), used it to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of
religion: "The raison d'etre of Post-Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of Modernism by being
thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic
tradition."[4]

In 1917 Rudolf Pannwitz used the term to describe a philosophically oriented culture. His idea of post-modernism came
from Nietzsche's analysis of modernity and its end results of decadence and nihilism. Overcoming the modern human
would be the post-human. Contrary to Nietzsche, Pannwitz also includes nationalist and mythical elements.[5]

The term was used later in 1926 by B. I. Bell in his "Postmodernism & other Essays". In 1921 and 1925 it had been
used to describe new forms of art and music. In 1942 H. R. Hays used it for a new literary form, but as a general theory
of an historical movement it was first used in 1939 by the historian Arnold J. Toynbee: "Our own Post-Modern Age has
been inaugurated by the general war of 1914-1918."[6]

In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, leading to the postmodern architecture
movement.[7] Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to
surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, and non-orthogonal angles. It may
be a response to the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style.

The term was then applied to a whole host of movements, many in art, music, and literature, that reacted against a
range of tendencies in the imperialist phase of capitalism called "modernism," and are typically marked by revival of
historical elements and techniques.[8] Walter Truett Anderson identifies Postmodernism as one of four typological
world views. These four worldviews are the Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; the scientific-
rational, in which truth is found through methodical, disciplined inquiry; the social-traditional, in which truth is found
in the heritage of American and Western civilization; and the neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining
harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self.[9]

Postmodernist ideas in philosophy and the analysis of culture and society expanded the importance of critical theory
and has been the point of departure for works of literature, architecture, and design, as well as being visible in
marketing/business and the interpretation of history, law and culture, starting in the late 20th century. These
developments — re-evaluation of the entire Western value system (love, marriage, popular culture, shift from industrial
to service economy) that took place since the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968 — are
described with the term Postmodernity,[10] as opposed to Postmodernism, a term referring to an opinion or movement.
Whereas something being "Postmodernist" would make it part of the movement, its being "Postmodern" would place it
in the period of time since the 1950s, making it a part of contemporary history.

[edit] Overview of ideas (see also Postmodern philosophy)

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)

rejected the philosophical basis of the concepts of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" and purported that similar
grounding oppositions in logic ultimately refer to one another. Instead of resisting the admission of this paradox
in the search for understanding, Heidegger requires that we embrace it through an active process of elucidation
he called the "Hermeneutic Circle". He stressed the historicity and cultural construction of concepts while
simultaneously advocating the necessity of an atemporal and immanent apprehension of them. In this vein, he
asserted that it was the task of contemporary philosophy to recover the original question of (or "openness to")
Dasein (translated as Being or Being-in-the-World) present in the Presocratic philosophers but normalized,
neutered and standardized since Plato. This was to be done, in part, by tracing the record of Dasein's
sublimation or forgetfulness through the history of philosophy which meant that we were to ask again what
constituted the grounding conditions in ourselves and in the World for the affinity between beings and between
the many usages of the term "being" in philosophy. To do this, however, a non-historical and, to a degree, self-
referential engagement with whatever set of ideas, feelings or practices would permit (both the non-fixed
concept and reality of) such a continuity was required - a continuity permitting the possible experience, possible
existence indeed not only of beings but of all differences as they appeared and tended to develop. Such a
conclusion led Heidegger to depart from the Phenomenology of his teacher Husserl and prompt instead an
(ironically anachronistic) return to the yet-unasked questions of Ontology, a return that in general did not
acknowledge an intrinsic distinction between phenomena and noumena or between things in themselves (de re)
and things as they appear (see qualia): Being-in-the-world, or rather, the openness to the process of
Dasein's/Being's becoming was to bridge the age-old gap between these two. In this latter premise, Heidegger
shares an affinity with the late Romantic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, another principal forerunner of Post-
structuralist and Postmodernist thought. Influential to thinkers associated with Postmodernism are Heidegger's
critique of the subject-object or sense-knowledge division implicit in Rationalism, Empiricism and
Methodological Naturalism, his repudiation of the idea that facts exist outside or separately from the process of
thinking and speaking them (however, Heidegger is not specifically a Nominalist), his related admission that the
possibilities of philosophical and scientific discourse are wrapped up in the practices and expectations of a
society and that concepts and fundamental constructs are the expression of a lived, historical exercise rather
than simple derivations of external, apriori conditions independent from historical mind and changing
 experience (see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist, Weltanschauung and Social Constructionism), and
his Instrumentalist and Negativist notion that Being (and, by extension, reality) is an action, method, tendency,
possibility and question rather than a discreet, positive, identifiable state, answer or entity (see also Process
Philosophy, Dynamism, Instrumentalism, Pragmatism and Vitalism).
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996)
located the rapid change of the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional consensus among scientists;
coined the term "paradigm shift" in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and in general contributed to the
debate over the presumed neutrality and objectivity of empirical methodology in the Natural Sciences from
disciplinarian or cultural bias.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in general; sought to undermine
the language of 'presence' or metaphysics in an analytical technique which, beginning as a point of departure
from Heidegger's notion of Destruktion, came to be known as Deconstruction. Derrida utilized, like Heidegger,
references to Greek philosophical notions associated with the Skeptics and the Presocratics, such as Epoché and
Aporia to articulate his notion of implicit circularity between premises and conclusions, origins and
manifestations, but - in a manner analogous in certain respects to Gilles Deleuze - presented a radical re-reading
of canonical philosophical figures such as Plato, Aristotle and Descartes as themselves being informed by such
"destabilizing" notions.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
introduced concepts such as 'discursive regime', or re-invoked those of older philosophers like 'episteme' and
'genealogy' in order to explain the relationship between meaning, power and social behavior within social orders
(see The Order of Things, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality).
In direct contradiction to what have been typified as Modernist perspectives on epistemology, Foucault asserted
that rational judgment, social practice and what he called 'biopower' are not only inseparable but co-
determinant. While Foucault himself was deeply involved in a number of progressive political causes and
maintained close personal ties with members of the far-Left, he was also controversial with Leftist thinkers of
his day, including those associated with various strains of Marxism, proponents of Left libertarianism (e.g.
Noam Chomsky) and Humanism (e.g. Jürgen Habermas), for his rejection of what he deemed to be
Enlightenment-derived concepts of freedom, liberation, self-determination and human nature. Instead, Foucault
focused on the ways in which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and exclusion. In line with
his rejection of such 'positive' tenets of Enlightenment-era Humanism, he was active, with Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari, in the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, considering much of institutionalized psychiatry and, in
particular, Freud's concept of repression central to Psychoanalysis (which was still very influential in France
during the 1960s and 70s), to be both harmful and misplaced. Foucault was known for his controversial
aphorisms, such as "language is oppression", meaning that language functions in such a way as to render
nonsensical, false or silent tendencies that might otherwise threaten or undermine the distributions of power
backing a society's conventions - even when such distributions purport to celebrate liberation and expression or
value minority groups and perspectives. His writings have had a major influence on the larger body of
Postmodern academic literature.
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998)
identified in The Postmodern Condition a crisis in the 'discourses of the Human Sciences' latent in Modernism
but catapulted to the fore by the advent of the "computerized" or "telematic" era (see Information Revolution).
This crisis, insofar as it pertains to academia, concerns both the motivations and justification procedures for
making research claims: unstated givens or values that have validated the basic efforts of academic research
since the late 18th Century might no longer be valid (particularly, in Social Science & Humanities research,
though examples from Mathematics are given by Lyotard as well). As formal conjecture about real-world issues
becomes inextricably linked to automated calculation, information storage and retrieval, such knowledge
becomes increasingly "exteriorised" from its knowers in the form of information. Knowledge is materialized
and made into a commodity exchanged between producers and consumers; it ceases to be either an idealistic
end-in-itself or a tool capable of bringing about liberty or social benefit; it is stripped of its humanistic and
spiritual associations, its connection with education, teaching and human development, being simply rendered
as "data" - omnipresent, material, unending and without any contexts or pre-requisites.[11] Furthermore, the
'diversity' of claims made by various disciplines begins to lack any unifying principle or intuition as objects of
study become more and more specialized due to the emphasis on specificity, precision and uniformity of
reference that competitive, database-oriented research implies. The value-premises upholding academic
research have been maintained by what Lyotard considers to be quasi-mythological beliefs about human
purpose, human reason and human progress - large, background constructs he calls "Metanarratives". These
Metanarratives still remain in Western society but are now being undermined by rapid Informatization and the
commercialization of the University and its functions. The shift of authority from the presence and intuition of
knowers - from the good-faith of Reason to seek diverse knowledge integrated for human benefit or truth
fidelity - to the automated database and the market had, in Lyotard's view, the power to unravel the very idea of
'justification' or 'legitimation' and, with it, the rationale for research altogether - esp. in disciplines pertaining to
human life, society and meaning. We are now controlled not by binding extra-linguistic value paradigms
defining notions of collective identity and ultimate purpose, but rather by our automatic responses to different
 species of "language games" (a concept Lyotard imports from JL Austin's theory of Speech Acts). In his vision
of a solution to this "vertigo," Lyotard opposes the assumptions of universality, consensus, and generality that
he identified within the thought of Humanistic, Neo-Kantian philosophers like Jürgen Habermas and proposes a
continuation of experimentation and diversity to be assessed pragmatically in the context of language games
rather than via appeal to a resurrected series of transcendentals and metaphysical unities.
Richard Rorty (1931–2007)
argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary Analytic philosophy mistakenly imitates
scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the traditional epistemological perspectives of
Representationalism and Correspondence theory that rely upon the independence of knowers and observers
from phenomena and the passivity of natural phenomena in relation to consciousness. As a proponent of anti-
foundationalism and anti-essentialism within a Pragmatist framework, he echoes Postmodern strains of
Conventionalism and Philosophical Relativism, but opposes much Postmodern thinking with his commitment to
Social Liberalism.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007),
in Simulacra and Simulation, 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. Baudrillard proposes the notion that, in such a state, where subjects are detached
from the outcomes of events (political, literary, artistic, personal or otherwise), events no longer hold any
particular sway on the subject nor have any identifiable context; they therefore have the effect of producing
widespread indifference, detachment and passivity in industrialized populations. He claimed that a constant
stream of appearances and references without any direct consequences to viewers or readers could eventually
render the division between appearance and object indiscernible, resulting, ironically, in the "disappearance" of
mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or holographic state, composed only of appearances.
Fredric Jameson (born 1934)
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, later expanded as Postmodernism,
or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). Eclectic in his methodology, Jameson has continued a
sustained examination of the role that Periodization continues to play as a grounding assumption of critical
methodologies in Humanities disciplines. He has contributed extensive effort to explicating the importance of
concepts of Utopianism and Utopia as driving forces in the cultural and intellectual movements of Modernity,
and outlining the political and existential uncertainties that may result from the decline or suspension of this
trend in the theorized state of Postmodernity. Like Susan Sontag, Jameson served to introduce a wide audience
of American readers to key figures of the 20th Century Continental European intellectual Left, particularly
those associated with the Frankfurt School, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Thus, his importance as a
'translator' of their ideas to the common vocabularies of a variety of disciplines in the Anglo-American
academic complex is equally as important as his own critical engagement with them.

[edit] Contested definitions

The term "Postmodernism" is often used to refer to different, sometimes contradictory concepts. Conventional
definitions follow:

• Compact Oxford English Dictionary: "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and
ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."[12]
• Merriam-Webster: Either "of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one", or "of, relating to, or being any of
various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials
and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)", or finally "of, relating
to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history,
or language".[13]
• American Heritage Dictionary: "Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier
modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist
styles or practices to extremes: 'It [a roadhouse] is so architecturally interesting ... with its postmodern wooden
booths and sculptural clock.'"[14]

While the term "Postmodern" and its derivatives are freely used, with some uses apparently contradicting others, those
outside the academic milieu have described it as merely a buzzword that means nothing. Dick Hebdige, in his text
‘Hiding in the Light’, writes:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the
diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or
the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-
teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling,
the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned
middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in
commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential
fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of
unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural
hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning
and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or
‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness
(‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes
possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very
post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.[15]

British historian Perry Anderson's history of the term and its understanding, 'The Origins of Postmodernity', explains
these apparent contradictions, and demonstrates the importance of "Postmodernism" as a category and a phenomenon
in the analysis of contemporary culture.[16]

[edit] Influence on art and aesthetics

[edit] Architecture

Main article: Postmodern architecture

Detail of the postmodern Abteiberg Museum in Germany.

The movement of Postmodernism began with architecture, as a response to the perceived blandness, hostility, and
Utopianism of the Modern movement. Modern Architecture, as established and developed by people such as Walter
Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Philip Johnson, was focused on the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection, and attempted
harmony of form and function,[17] and dismissal of "frivolous ornament."[18][19] Critics of modernism argued that the
attributes of perfection and minimalism themselves were subjective, and pointed out anachronisms in modern thought
and questioned the benefits of its philosophy.[20] Definitive postmodern architecture such as the work of Michael Graves
rejects the notion of a 'pure' form or 'perfect' architectonic detail, instead conspicuously drawing from all methods,
materials, forms and colors available to architects. Postmodernist architecture was one of the first aesthetic movements
to openly challenge Modernism as antiquated and "totalitarian", favoring personal preferences and variety over
objective, ultimate truths or principles. It is this atmosphere of criticism, skepticism, and emphasis on difference over
and against unity that distinguishes many postmodernisms.

[edit] Literature

Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Main article: Postmodern literature

Literary postmodernism was officially inaugurated in the United States with the first issue of boundary 2, subtitled
"Journal of Postmodern Literature and Culture", which appeared in 1972. David Antin, Charles Olson, John Cage, and
the Black Mountain College school of poetry and the arts were integral figures in the intellectual and artistic exposition
of postmodernism at the time.[21] boundary 2 remains an influential journal in postmodernist circles today.[22]

Although Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett are sometimes seen as important influences, novelists who are
commonly counted to postmodern literature include William Gaddis, John Hawkes, William Burroughs, Giannina
Braschi, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E.L. Doctorow, Jerzy Kosinski, Don DeLillo, Thomas
Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, Ana Lydia Vega, and Paul Auster.

In 1971, the Arab-American scholar Ihab Hassan published The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern
Literature, an early work of literary criticism from a postmodern perspective, in which the author traces the
development of what he calls "literature of silence" through Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway,
Beckett, and many others, including developments such as the Theatre of the Absurd and the nouveau roman.

[edit] Music

Composer Henryk Górecki.

Main articles: Postmodern music and Postmodern classical music

Postmodern music is either music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetic and philosophical trends of
postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to the ideals modernist.
Because of this, Postmodern music is mostly defined in opposition to modernist music, and a work can either be
modernist, or postmodern, but not both. Jonathan Kramer posits the idea (following Umberto Eco and Jean-François
Lyotard) that postmodernism (including musical postmodernism) is less a surface style or historical period (i.e.,
condition) than an attitude.

The postmodern impulse in classical music arose in the 1970s with the advent of musical minimalism. Composers such
as Terry Riley, Henryk Górecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Lou
Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with
simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies. Some composers have been openly influenced by popular music
and world ethnic musical traditions.

Postmodern Classical music as well is not a musical style, but rather refers to music of the postmodern era. It bears the
same relationship to postmodernist music that postmodernity bears to postmodernism. Postmodern music, on the other
hand, shares characteristics with postmodernist art—that is, art that comes after and reacts against modernism (see
Modernism in Music).

Though representing a general return to certain notions of music-making that are often considered to be classical or
romantic[citation needed], not all postmodern composers have eschewed the experimentalist or academic tenets of modernism.
The works of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, for example, exhibit experimentalist preoccupation that is decidedly
anti-romantic. Eclecticism and freedom of expression, in reaction to the rigidity and aesthetic limitations of modernism,
are the hallmarks of the postmodern influence in musical composition.

[edit] Theories and derivatives

[edit] Deconstruction

Main article: Deconstruction

One of the most popular postmodernist tendencies within aesthetics is deconstruction. As it is currently used,
"deconstruction" is a Derridean approach to textual analysis (typically literary critique, but variously applied).
Deconstructions work entirely within the studied text to expose and undermine the frame of reference, assumptions,
and ideological underpinnings of the text. Although deconstructions can be developed using different methods and
techniques, the process typically involves demonstrating the multiple possible readings of a text and their resulting
internal conflicts, and undermining binary oppositions (e.g. masculine/feminine, old/new). Deconstruction is
fundamental to many different fields of postmodernist thought, including postcolonialism, as demonstrated through the
writings of Gayatri Spivak.

[edit] Structuralism and post-structuralism

Further information: Manifestations of Postmodernism

Structuralism was a broad philosophical movement that developed particularly in France in the 1950s, partly in
response to French Existentialism, but is considered by many to be an exponent of High-Modernism,[by whom?] though its
categorization as either a Modernist or Postmodernist trend is contested. Many Structuralists later moved away from
the most strict interpretations and applications of "structure", and are thus called "Post-structuralists" in the United
States (the term is uncommon in Europe). Though many Post-structuralists were referred to as Postmodern in their
lifetimes, many explicitly rejected the term. Notwithstanding, Post-structuralism in much American academic literature
in the Humanities is very strongly associated with the broader and more nebulous movement of Postmodernism.
Thinkers most typically linked with Structuralism include anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and literary theorist Roland Barthes.
Philosophers commonly referred to as Post-structuralists include Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard
(who also began their careers with a Structuralist background), Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-
François Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and, sometimes, the American cultural theorists, critics
and intellectuals they influenced (e.g. Judith Butler, Jonathan Crary, John Fiske, Rosalind Krauss).

Though by no means a unified movement with a set of shared axioms or methodologies, Post-structuralism emphasizes
the ways in which different aspects of a cultural order, from its most banal material details to its most abstract
theoretical exponents, determine one another (rather than espousing a series of strict, uni-directional, cause and effect
relationships - see Reductionism - or resorting to Epiphenomenalism). Like Structuralism, it places particular focus on
the determination of identities, values and economies in relation to one another, rather than assuming intrinsic
properties or essences of signs or components as starting points.[23] In this limited sense, there is a nascent Relativism
and Constructionism within the French Structuralists that was consciously addressed by them but never examined to the
point of dismantling their reductionist tendencies. Unlike Structuralists, however, the Post-structuralists questioned the
division between relation and component and, correspondingly, did not attempt to reduce the subjects of their study to
an essential set of relations that could be portrayed with abstract, functional schemes or mathematical symbols (as in
Claude Lévi-Strauss's algebraic formulation of mythological transformation in "The Structural Study of Myth"[24]).

Post-Structuralists tended to reject such formulations of “essential relations” in primitive cultures, languages or
descriptions of psychological phenomena as a subtle forms of Aristotelianism, Rationalism or Idealism or as more
reflective of a mechanistic bias[25] inspired by bureaucratization and industrialization than of the inner-workings of
primitive cultures, languages or the psyche. Generally, Post-structuralists emphasized the inter-determination and
contingency of social and historical phenomena with each other and with the cultural values and biases of perspective.
Such realities were not to be dissected, in the manner of some Structuralists, as a system of facts that could exist
independently from values and paradigms (either those of the analysts or the subjects themselves), but to be understood
as both causes and effects of the each other.[26] For this reason, most Post-structuralists held a more open-ended view of
function within systems than did Structuralists and were sometimes accused of circularity and ambiguity. Post-
structuralists countered that, when closely examined, all formalized claims describing phenomena, reality or truth, rely
on some form or circular reasoning and self-referential logic that is often paradoxical in nature. Thus, it was important
to uncover the hidden patterns of circularity, self-reference and paradox within a given set of statements rather that
feign objectivity, as such an investigation might allow new perspectives to have influence and new practices to be
sanctioned or adopted.

As would be expected, Post-structuralist writing tends to connect observations and references from many, widely
varying disciplines into a synthetic view of knowledge and its relationship to experience, the body, society and
economy - a synthesis in which it sees itself as participating. Stucturalists, while also somewhat inter-disciplinary, were
more comfortable within departmental boundaries and often maintained the autonomy of their analytical methods over
the objects they analyzed. Post-structuralists, unlike Structuralists, did not privilege a system of (abstract) "relations"
over the specifics to which such relations were applied, but tended to see the notion of “the relation” or of
systemization itself as part-and-parcel of any stated conclusion rather than a reflection of reality as an independent,
self-contained state or object. If anything, if a part of objective reality, theorization and systemization to Post-
structuralists was an exponent of larger, more nebulous patterns of control in social orders – patterns that could not be
encapsulated in theory without simultaneously conditioning it. For this reason, certain Post-structural thinkers were also
criticized by more Realist, Naturalist or Essentialist thinkers of anti-intellectualism or anti-Philosophy. In short, Post-
structuralists, unlike Structuralists, tended to place a great deal of skepticism on the independence of theoretical
premises from collective bias and the influence of power, and rejected the notion of a "pure" or "scientific"
methodology in social analysis, semiotics or philosophical speculation. No theory, they said, was capable of reducing
phenomena to elemental systems or abstract patterns, nor could abstract systems be dismissed as secondary derivatives
of a fundamental nature –systemization, phenomena and values were part of each other.

While many of the so-called Post-structuralists vehemently disagreed on the specifics of such fundamental categories
as "the real", "society", "totality", "desire" and "history", many also shared, in contrast to their so-called Structuralist
predecessors, the traits mentioned. Furthermore, a good number of them engaged in a re-assessment (positive or
negative) of the philosophical traditions associated with Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Because of its general
skepticism of analytical objectivity and mutually exclusive oppositions in logic, its emphasis on the social production
of knowledge and of knowledge paradigms, and its portrayal of the sometimes ambiguous inter-determination of
material culture, values, physical practices and socio-economic life, Post-structuralism is often linked to
Postmodernism.

[edit] Post-postmodernism

Main article: Post-postmodernism

Recently the notion of the "death of postmodernism" has been increasingly widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoborek
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 and/or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most
notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles Lipovetsky (hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud (Altermodern), and
Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism). None of these new theories and labels has so far
gained widespread acceptance.

[edit] Criticism

Main article: Criticism of postmodernism

Formal, academic critiques of postmodernism can be found in works such as Beyond the Hoax and Fashionable
Nonsense.

The term postmodernism, when used pejoratively, describes tendencies perceived as relativist, counter-enlightenment
or antimodern, particularly in relation to critiques of rationalism, universalism or science. It is also sometimes used to
describe tendencies in a society that are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality.

The Postmodern Era:

From WWII to the Present

American culture and society in the post-World War II era:

• The era immediately following the war was incredibly positive and optimistic, at least on
the surface.
• There were undercurrents of fear, apprehension, and discontent, however:
o Fear of nuclear war, which many thought was inevitable.
o A sense of impending doom.
o A sense that there is no longer any order or logic to life.
o Tremendous pressures to conform, for men, women, minorities, children and
young people.
o The rise of the white-collar middle-class and the suburbs:
 A more affluent, educated culture--as much as 50% of the population is
college educated; workers are protected by strong unions.
 A more mobile culture—the average family moves once every five years.
 The shift in focus from the extended family to the nuclear family.
 Redefinitions of family, community, work, wealth, success.
 The emphasis on appearances (which often masked unpleasant realities).
 The establishment of a “teen culture.”
 The further establishment and extensive growth of popular, consumer
culture.

This pressure-cooker of conformity explodes in the 1960s and 1970s:

• Conflicts between conformity and individuality; tradition and innovation; stability and
disruption.
• Recognition of the diversity of America.
• Questions of personal identity and experience, of how the personal and the social
interact to form the individual.
• A tendency to critique and question anything or anyone that sets themselves up as
“right”, or as “the truth.”
• Recognition of the subjectivity of all “truths” including political truth and moral truth.
• Recognition of the extent to which rhetoric forms our concepts of “reality.”

Postmodern Literature and Art

In many ways, these decades witness a continuation of the trends and ideas of Modernism, but
in reference and reaction to a society that is “progressing” at a much greater rate and in a
multitude of ways:

• A decentering of authority.
• An eradication of traditional boundaries between high and low, art and entertainment.
• A struggle against the anonymity that contemporary society accorded most people.
• A focus on pointing out the rhetoric of society, the half-truths and untruths that people
are convinced to believe.
• A focus on the experience of the individual, of how the personal and the social come
together to form identity.
• A focus on the concept of “voice”—how, in this vast culture, does one establish any
sense of individuality? How does one find a meaningful way to express and explain
oneself? How do people achieve viable existence?