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Define Postmodernism (1 Viewer)

simonloo

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Too often I hear this word thrown around, especially in EE2. Am I the only one left in the dark? I've been searching up on the internets, but I'd like to have a human response, one which is specific (doesn't necessarily apply to art), more specifically- say, what does one search for in a postmodernist reading?

Much love
 

Hysterik

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I don't know if you've been studying PM at school so you might know all of this! The problem with postmodernism is that it doesn't really have a meaning. Postmodernism really just means the period after modernism.... which doesn't help.

The best that I've heard is that most literary movements (epistemes) have similar characteristics, it's what is foregrounded that is important. For example in modernism it was ways of knowing, epistemology but in postmodernism it is ontology, ways of being. This boils down to our way of looking at the universe. Postmodernism experiments with the way the audience views the text (see Roland Barthes 'Death of the Author'). This means that it acknowledges itself as fiction. Texts are also placed in such unbelievable circumstances, using intertextuality to mix things that wouldn't have ever been mixed before, that the audience cannot submit to the narrative.

Language is also important. Postmodernists define meaning as something that isn't constant, it is constructed by the society in which we live. It's also very playful in nature, even seemingly serious texts (Orlando) are messing with texts that no one would ever have dreamed of before postmodernism.

Hope that helped, though reading over it it was just a tad rambling, lol.
 

simonloo

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No- that seriously cleared up a lot of questions. Thanks
 

sleepy12

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think of it this way:

the only convention for a postmodern text is that there are no conventions.



like there is no criteria that makes it PM... it just has to have PM qualities.

idk if that makes sense lol im doing postmodernism for both EE1 and EE2

xx
 

simonloo

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Mmm. So you can't actually ask 'What is Post Modenrism?'.

This shit is way over my head >_>
 

Kujah

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Look into post-structuralism as well. It links really well with post-modernism.
 

sleepy12

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heres the best simplest way i'd explain it:

postmodernism plays with an audience's natural perspective of reality. it plays with sense of time and setting, like flashing from time to tiem without telling the audience. also it uses things like breaking the fourth wall, intertextuality, and just stuff that doesnt make sense

some examples are:

- the simpsons (like what you're watching you know can't really happen. it has references to popular culture and doesnt really make sense yet it does)
- donnie darko (plays with time, reality, and confuses the audience, they can interpret it how they want)
- pulp fiction
- eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
- ferris bueller's day off
- family guy.. all those cartoons
- books like the series of unfortunate events where the author talks to the reader



does that help? when you get your head around it its alright, but you can never fully understand it thats the whole point really.

worst ext 1 topic haha i feel like we're such a disadvantage to the other classes doing stuff like 'crime fiction' or 'revenge tragedy'
 

Jinpoo

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postmodernism is seditious, fluid, subversive, etc.

in other words, complete bs
 

Zephyrio

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Defining Postmodernism is un-Postmodern itself, seeing as Postmodernism aims to debase all perceptions of "truth", highlighting its subjectivity and inside-contradiction.



I'll post my notes for you, Simon <3 lol

While Modernists presented fragmentation as something tragic, symbolic of loss and mourning, Postmodernists relish the idea of fragmentation. Modernists upheld the idea that works of art provide unity, meaning and coherence; Postmodernists promote reflexivity, self-consciousness, fragmentation, discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanised subject.

Postmodernist thinkers address and readdress present situations and interrogate the ways of “knowing the present”. In other words, Postmodernists question the idea of “truth”. Postmodernism was a rebellion against Modernism, embracing popular culture and appropriating Modernist works into new pieces of art. Postmodernism incorporates:
• Appreciation of diversity and plurality. This means that Postmodern texts promote the expression of voices other than those of the dominant social groups.
• Flexibility in the construction, style and format of texts. Rigid obedience to the accepted rules of a genre (or type of text) is not required. Postmodern texts combine different styles and formats.
• A critical attitude towards an “all-knowing” text or education/social elite. The idea that any text can reflect a concrete (solid or absolute) truth about all human beings or reality is changed by postmodern texts.
• The obvious acknowledgement that texts are not “real”, but are reflections of the composer’s “reality” which is not necessarily true for everyone. The composer incorporates devices or techniques to ensure that the responder is aware that the text is a creative work.

An excellent example of a Postmodernist work is Shrek, the movie. It demonstrates a “re-think” of traditional fairy stories and “normal” expectations of a romance. The prince is not the hero of the story; the princess is not passive and traditionally beautiful; the hero is rather an ugly ogre who uses earwax for candles.


Specific Characteristics of Postmodernism
• Irony
o Meaning something different to what you say
o Knowing and cynical
• Cynicism
o Our postmodern knowledge has given us the power to “see through” things: we know that the media are all constructions, and that we cannot trust media products to represent reality truthfully. We can see that we are controlled by family, church, education and other institutions. If nothing is certain, and if the corporate powers that control our lives are too strong, this can lead to the sense of powerlessness sometimes evoked by postmodern texts.
• Knowingness
o Postmodernism is built on countless theories about society, the media, knowledge of the world. However, we are reminded constantly that there is no ultimate way of making sense of the world. Postmodernism is comfortable with lack of certainty.
• Pleasure
o With our knowledge, uncertainty and powerlessness, it is left to us to live “in the moment” to play, and to celebrate our limited power to be what we want to be. Uncertainty is a freedom from limitations. The feeling that there are no boundaries, that we are in a state of change and expansion leads to exciting experimentation. Playfulness of design, use of puzzles and false leads, it is an important feature of many Modernist texts.
• Blurring the boundaries
o Before postmodernism, aesthetic products could be classified into discrete areas: fiction, fact, high culture, low culture, Westerns, musicals, documentaries, plays, films, operas, pop music and so on. Postmodernism likes to blue these boundaries and create hybrids.
• Reality
o Postmodernism is often a debate about reality and identity. If the world is entirely questionable and constructed, what are we left with? The reality question also deals with “humanness”. Replicants are near human because so many human characteristics have been incorporated into their construction that telling the difference is a tease. Conversely, today it is possible to import machine features into human experience and bodies to such an extent that the conventional limits of the body are now in question.

Techniques
• “Postmodernism operates as a catchcry to describe the whole condition of the world in the late 20th century. It is resolutely diverse and multiple, but also historical, and therefore acknowledges the heritage of its own critical culture (modernism) and defines itself by what it is not. Some key concept are:
o Death of enlightenment’s grand narratives of truth and order
o Death of the authority of the canon, and its power to control discourse
o Death of the individual and the stable self
o The birth of global communities
o The reign of poly vocality
o The loss of the “real” through the birth of technology and its simulations.
o Tendency to be non-traditional and anti-authoritarian.
• Self-referentiality

• Pastiche
o Appropriation (borrowing) and combination of different cultural elements into a new form. In all kinds of appropriation, the original sign/signifier makes links with other texts.
• Self-reflexivity
o In order to disrupt the reading process, postmodern texts explore their own textual nature. Authors and composers utilise a range of self-reflexive devices to break illusion and to engage the reader in the process of making the meaning of the text, rather than simply receiving it. The responder becomes a “producer” rather than “consumer”. Frame, parody, pastiche, appropriation, metatext (text within a text) disrupted gender and disruption (intrusion, broken time frames etc) all serve to turn the text in on itself, drawing attention to itself as a text rather than reality.
 

seano77

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It says truth can not be attained, or known. But that in itself is a truth claim. Thus it is contradictory.
 

kitty kats

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Ok heres a simple explanation. but take into consideration that before you want to understand post -modernism, the notion of modernism itself is very important.

Modernism occured during the 18th century (somewhere around there, but its century isnt of concern atm), where it was societies way of marking the "new ideas" that came about during that time. Science and Reason was the way of looking at the world - human behaviour, art was all viewed from this humanistic perspective. Everything was explainable from this perspective.

However, many wars came after this time, precisely WWI, WWII, how could science and reason possibly explain this event? It could not. So then society introduced post-modernism. Another way of looking at things....

then add on the rest of the information from the previous replies....and there u have post-modernism :)
 

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