postmodernism

postmodernism
In the culture generally, postmodernism is associated with a playful acceptance of surfaces and superficial style, self-conscious quotation and parody (although these are also found in modernist literature, such as that of James Joyce), and a celebration of the ironic, the transient, and the glitzy. It is usually seen as a reaction against a naïve and earnest confidence in progress, and against confidence in objective or scientific truth. In philosophy, therefore, it implies a mistrust of the grands récits of modernity: the large-scale justifications of western society and confidence in its progress visible in Kant, Hegel, or Marx, or arising from utopian visions of perfection achieved through evolution, social improvement, education, or the deployment of science. In its post-structuralist aspects it includes a denial of any fixed meaning, or any correspondence between language and the world, or any fixed reality or truth or fact to be the object of enquiry.
The tendency was anticipated, and perhaps most brilliantly expressed, by Nietzsche, whose perspectivism is seen as a philosophical technique for dissolving the presumption that there can be objective knowledge. Objectivity is revealed as a disguise for power or authority in the academy, and often as the last fortress of white male privilege. Logical or rational thought is revealed as the imposition of suspect dichotomies on the flux of events. Postmodernists differ over the consequences of such discoveries, sharing the sceptic's old problem of how to think and act in the light of the doctrine. While the dismantling of objectivity seems to some to be the way towards a liberating political radicalism, to others it allows such unliberating views as the denial that there was (objectively) such an event as the Second World War or the Holocaust, and to others such as Rorty (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, 1989), it licenses the retreat to an aesthetic, ironic, detached, and playful attitude to one's own beliefs and to the march of events. This retreat has been criticized as socially irresponsible (and in its upshot, highly conservative). The postmodernist frame of mind, charted, for example, in The Postmodern Condition, 1984, by Jean-François Lyotard (1924– ), may seem to depend on a cavalier dismissal of the success of science in generating human improvement, an exaggeration of the admitted fallibility of any attempt to gain knowledge in the humane disciplines, and an ignoring of the quite ordinary truth that while human history and law admit of no one final description, they certainly admit of more or less accurate ones, just as a landscape permits of no one unique map, yet there can be more or less accurate maps.

Philosophy dictionary. . 2011.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • postmodernism — postmodernísm s. n. Trimis de siveco, 04.01.2009. Sursa: Dicţionar ortografic  POSTMODERNÍSM s. n. curent artistic, tendinţă care urmează după modernism. (< engl. postmodernism) Trimis de raduborza, 15.09.2007. Sursa: MDN …   Dicționar Român

  • POSTMODERNISM —    Postmodernism (posuto modan shugi) is a post– World War II literary movement that both continued and reacted against the ideas of modernism. In Japan, the movement began with Tanaka Yasuo’s novel Nantonaku Kuristaru (Somewhat Like Crystal,… …   Japanese literature and theater

  • postmodernism — also post modernism, by 1977, from POST (Cf. post ) + MODERNISM (Cf. modernism). Defined by Terry Eagleton as the contemporary movement of thought which rejects ... the possibility of objective knowledge and is therefore skeptical of truth, unity …   Etymology dictionary

  • postmodernism — the late 20c approach to the arts and architecture which generally distrusts existing ideologies and theories, is spelt as one word, as are the related words postmodern and postmodernist …   Modern English usage

  • postmodernism — ► NOUN ▪ a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions. DERIVATIVES postmodern adjective postmodernist noun & adjective postmodernity noun …   English terms dictionary

  • Postmodernism — This article is about the philosophy. For the condition or state of being, see Postmodernity. Postmodernism preceded by Modernism Postmodernity …   Wikipedia

  • postmodernism — (houxiandaizhuyi vi) and ‘post ism’ (houxue) Postmodernism as a rubric covering various critical methodologies (deconstruction, post structuralism, post colonialism, New Historicism, and so forth) was assimilated by intellectual and academic… …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • postmodernism —    The use of the term ‘postmodernism’ in connection with architecture was not common until the critic Charles Jencks began publishing on the subject in 1975. Jencks described postmodernism as primarily a matter of ‘double coding’, by which he… …   Encyclopedia of contemporary British culture

  • Postmodernism —    Sometimes used so as to include metafiction, fabulation, and literary self reference, postmodernism is a manifestation of a broader tendency against realism. Unencumbered by the dreams ofdialectical harmony, postmodernism celebrates the… …   Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theater

  • postmodernism —    A term used to identify a broad movement across a number of fields including architecture, art and literature, that is united by its criticism of Enlightenment values and goals, postmodernism entered philosophical use in the 1970s and is… …   Christian Philosophy

  • postmodernism — postmodernist, n., adj. /pohst mod euhr niz euhm/, n. (sometimes cap.) any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established… …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”