Postmodernism [Introduction & Overview]

From the Obscurists, the in-class encyclopedia

Postmodernism ​(/postmɑdɛɾnɪzəm/

meaning “after modernity”) is an expansive,

skeptical movement that gained traction in

the mid to late 20th century and marks a turn

from modernism. It is primarily found in the

arts, literature, architecture, social sciences,

and philosophy as a form of critical analysis

and departure

from modernist

thought (Ray

131-4).

As a movement, postmodernism is difficult to describe or dissect. Its main tenets could

be better portrayed as attitudes of skepticism, irony, and rejection for any understanding

of the contemporary world and its origins of conventional knowledge (Connor 20). This

movement has also been found to influence and inform other academic fields such as

sociology, linguistics, politics, and feminist theory. Other key features of postmodernism

include: a rejection of grand narratives (metanarratives), skepticism of universal value

systems and social claims, and an ironic undermining of modernist totalities (Taylor and

Winquist 304-8).

Overview

Postmodernism was from the beginning of its formation in the 1960s “more concerned

with the processes of our understanding than with the pleasures of artistic finish or

unity, less inclined to hold a narrative together, and certainly more resistant

to…interpretation” than modernist perspectives (Butler 5). Although the term was initially

used in the arts, these concepts later helped create an evasive yet persistent theory that

informed itself from many other fields and marked the departure from modernism.

Where modernism sought to create new conventions for an industrial world and

establish a progressive narrative from the Enlightenment era, postmodernism rejects

those notions of progress by calling into question the origins and endings to those

narratives (Connor 21).

Jean-François Lyotard helped popularize postmodernity to Western audiences, in his

1984 book ​The Postmodern Condition​, by defining the postmodern condition as the

“condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies” in order to talk about

the decline of modernist grand narratives (Lyotard xxiii). These narratives are features

of modernism that helped structure developed countries and establish key prescriptive

dialogues for its inhabitants. Examples of metanarratives include religion, marxism, and
classical liberalism. Lyotard further analyzed that the modern process of understanding

is influenced by the oversaturation of knowledge and information in an increasingly

technological society and shows how this has caused a further disparity in unity, a

dismantling of progression and narratives, and an destruction of modern objective

interpretation even within the scopes of science (Lyotard 3-38).

 Works Cited

Andre, Carl. ​Equivalent VIII​. 1966, Tate Modern, Bankside.

Butler, Christopher. ​Postmodernism a Very Short Introduction​. Oxford UP, 2002.

Connor, Steven, editor. ​The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism​. Cambridge UP,

2004.

Lyotard, Jean-François. ​The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge​. U of

Minnesota P, 1984.

Ray, Robert B. "Postmodernism." ​Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism,​ edited by

Martin Coyle et al., Routledge, pp. 131-47.

Taylor, Victor E., and Charles E. Winquist, editors. ​Encyclopedia of Postmodernism.​

Routledge, 2001.