Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article
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Postmodernism
The term “postmodernism” means, literally speaking, “after
modernism.” It also can mean “moving beyond” or “opposing.” To
understand what postmodernism is we must understand how it differs from
modernism, the period that came before it, which spanned from
approximately 1915 to 1960. In 1924 the writer Virginia Woolf wrote “in or
about December, 1910, human character changed…All human relations have
shifted—those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents
and children. And when human relationships change there is at the same time
a change in religion, conduct, politics and literature.” She was dealing with
what we can characterize as the development of the modernist sensibility.
The term “modern” comes from the fifth-century Latin word
modernus, which was used by historians and others to differentiate the pagan
era from the Christian era. As Bryan S. Turner explains in his book Theories
of Modernity and Postmodernity, modernism involves a rejection of history
and of the notion of differentiation. We can see this in modernist architecture
which tends to be stylistically pure while postmodernist architecture often
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blends many different styles in a building. We can compare the modernist
work of the Dutch architect Mies van der Rohe, with his “glass curtain walls”
and the work of the postmodernist architect Philip Johnson, whose AT&T
skyscraper has a Roman colonnade on the street level, a neoclassical
midsection and a Chippendale pediment on its top. This means that
postmodernism involves a kind of cultural eclecticism and de-differentiation.
After 1960 postmodernism became what might described as a
“cultural dominant.” This is the term that Frederic Jameson uses to
characterize postmodernism. He argues that postmodernism is actually an
advanced form of modernism and is characterized by the capitalism that
flourished during that period. This is made clear in the title of his book:
Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. As he explains in
this book, postmodernism involves a “break” from modernism (1991: 2):
[There is] one fundamental feature of all the postmodernisms …
namely the effacement in them of the older (essentially highmodernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or
commercial culture…The postmodernisms have, in fact, been
fascinated precisely by this whole “degraded” landscape of schlock
and kitsch, of TV series and Reader’s Digest culture, of advertising
and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of socalled paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the
gothic and the romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery,
and the science fiction or fantasy novel….
Postmodernism, he adds, is the culture of figures such as Andy Warhol, Philip
Glass, Thomas Pynchon and Ishmael Reed and movements such as pop art,
photorealism, and the nouveau roman.
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Some theorists argue that postmodernism is not just an “advanced” or
different form of modernism and is considerably different from it in important
ways. These critics suggest that postmodernism has an identity of its own.
Postmodernism, these theorists assert, helps explain what has been going on
in American culture and in many other cultures since approximately 1960,
when the influence of modernism started fading. The argument that Virginia
Woolf made about the changes brought on by modernism can be made about
postmodernism, who argue that around 1960 another important change
occurred in our sensibilities, as we moved into a postmodern era. There are
some scholars who argue that postmodernism is passé and that we now live in
a post-postmodernism period, but none of them have been able to think up a
suitable name for this period.
There is a considerable amount of debate about modernism and
postmodernism in our universities and some critics of postmodernism suggest
it is or was nothing more than a fad popularized by French and continental
intellectuals while defenders of postmodernism argue that postmodernist
theory is necessary to explain the world we now live in. The defenders of
postmodernism believe that it represents an important “cultural mutation” that
has occurred in since 1960 and this mutation in beliefs, attitudes, philosophies
and aesthetic sensibilities is what is explained by theorists of postmodernism.
Postmodernism also develops around the same time as capitalism
becomes dominant and thus postmodernism is associated with mass
consumption which dominates fashion and shapes peoples lifestyles.
According to postmodern theorists, we live now in a world dominated by
signs, by simulations, by media, and by images. As a result of this, our sense
of reality has been undermined and our modernist attitudes about elite culture
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and popular culture have been discarded. The pastiche becomes a dominant
mode in postmodernism culture and eclecticism rules. This sensibility is
expressed in Jean-Francois Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition: A
Report on Knowledge, when he writes (1984:76):
Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one
listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch
and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and
“retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.
It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art
panders to the confusions which reigns in the “taste” of patrons.
Artists, gallery owners, critics and the public wallow together in the
“anything goes,” and the epoch is one of slackening. But this realism
of the “anything goes” is in fact that of money; in the absence of
aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the works of
art according to the profit they yield. Such realism accommodates all
tendencies, just as capital accommodates all “needs,” providing that
the tendencies and needs have purchasing power. As for taste, there is
no need to be delicate when one speculates or entertains oneself.
Lyotard points out that there is, in fact, a unifying factor beneath the seeming
randomness and eclecticism of postmodern culture, namely that of money.
The question eclecticism raises is whether there can ever be an end to the
eclecticism and experimentation in lifestyles that it reflects.
Let me summarize now some of the differences between
postmodernism and modernism, which have been mentioned or implied in the
discussion above. If modernism involves making distinctions between
Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article
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between the elite arts and popular culture, postmodernism involves what can
be described as de-differentiation. It breaks down the distinctions between
the elite arts and popular culture and revels in experimentation and in mass
mediated culture. Modernism involves an attitude of “high seriousness”
towards life while postmodernism involves an ironic attitude and a kind of
playfulness. In postmodernist societies, people “play” with their identities,
changing them when they feel bored with their old ones. Postmodernism also
involves stylistic eclecticism with the pastiche as a dominating metaphor.
Modernist believe we can know reality and postmodernists argue that
this is not possible, that we are always being misled by illusions, simulacra,
and hyperreality, the term the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard uses for the
world of images and simulations that pervade everyday life.. Postmodernism
is the realm of consumer culture, in contrast to what we might call the
production culture of modernism. The heroes of postmodernism tend to be
celebrities and entertainment figures, whose tastes and consumption habits are
held up as models to us all.
The British historian Arnold Toynbee is credited with being one of
the first writers to use them term in his multi-volume epic work, A Study of
History whose first volume appeared in 1934. The term started becoming
more popular in the Sixties. Bernard Rosenberg, a sociologist, used the term
in an introduction he wrote to Mass Culture. He writes, “First besieged with
commodities, postmodern man himself becomes an interchangeable part in
the whole cultural process.” (1957: 4) In this passage, Rosenberg ties
postmodernism to the mass media and the rise of consumer culture and
suggests a process of dehumanization is at work in postmodernist cultures.
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This relationship between postmodernism and consumer cultures is
one that many other postmodernist theorists have made. In his essay
Rosenberg connected postmodernism with what has been called “cultural
homogenization” on a global level which differs from the view of many
postmodern theorists that it leads to the opposite, a kind of anarchic hyperdifferentiation in people.
Charles Jencks, an architect known for designing postmodern
buildings, sees postmodernism as inherently democratic and as a reflection of
the multicultural, multiethnic societies in which we now live. He uses the
term “double-coding” to mean using different aesthetic styles used in a
building. Thus, in one building you can find styles connected both to
modernism and postmodernism which relate to the many different socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups which will use the building, groups with
different levels of taste and sophistication. The great postmodern architects
such as Robert Venturi, Robert Stern and Michael Graves use both popular
and elitist styles in their buildings to appeal to the varying tastes of people
who see and use their buildings.
One of the most useful characterizations of postmodernism appears in
Ellis Cashmore and Christ Rojek’s anthology, Dictionary of Cultural
Theorists. In their introduction to the book, they suggest that in
postmodernity, what seemed to be fixed and universal categories and certainty
found in modernism become replaced by an inability to accept any agreed
upon cultural boundaries or certainties. Under postmodernism, they argue, we
have abandoned a belief in scientific rationality and all-embracing theories of
truth and of progress. (1999: 6)
This notion is found in one of the most celebrated descriptions of
Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article
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postmodernism, made by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. He
writes in his influential book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press) 1984: xxiv:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward
metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress
in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the
obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation
corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and
of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The
narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great
dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. (1984: xxiv)
According to Lyotard, we no longer have faith in the great all-encompassing,
narratives or systems of thought (as manifested in philosophy, political
ideologies and religions) that have provided us with ways of behaving and
apprehending the world. In a postmodern world, we have many different
narratives fighting for our acceptance and this has led to a crisis of
legitimation. Whose ideas are correct? How do we distinguish between right
and wrong? Our incredulity toward these metanarratives has made it
impossible, it would seem, to answer these questions.
Postmodernism may seem, at first sight, to be relativistic but it may
not actually be relativistic. That is one of the controversies about
postmodernism. The problem can be stated as follows: just because you
don’t accept one “universal” standard doesn’t mean you cannot have any
standards at all. Postmodernists may not believe in metanarratives but that
doesn’t mean they don’t believe in any narratives. This is because we all need
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narratives, of one sort of another, to live. But how does one decide which
narratives are valid?
Nietzsche faced this problem in his book The Will to Power. In this
book he wrote that he had an aversion to any “one total view of the world.”
He added that there are only interpretations, not facts. This notion is basic to
postmodern thought, which argues that there are “countless meanings” or
ways of looking at things, which is what Nietzsche called “perspectivism.”
The more perspectives you have on something, he suggested, the closer you
get to apprehending it as it really is.
Postmodernism raises the question of whether we can establish just
societies without universally accepted belief in notions such as equality,
democracy and the rule of law. Many postmodernist theorists, with their
focus on cultural phenomenon, do not answer these questions but it is inherent
in the logic of postmodernist thought that one can have just and democratic
societies in ones characterized by postmodernist culture. We can cite the
examples of America and Japan, which are often held us as exemplars of
postmodern democratic societies.
Some theorists argue that there are two kinds of postmodernism—
“conservative” and “critical” postmodernism. It is conservative
postmodernist thought that tends towards relativism and an “anything goes”
attitude while critical postmodernist thought attempts to deal with the
limitations and the failures of modernism and find ways of creating societies
that are more just and more democratic.
If you search for “modernism” in Google you find there are 9,
370,000 web sites that deal with the subject. If you search for
“postmodernism” in Google you find there are 5,580,000 web sites devoted to
Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article
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it. There is also a program you find on Google called the “postmodern essay
generator” that creates different parodies of postmodernist thought each time
you click on it. These parodies use the names of well known postmodernist
thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard and the language of postmodernist
thought, such as simulacra, hyperreality, and eclecticism, to ridicule the
subject. They also include titles of make-believe books by make-believe
authors.
Google also informs us that there 18,100 web sites that deal with
post-postmodernism. What the Google searches reveal is that modernism and
postmodernism (and, if it actually exists, post-postmodernism) remain as
subjects of considerable interest, contention, conflict, and perhaps confusion,
to contemporary cultural theorists. We may not be able to define
postmodernism precisely or to everyone’s satisfaction and we may not be able
to distinguish it from modernism, but as we look around the world we live in,
with its remarkable and “strange” new buildings, with its shopping malls and
its Disneylands, with films such as Rashomon and Blue Velvet, and with our
media saturated societies, we cannot help but think that whatever
postmodernism may be, it certainly has led to profound changes in our
societies. These changes, it can be argued, reflect that impact of
postmodernism on our cultures and character.
Arthur Asa Berger Postmodernism Encyclopedia Article
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