Postmodernity

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
Right, this is one of those terms that is bandied about frequently but of which i have no understanding. How closely is it linked to postmodernism in art? What can be said to be postmodernist? What is postmodernism? There is probably no easy answer, but if anyone can point me to a good article or book that'd be marvellous.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
For me postmodernism started when William Morris said that restoration of buildings and furniture was crap and that you should just cut out the rotting bits and replace them with something new in a modern design that went with but not matched the original. I think it's all architecture based, most things are, they just get paid or are rich enough to sit around and come up with theories that then filter into everything else.

Postmodernity is something to do with all them French writers, and trendy people read Lyotard about it.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
What is postmodernism?

One characteristic of the emerging postmodern science is its stress on nonlinearity and discontinuity: this is evident, for example, in chaos theory and the theory of phase transitions as well as in quantum gravity.81 At the same time, feminist thinkers have pointed out the need for an adequate analysis of fluidity, in particular turbulent fluidity.82 These two themes are not as contradictory as it might at first appear: turbulence connects with strong nonlinearity, and smoothness/fluidity is sometimes associated with discontinuity (e.g. in catastrophe theory83); so a synthesis is by no means out of the question.

Secondly, the postmodern sciences deconstruct and transcend the Cartesian metaphysical distinctions between humankind and Nature, observer and observed, Subject and Object. Already quantum mechanics, earlier in this century, shattered the ingenuous Newtonian faith in an objective, pre-linguistic world of material objects ``out there''; no longer could we ask, as Heisenberg put it, whether ``particles exist in space and time objectively''. But Heisenberg's formulation still presupposes the objective existence of space and time as the neutral, unproblematic arena in which quantized particle-waves interact (albeit indeterministically); and it is precisely this would-be arena that quantum gravity problematizes. Just as quantum mechanics informs us that the position and momentum of a particle are brought into being only by the act of observation, so quantum gravity informs us that space and time themselves are contextual, their meaning defined only relative to the mode of observation.84

Thirdly, the postmodern sciences overthrow the static ontological categories and hierarchies characteristic of modernist science. In place of atomism and reductionism, the new sciences stress the dynamic web of relationships between the whole and the part; in place of fixed individual essences (e.g. Newtonian particles), they conceptualize interactions and flows (e.g. quantum fields). Intriguingly, these homologous features arise in numerous seemingly disparate areas of science, from quantum gravity to chaos theory to the biophysics of self-organizing systems. In this way, the postmodern sciences appear to be converging on a new epistemological paradigm, one that may be termed an ecological perspective, broadly understood as ``recogniz[ing] the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the embeddedness of individuals and societies in the cyclical patterns of nature.''85

A fourth aspect of postmodern science is its self-conscious stress on symbolism and representation. As Robert Markley points out, the postmodern sciences are increasingly transgressing disciplinary boundaries, taking on characteristics that had heretofore been the province of the humanities:

Quantum physics, hadron bootstrap theory, complex number theory, and chaos theory share the basic assumption that reality cannot be described in linear terms, that nonlinear -- and unsolvable -- equations are the only means possible to describe a complex, chaotic, and non-deterministic reality. These postmodern theories are -- significantly -- all metacritical in the sense that they foreground themselves as metaphors rather than as ``accurate'' descriptions of reality. In terms that are more familiar to literary theorists than to theoretical physicists, we might say that these attempts by scientists to develop new strategies of description represent notes towards a theory of theories, of how representation -- mathematical, experimental, and verbal -- is inherently complex and problematizing, not a solution but part of the semiotics of investigating the universe.86 87

From a different starting point, Aronowitz likewise suggests that a liberatory science may arise from interdisciplinary sharing of epistemologies:

... natural objects are also socially constructed. It is not a question of whether these natural objects, or, to be more precise, the objects of natural scientific knowledge, exist independently of the act of knowing. This question is answered by the assumption of ``real'' time as opposed to the presupposition, common among neo-Kantians, that time always has a referent, that temporality is therefore a relative, not an unconditioned, category. Surely, the earth evolved long before life on earth. The question is whether objects of natural scientific knowledge are constituted outside the social field. If this is possible, we can assume that science or art may develop procedures that effectively neutralize the effects emanating from the means by which we produce knowledge/art. Performance art may be such an attempt.88

Finally, postmodern science provides a powerful refutation of the authoritarianism and elitism inherent in traditional science, as well as an empirical basis for a democratic approach to scientific work. For, as Bohr noted, ``a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description'' -- this is quite simply a fact about the world, much as the self-proclaimed empiricists of modernist science might prefer to deny it. In such a situation, how can a self-perpetuating secular priesthood of credentialed ``scientists'' purport to maintain a monopoly on the production of scientific knowledge? (Let me emphasize that I am in no way opposed to specialized scientific training; I object only when an elite caste seeks to impose its canon of ``high science'', with the aim of excluding a priori alternative forms of scientific production by non-members.89)
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Might be worth reading Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism".. here's a quote I found online:

The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the “crisis” of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism. The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break or coupure, generally traced back to the end of the 1950s or the early 1960s.

As the word itself suggests, this break is most often related to notions of the waning or extinction of the hundred-year-old modern movement (or to its ideological or aesthetic repudiation). Thus abstract expressionism in painting, existentialism in philosophy, the final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great auteurs, or the modernist school of poetry (as institutionalised and canonised in the works of Wallace Stevens) all are now seen as the final, extraordinary flowering of a high-modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with them. The enumeration of what follows, then, at once becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous: Andy Warhol and pop art, but also photorealism, and beyond it, the “new expressionism”; the moment, in music, of John Cage, but also the synthesis of classical and “popular” styles found in composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley, and also punk and new wave rock (the Beatles and the Stones now standing as the high-modernist moment of that more recent and rapidly evolving tradition); in film, Godard, post-Godard, and experimental cinema and video, but also a whole new type of commercial film (about which more below); Burroughs, Pynchon, or Ishmael Reed, on the one hand, and the French nouveau roman and its succession, on the other, along with alarming new kinds of literary criticism based on some new aesthetic of textuality or écriture ... The list might be extended indefinitely; but does it imply any more fundamental change or break than the periodic style and fashion changes determined by an older high-modernist imperative of stylistic innovation?

It is in the realm of architecture, however, that modifications in aesthetic production are most dramatically visible, and that their theoretical problems have been most centrally raised and articulated; it was indeed from architectural debates that my own conception of postmodernism – as it will be outlined in the following pages – initially began to emerge. More decisively than in the other arts or media, postmodernist positions in architecture have been inseparable from an implacable critique of architectural high modernism and of Frank Lloyd Wright or the so-called international style (Le Corbusier, Mies, etc), where formal criticism and analysis (of the high-modernist transformation of the building into a virtual sculpture, or monumental “duck,” as Robert Venturi puts it), are at one with reconsiderations on the level of urbanism and of the aesthetic institution. High modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and its older neighbourhood culture (by way of the radical disjunction of the new Utopian high-modernist building from its surrounding context), while the prophetic elitism and authoritarianism of the modern movement are remorselessly identified in the imperious gesture of the charismatic Master.

Postmodernism in architecture will then logically enough stage itself as a kind of aesthetic populism, as the very title of Venturi’s influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, suggests. However we may ultimately wish to evaluate this populist rhetoric, it has at least the merit of drawing our attention to one fundamental feature of all the postmodernisms enumerated above: namely, the effacement in them of the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern, from Leavis and the American New Criticism all the way to Adorno and the Frankfurt School. 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 so-called 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: materials they no longer simply “quote” as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but incorporate into their very substance.
 
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sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
thanks for the replies, that book does sound interesting, i'll hunt it down. So basically the modern shouldn't be conflated with the temporary, that is what post-modernists are saying?
 

nomos

Administrator
I'd like to add more to this but can't right now. David Harvey's The Condition of Post Modernity makes a good companion for the Jameson one. Harvey focuses on changing relationships of time and space from the medieval through the postmodern.

Amazon.com
The Condition of Postmodernity is David Harvey's seminal history of our most equivocal of eras. What does postmodernism mean? Where did it come from? Harvey, a professor of geography and a key mover behind extending the scope and influence of the discipline of geography itself, does a thorough job here delineating the passage through to postmodernity and the economic, social, and political changes that underscored and accompanied it. As he clearly states, the rise in postmodernist cultural forms is related to a new intensity in what Harvey terms "time-space compression," but this new intensity is a qualitative rather than quantitative change in social organization, and it does not point to an era beyond capitalism as "the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation" remain unchanged. Unlike Fredric Jameson (whose equally rewarding Postmodernism stands as the twin pillar to Harvey's critique), who explicitly relies on Ernest Mandel's periodization of late capitalism, Harvey eschews a narrowly economic focus, the limits and contradictions of production that have led to the rise in the service sector, and takes a more multidisciplinary approach to his history. As comfortable discussing Manet as he is labor markets, Harvey is an excellent writer, and The Condition of Postmodernity is an exceptionally informative and enjoyable read. --Mark Thwaite, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal
Harvey presents an illuminating and powerful critique of postmodernism, arguing that it represents the cultural manifestation of late capitalism and specifically that it emerges from a transformation of time and space to accommodate a shift from a political economy based on Fordism to one based on flexible accumulation. Harvey moves with ease and authority over a wide range of cultural forms from architecture and urban planning to painting and literature. He is well versed in currents of postmodernist theory but avoids the pitfalls of jargon and obscurity. The book is both penetrating and accessible, an important contribution to the postmodernist debate. See also Postmodern Genres , reviewed below.--Ed.
- T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.
 
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Gavin

booty bass intellectual
I'd like to add more to this but can't right now. David Harvey's The Condition of Post Modernity makes a good companion for the Jameson one. Harvey focuses on changing relationships of time and space from the medieval through the postmodern.

Yeah, I'll second this. It's a rather readable trip through architecture, geography, economics... I felt smarter after reading it. The Jameson made me feel dumb the first couple times.
 

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Here's a link to a bigger excerpt of the Jameson... for whatever reason, it's widely available online: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

Here are the first five chapters of Lyotard's Postmodern Condition... he coined the term with this work, and somewhat predictably disowned it later.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm

In retrospect, I think Adorno & Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment helped me a lot as a good critique of some of the fundamental tenets of modernism/modernity, a project to which postmodernism ostensibly continues. The Culture Industry chapter is maybe not the best example of this, but it's what I could find:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm

Of course, Wikipedia makes a decent Cliff's Notes for all of this ;)
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
thanks for all the reccomendations, the harvey book looks the most appealing to me. i'll have a crack at reading it over the summer and follow it up later with the others reccomended here. :)
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Of course what postmodernism describes as specifically postmodern is really already very much a phenomenon of modernity. Postmodernity is merely a popular form of modernity's self-description.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
I don't know about that, BP, though I understand what you mean.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I just read this article on the new documentary about Zizek, it's fucking hilarious:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200704300031

"When Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari say we should all become schizophrenic, when the gay Michel Foucault embraces the murderously homophobic Ayatollah Khomeini, when Zizek suggests a return to Leninist terror - these very positions are admissions that postmodernism is merely an unserious confection by intellectuals."
 

swears

preppy-kei
I just read this article on the new documentary about Zizek, it's fucking hilarious:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200704300031

"When Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari say we should all become schizophrenic, when the gay Michel Foucault embraces the murderously homophobic Ayatollah Khomeini, when Zizek suggests a return to Leninist terror - these very positions are admissions that postmodernism is merely an unserious confection by intellectuals."

This is an interesting demonstration of how both the left and the right throw the term "postmodernist" around as a pejorative. Do any scholars actually describe themselves this way?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This just seems to be an attempt to try and avoid the obvious accusation that it's all just a load of hyper-(or pseudo-)intellectual charlatanry of the highest order. The more I read about it the more convinced of this I become.

This is a fantastic parallel to the discussion going on in the 'moral high ground' thread, about anti-totalitarian socialists who try to distance themselves from the crimes of Lenin, Stalin etc. by claiming they weren't 'proper' socialists; is Zizek then not a 'proper' post-modernist? He seems to be a postmodernist par excellence as far as I can see.

(Incidentally, Zizek seems to get a total hard-on for Soviet totalitarianism.)
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
*decides not to rise to it*
I was about to post a stinging riposte ("does this person have the first idea what 'nonlinear' means in a mathematical context" etc) to that first quote until I realised what the source was...
 
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