Postmodernism

A detailed Summary of Postmodernism

The postmodern condition can bee seen and experienced in our everyady lives. Anything from the decor of a room, to societal and economical shifts can be, and are, decribed as postmodern. While modernism looks beyond material truth and searches for abstract truth, postmodernism sees no abstract or universal truth. It attempts to subvert the distincton between "high" and "low" culture; likewise, it carries no distinctions between "good" and "bad." Unlike modernism, which sees history as something we can learn from for the future, postmodern theory says the future is indeterninate; we cannot learn from the past and we can live only in the present. Works of art and science (as is history) are seen as texts, understood only in themselves and are not, what modern theory suggests, windows to the truth.

Jean-Francois Lyotard views the condition of postmodernism as "marked by a crisis in the status of knowledge in Western societies (174)." He believes that stability and order are maintained in modern societies by what he calls metanarratives. Metanarratives are stories told to explain the belief sysytems that exist within a society . Postmodernism is the critique of these metanarratives, knowing that these stor

ies are told to mask the unavoidable instabilities in any society by categorizing and stating that disorder really is bad and order really is good. Postmodernism rejects these stories and, instead, advocates mini-narratives, which are situational, temporary, and make no claim be universal or the absolute truth. His main focus is on the narrative within the scientific realm. According to Storey, Lyotard feels that science has become less philosphical and based more on perfomability, guided by what the powers demand (175). In viewing popular culture from this angle, the metanarrative of separating the good from the bad must be erased. He sees the postmodern culture as the prerequiset to a new modernism; it must break from one modernism in order to become a new one.

Jean Baudrillard represents an extreem view of postmodernism where our postmodern world is no longer real, but only a simulation of the real. He says that the signs that used to represent things are drained of their meaning, becoming a hyperreality. Our mass society is dominated by the supremacy of signs over things, which develops simulation. Our society is viewed as one that has lost touch with reality and is subject to mediatization. Mediatization is a process where symbols become increasingly mediated by apparatuses of the media industry. The central apparatus in our case is the television. This mediatiz

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jameson Marxist, Jean Baudrillard, , Jean-Francois Lyotard, Storey Lyotard, Soviet Union, postmodern culture, absolute truth, false realism, postmodernism postmodern, underlying meaning, stories told,

Approximate Word count = 937
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics