Course:WMST307:Student Pages:Jasmine Schuett

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a difficult concept to describe concisely as:

1. There is no universally agreed upon definition of the term.
2. It can be applied to many different fields of study.
3. The definition changes depending on which field of study you are applying Postmodernist theory towards.
   
   

Postmodernism is a critical theory that has developed relatively recently, thanks in a big way to the invention and popularization of the internet. The basic concept of Postmodernism is to critically analyze past theory and creations through a new lens. In a way it's about repurposing the past to be relevant to the contemporary. Postmodernists reject past theories, art, creations, but appropriate these same things in order to try and show the social situations that were the driving force behind its production. The popularization of the internet has allowed for Postmodernism to flourish, as it allows for easy access to all the past creations of humankind that Postmodernists love to analyze and critique.

Postmodernism is often applied to visual art (although as previously mentioned, it can be applied to nearly every field). Some examples of Postmodern artwork that you might be familiar with would be: a film that makes visual references to famous paintings, a painting very deliberately done in the style of a specific famous artist that exposes or parodies the original, or mixed media work that draws imagery from multiple sources.

In the context of human history, Jean-Francois Lyotard defines postmodernism as an "incredulity towards metanarratives." In other words, history cannot be told in terms of 'natural progress' towards a predefined or even positively defined goal, nor can it be 'told' or expalined via just one story or perspective. Lyotard wanted to prove that there is no grand purpose to the history of humanity because he saw the great totalitarianisms of the 20th century (e.g. Stalin, Hitler regimes) as a direct product or result attempting to set up a point to collective human existence through collective human existence.

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[1] Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "The Postmodern Condition". http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~mhalber/Research/Paper/pci-lyotard.html (1979)