250- ] English Literature
Postmodernism
Postmodernism
is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical
movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the
conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of
depicting the world. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more
precise meaning even within narrow contexts.
The
term began to acquire its current range of meanings in literary criticism and
architectural theory during the 1950s–1960s. In opposition to modernism's
alleged self-seriousness, postmodernism is characterized by its playful use of
eclectic styles and performative irony, among other features. Critics claim it
supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle.
In
the 1990s, "postmodernism" came to denote a general – and, in
general, celebratory – response to cultural pluralism. Proponents align themselves
with feminism, multiculturalism, and postcolonialism. Building upon
poststructural theory, postmodern thought defined itself by the rejection of
any single, foundational historical narrative. This called into question the
legitimacy of the Enlightenment account of progress and rationality. Critics
allege that its premises lead to a nihilistic form of relativism. In this
sense, it has become a term of abuse in popular culture.
Definitions
"Postmodernism"
is "a highly contested term", referring to "a particularly
unstable concept", that "names many different kinds of cultural
objects and phenomena in many different ways". It may be described simply
as a general mood or Zeitgeist.
Although
postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend the perceived
limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to
different critics in various arts. Further, there are outliers on even this
basic stance; for instance, literary critic William Spanos conceives
postmodernism not in period terms but in terms of a certain kind of literary
imagination so that pre-modern texts such as Euripides' Orestes or Cervantes'
Don Quixote count as postmodern.
According
to scholar Louis Menand, "Postmodernism is the Swiss Army knife of
critical concepts. It's definitionally overloaded, and it can do almost any job
you need done." From an opposing perspective, media theorist Dick Hebdige
criticized the vagueness of the term, enumerating a long list of otherwise
unrelated concepts that people have designated as postmodernism, from "the
décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear
armageddon and the "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything
that could signify all of those things was "a buzzword".
All
this notwithstanding, scholar Hans Bertens offers the following:
If
there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a
crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to
represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthestic,
epistemological, moral, or political in nature, the representations that we
used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted.
In
practical terms, postmodernisms share an attitudeof skepticism towards grand
explanations and established ways of doing things. In art, literature, and
architecture, this attitude blurs boundaries between styles and genres, and
encourages freely mixing elements, challenging traditional distinctions like
high art versus popular art. In science, it emphasizes multiple ways of seeing things,
and how our cultural and personal backgrounds shape how we see the world,
making it impossible to be completely objective. In philosophy, education,
history, politics, and many other fields, it encourages critical re-examination
of established institutions and social norms, embracing diversity, and breaking
down disciplinary boundaries. Though these ideas weren't strictly new,
postmodernism amplified them, using an often playful, at times deeply critical,
attitude of pervasive skepticism to turn them into defining features.
Historical
overview
Two
broad cultural movements, modernism and postmodernism, emerged in response to
profound changes in the Western world. The Industrial Revolution, urbanization,
secularization, technological advances, two world wars, and globalization
deeply disrupted the social order. Modernism emerged in the late 1800s, seeking
to redefine fundamental truths and values through a radical rethinking of
traditional ideas and forms across many fields. Postmodernism emerged in the
mid-20th century with a skeptical perspective that questioned the notion of
universal truths and reshaped modernist approaches by embracing the complexity
and contradictions of modern life.
The
term "postmodernism" first appeared in print in 1870, but it only
began to enter circulation with its current range of meanings in the 1950s—60s.
Early
appearances
The
term "postmodern" was first used in 1870 by the artist John Watkins
Chapman, who described "a Postmodern style of painting" as a
departure from French Impressionism. Similarly, the first citation given by the
Oxford English Dictionary is dated to 1916, describing Gus Mager as "one
of the few 'post' modern painters whose style is convincing".
Episcopal
priest and cultural commentator J. M. Thompson, in a 1914 article, uses the
term to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion,
writing, "the raison d'être of Post-Modernism is to escape from the
double-mindedness of modernism by being thorough in its criticism by extending
it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic
tradition". In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell, president of St. Stephen's
College and also an Episcopal priest, published Postmodernism and Other Essays,
which marks the first use of the term to describe an historical period
following modernity. The essay criticizes lingering socio-cultural norms,
attitudes, and practices of the Enlightenment. It is also critical of a
purported cultural shift away from traditional Christian beliefs.
The
term "postmodernity" was first used in an academic historical context
as a general concept for a movement by Arnold J. Toynbee in a 1939 essay, which
states that "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general
war of 1914–1918".
In
1942, the literary critic and author H. R. Hays describes postmodernism as a
new literary form. Also in the arts, the term was first used in 1949 to
describe a dissatisfaction with the modernist architectural movement known as
the International Style.
Although
these early uses anticipate some of the concerns of the debate in the second
part of the 20th century, there is little direct continuity in the discussion.
Just when the new discussion begins, however, is also a matter of dispute.
Various authors place its beginnings in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Theoretical
development
In
the mid-1970s, the American sociologist Daniel Bell provided a general account
of the postmodern as an effectively nihilistic response to modernism's alleged
assault on the Protestant work ethic and its rejection of what he upheld as
traditional values. The ideals of modernity, per his diagnosis, were degraded
to the level of consumer choice. This research project, however, was not taken
up in a significant way by others until the mid-1980s when the work of Jean
Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson, building upon art and literary criticism,
reintroduced the term to sociology.
Discussion
about the postmodern in the second part of the 20th century was most articulate
in areas with a large body of critical discourse around the modernist movement.
Even here, however, there continued to be disagreement about such basic issues
as whether postmodernism is a break with modernism, a renewal and
intensification of modernism, or even, both at once, a rejection and a
radicalization of its historical predecessor.
While
discussions in the 1970s were dominated by literary criticism, these were
supplanted by architectural theory in the 1980s. Some of these conversations
made use of French poststructuralist thought, but only after these innovations
and critical discourse in the arts did postmodernism emerge as a philosophical
term in its own right.
In
literary and architectural theory
According
to Hans Bertens and Perry Anderson, the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson and
Robert Creeley first introduced the term "postmodern" in its current
sense during the 1950s. Their stance against modernist poetry – and Olson's
Heideggerian orientation – were influential in the identification of
postmodernism as a polemical position opposed to the rationalist values
championed by the Enlightenment project.
During
the 1960s, this affirmative use gave way to a pejorative use by the New Left,
who used it to describe a waning commitment among youth to the political ideals
socialism and communism. The literary critic Irving Howe, for instance,
denounced postmodern literature for being content to merely reflect, rather
than actively attempt to refashion, what he saw as the "increasingly
shapeless" character of contemporary society.
In
the 1970s, this changed again, largely under the influence of the literary
critic Ihab Hassan's large-scale survey of works that he said could no longer
be called modern. Taking the Black Mountain poets an exemplary instance of the
new postmodern type, Hassan celebrates its Nietzschean playfulness and
cheerfully anarchic spirit, which he sets off against the high seriousness of
modernism.
(Yet,
from another perspective, Friedrich Nietzsche's attack on Western philosophy
and Martin Heidegger's critique of metaphysics posed deep theoretical problems
not necessarily a cause for aesthetic celebration. Their further influence on
the conversation about postmodernism, however, would be largely mediated by
French poststructuralism.
If
literature were at the center of the discussion in the 1970s, architecture was
at the center in the 1980s. The architectural theorist Charles Jencks, in
particular, connected the artistic avant-garde to social change in a way that
captured attention outside of academia. Jenckes, much influenced by the
American architect Robert Venturi, celebrated a plurality of forms and
encourages participation and active engagement with the local context of the
built environment. He presented this as in opposition to the
"authoritarian style" of International Modernism.
The
influence of poststructuralism
In
the 1970s, postmodern criticism increasingly came to incorporate
poststructuralist theory, particularly the deconstructive approach to texts
most strongly associated with Jacques Derrida, who attempted to demonstrate
that the whole foundationalist approach to language and knowledge was untenable
and misguided. It is during this period that postmodernism came to be
particularly equated with a kind of anti-representational self-reflexivity.
In
the 1980s, some critics began to take an interest in the work of Michel
Foucault. This introduced a political concern about social power-relations into
discussions about postmodernism. This was also the beginning of the affiliation
of postmodernism with feminism and multiculturalism. The art critic Craig
Owens, in particular, not only made the connection to feminism explicit, but
went so far as to claim feminism for postmodernism wholesale, a broad claim
resisted by even many sympathetic feminists such as Nancy Fraser and Linda
Nicholson.
Generalization
Although
postmodern criticism and thought drew on philosophical ideas from early on,
"postmodernism" was only introduced to the expressly philosophical
lexicon by Jean-François Lyotard in his 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report
on Knowledge. This work served as a catalyst for many of the subsequent
intellectual debates around the term.
By
the 1990s, postmodernism had become increasingly identified with critical and
philosophical discourse directly about postmodernity or the postmodern idiom
itself. No longer centered on any particular art or even the arts in general,
it instead turned to address the more general problems posed to society in
general by a new proliferation of cultures and forms. It is during this period
that it also came to be associated with postcolonialism and identity politics.
Around
this time, postmodernism also began to be conceived in popular culture as a
general "philosophical disposition" associated with a loose sort of
relativism. In this sense, the term also started to appear as a "casual
term of abuse" in non-academic contexts. Others identified it as an
aesthetic "lifestyle" of eclecticism and playful self-irony.
The
"Science Wars"
The
basis for what became known later as the Science Wars was the 1962 publication
of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by the physicist and historian of
science Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn presented the direction of scientific inquiry — the
kind of questions that can be asked, and what counts as a correct answer — as
governed by a "paradigm" defining what counts as "normal
science" during any given period. While not based on postmodern ideas or
Continental philosophy, Kuhn's intervention set the agenda for much of The
Postmodern Condition and has subsequently been presented as the beginning of
"postmodern epistemology" in the philosophy of science.
In
Kuhn's 1962 framework, the assumptions introduced by new paradigms make them
"mutually incommensurable" with previous ones, although they may
provide improved explanations of the material world. A more radical version of
incommensurablity, introduced by the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend,
made stronger claims that connected the largely Anglo-American debate about
science to the development of poststructuralism in France.
To
some, the stakes were more than epistemological. The philosopher Israel
Scheffler, for instance, argued that the ever-expanding body of scientific
knowledge embodies a sort of "moral principle" protecting society
from its authoritarian and tribal tendencies. In this way, with the addition of
the poststructuralist influence, the debate about science expanded into a
debate about Western culture in general.
The
French political philosophers Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry began a series of
responses to this interpretation of postmodernism, and these inspired the
physicist Alan Sokal to submit a deliberately nonsensical paper to a
postmodernist journal, where it was accepted and published in 1996. Although
the so-called Sokal hoax proved nothing about postmodernism or science, it
added to the public perception of a high-stakes intellectual "war"
that had already been introduced to the general public by popular books
published in the late '80s and '90s. By the late '90s, however, the debate had
largely subsided, in part due to the recognition that it had been staged
between strawman versions of postmodernism and science alike.
Literature
In
1971, the American literary theorist Ihab Hassan made "postmodernism"
popular in literary studies with his influential book, The Dismemberment of
Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. According to scholar David Herwitz,
American writers such as John Barth (who had controversially declared that the
novel was "exhausted" as a genre), Donald Barthelme, and Thomas
Pynchon responded in various ways to the stylistic innovations of Finnegans
Wake and the late work of Samuel Beckett. Postmodern literature often calls
attention to issues regarding its own complicated connection to reality. The
postmodern novel plays with language, twisted plots, multiple narrators, and
unresolved endings, unsettling the conventional idea of the novel as faithfully
reflecting the world.
In
Postmodernist Fiction (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to
postmodernism, arguing that postmodern works developed out of modernism, moving
from concern with what is there ("ontological dominant") to concern
with how we can know it's there ("epistemological dominant").
McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007) follows Raymond Federman's
lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism. Others argue
that postmodernism in literature utilizes compositional and semantic practices
such as inclusivity, intentional indiscrimination, nonselection, and
"logical impossibility."
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