Aims of Postmodernists

Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication p.330-331

Postmodernism does not constitute a unified ‘theory’ (though many postmodernist theorists grant no access to any reality outside *signification). Nor is there a postmodernist aesthetic ‘movement’; postmodernism is highly fragmented and eclectic. However, characteristic features of postmodern texts and practices are… blurring the boundaries of *texts, *genres, and *media and drawing attention to the text’s *constructedness and process of construction… The postmodernist trend is sometimes dated from Lyotard’s book, The Postmodern Condition, first published in 1979, which characterized postmodernist theory in terms of incredulity towards metanarratives.

[Postmodernity is a] relational term (see MODERNITY) for the social-eonomic and political transformation of modern advanced industrial capitalism… is associated with trends such as *globalization (global capitalism), a shift from *production to *consumption, the fragmentation of the *mass market (see AUDIENCE FRAGMENTATION), and the decline of the nation-state… [is a] *cultural and *ideological shift from a world of relatively stable *values, beliefs, *theories, and organizational structures to a world of flux, *fragmentation, *ambiguity, and radical scepticism (which critics see as *relativism). Lyotard notes the demise of modernity’s *grand narrative of progress.

Dictionary of Philosophy – Penguin pp.483-484

Jean Baudrillard… claims that contemporary culture is post-modern, the word denotes fragmentation and promiscuous trivialization of values, symbols, images: its most characteristic manifestation id the commercial advertisements shown in television broadcasts.

In architecture, where the word first gained currency, post-modernism denotes a rejection of the functionalism and brutalism of modern architecture… together with a preference for aimless eclecticism… It is said that whereas modernism assumes that there is hidden meaning or truth and is engaged in a search for it, post-modernism, able to recognize absurdity when it sees it, has recourse to pastiche, many-layerd irony, flippancy, etc.

Many critics have rejected post-modernism, and have often done so with great vehemence, because of its association with RELATIVISM of various kinds, which they see as morally repugnant and logically absurd.

cultural relativism… (1)different cultures have different customs, social institutions, moralities, etc,; (2) the view that those who belong to one culture cannot form a valid judgement of any custom, institution, belief, etc. which is part of a culture which differs significantly from their own. The view is that there is no non-relative (‘absolute’) basis from which to judge, and that proper judgements can only be made from inside, i.e. from the standpoint of the culture judged…. Note: ‘Culturaris’ is occasionally used for this view. (p.132)

Oxford Dictionary of Sociology pp.584-586

The emphasis on plurality, diversity, and relativity encouraged some intellectuals to promote a wider reconstruction of thought… [W]hat it is that this body of theory… has in common, is certainly much less settled.

What [Lyotard] did that was new to declare that post-modernism was a generic social condition…; it is a condition in which there is a widespread if belated recognition that the two major myths or ‘meta-narratives’ that have legitimated scientific z9including social scientific) activity for the past two hundred years, are no longer widely believed.

On the one hand,’The Myth of Liberation’ has been rendered incredible by the complicity of all the sciences in the great crimes of the 20th century, including the Holocaust, the Soviet gulags, and the creation of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction…. The net result of such a generalized ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’, according to Lyotard, is that the inhabitants of advanced capitalist societies now live in a world in which the following is the case: there are no guarantees as to either the worth of their activities or the truthfulness of their statements; there are only ‘language games’; and there are no economic constraints on the cultural realm.

Postmodernity… denies the existence of all ‘universals’, including the philosophy of the transcendental self, on the grounds that the discourse and referential categories of modernity (the subject, community, the state, use-value, social class, and so forth) are no longer appropriate to the description of disorganized capitalism. There is instead a new culture of ‘paralogy’–of imagination, inventiveness, dissensus, the search for paradox, and toleration of the incommensurable.

p.642-643

relativism The word relativism is used loosely to describe intellectual positions which reject  absolute or universal standards or criteria. …. [Feyerabend] sees a world increasingly dominated by a Western industrial-scientific way of life, which eliminates cultural diversity, destroys the environment, and impoverishes life.

Dictionary of Sociology – Penguin p.302-303

INDUSTRIALIZATION and the economic system of CAPITALISM brought with them a system of social classes… In postmodern societies, … social classes are no longer so important. The social structure is more fragmented and complex, with a number of sources of differentiation, including CLASS, but also including gender, ethnicity and age.

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy pp.283-284

In philosophy, therefore, it implies a mistrust of the grands récits od modernity: the large-scale justifications of Western society and confidence in its progress visible in *Kant, *Hegel, or *Marx, or arising from *utopian visions of perfection achieved through evolution, social improvement, education, or the deployment of science. In its *poststructuralist aspects it includes a denial of any fixed meaning, or any correspondence between language and the world, or any fixed reality or truth or fact to be the object of enquiry.

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