Postmodernism basics

Postmodernism basics What’s the difference between modernism and postmodernism?  

MODERNISM: links back to the Enlightenment (18th century) where there was an emphasis on the importance of science, facts and logic POSTMODERNISM: does not feel compelled to rely on these as much as subjective truth (ie: everyone has a different idea of what truth is – “The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.” Baudrillard)

Baudrillard:  “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (from Simulacra and Simulation, 1981)  “Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible.

We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.”  “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation.” (from Simulacra and Simulation, 1981)  “The media carry meaning and counter‐meaning, they manipulate in all directions at once, nothing can control this process, they are the vehicle for the simulation internal to the system and the simulation that destroys the system.” (from Simulacra and Simulation, 1981)  "the ultimate event, the mother of all events" In relation to 9/11 Lyotard:  Sees the postmodern condition as characterised by "incredulity toward meta‐narratives"  “Postmodernity is not a new age, but the rewriting of some of the features claimed by modernity, and first of all modernity's claim to ground its legitimacy on the project of liberating humanity as a whole through science and technology.” (from Re‐writing Modernity)  “History is made up of wisps of narratives, stories that one tells, that one invents, that one hears, that one acts out; the people does not exist as a subject but as a mass of millions of insignificant and serious little stories that sometimes let themselves be collected together to constitute big stories and sometimes disperse into digressive elements, but which in general hold more or less together in forming what os called the culture of a civil society’ (1977) He wants us to beware ‘totalising’ views ie: a one size fits all mentality.

Roland Barthes:  “The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.”  “The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”  “One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image‐repertoire. Consider the United States, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist and are produced and are consumed ... when generalized, it completely de‐realizes the human world of conflicts and desires, under cover of illustrating it.”

The Frankfurt School:  “The means of... communication..., the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote

a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood... Thus emerges a pattern of one‐dimensional thought and behaviour.” Marcuse 1972  The work of the Frankfurt School “gives to the mass media and the culture industry a role of ideological dominance which destroys both bourgeois individualism and the revolutionary potential of the working class”.

Antonio Gramsci: By hegemony, Gramsci meant the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations.  “Man was not 'discovered', rather a new form of culture was initiated, a new effort to create a new type of man in the dominant classes.”  “Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.”  “In history, in social life, nothing is fixed, rigid or definitive. And nothing ever will be.”

Althusser:  

Ideology, for Althusser “represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”.

In Althusserian theory mass media texts “interpellate the subject” ie: give identity to the subject, a view which postmodern theory rejects.

Key terms: INTERTEXTUALITY – where texts make reference to each other as a way of constructing meaning for the audience BRICOLAGE – something put together with whatever materials are available to make something new and different CONNOTATION – the associated meanings of a text resulting from social/ historical experience PARODY – a text that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule PASTICHE – a text openly imitating the previous works of other artists, often with satirical intent (often meaner in tone than a parody) CULTURAL CAPITAL – ‘wealth’ based upon the cultural points you accrue from the clothes you wera, the education that you have, the choices that you make in your consumption ie: buying Fairtrade/ going to a particular University etc.

CONSUMER CULTURE – the process whereby society has become obsessed with consumption of branded goods, with little consideration for waste/ the long term impact of our behaviour both environmentally, socially and economically.

SIMULACRA/ SIMULACRUM – the notion that everything is a copy of a copy of a copy – nothing is real and true anymore because of the media saturated world in which we live. The ‘original’ idea has been warped and lost in the process of representation over time.