Introduction to Postmodernism

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Introduction toPostmodernism
2
Why Reality Isnt What It Used to Be
3
Deconstructing Mrs. Miller
4
Questions

• 1. What is postmodernism?
• 2. Why should we care about it?
• 3. Have you received a modern or postmodern
  education?
• 4. What does postmodernism have to say about
  your identity?
• 5. What does postmodernism have to say about
  truth, beauty, and goodness?
• 6. How postmodernism is impacting K-12
  education, religion, the arts, and our daily
  lives.

5
Evolution of Western Thought
Timeline
as
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernity
Timeline

• RENAISSANCE TO ABOUT 1900 (/- 30 years)
• Baudrillard
• Early modernity Renaissance to Industrial
  Revolution
• Modernity Industrial Revolution
• Postmodernity Period of mass media
• The world according to white Anglo-Saxon males
  from Europe

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Your Place in History
Timeline
14th C 1900
2000

• Modern

• Modernism

• Postmodernism

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Your Place in History
Timeline
as
14th C 1900
2000

• Modern

• Modernism

• Postmodernism

Your teachers were / are here
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernity
Newtonian Order

• God, reason and progress
• There was a center to the universe.
• Progress is based upon knowledge, and man is
  capable of discerning objective absolute truths
  in science and the arts.
• Modernism is linked to capitalismprogressive
  economic administration of world
• Modernization of 3rd world countries (imposition
  of modern Western values)

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Language Truth
What Is Language?
as

• People are the same everywhere
• There are universal laws and truths
• Knowledge is objective, independent of culture,
  gender, etc.
• Language is a man-made tool that refers to real
  things / truths
• I, the subject, speak language
• I have a discernible self
• The self is the center of existence

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Liberal Humanism View of Literature
Purpose of Literature

• Good literature is of timeless significance.
• The text will reveal constants, universal truths,
  about human nature, because human nature itself
  is constant and unchanging.

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernism
Death of the Old Order

• Early 1900s
• World War I
• Worldwide poverty exploitation

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernism
Death of the Old Order

• Early 1900s
• World War I
• Worldwide poverty exploitation
• Intellectual upheaval
• Freud psychoanalysis
• Marx class struggle
• Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Neitzsche
• Picasso, Stravinsky, Kafka, Proust, Brecht,
  Joyce, Eliot

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Relativism
The Bending of Time Space

• Einstein relativity, quantum mechanics
• Refutation of Newtonian science
• Time is relative
• Matter and energy are one
• Light as both particle and wave
• Universe is strange

Emc2
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Literature
A World with No Center

• Things fall apart,The centre cannot hold,Mere
  anarchy is loosed upon the world.
• --Yeats, The Second Coming

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Literature
Breaking the Rules

• Emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity
• Movement away from objective third-party
  narration
• Tendency toward reflexivity and
  self-consciousness
• Obsession with the psychology of self
• Rejection of traditional aesthetic theories
• Experimentation with language

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age

• Continuation of modernist view
• Does not mourn loss of history, self, religion,
  center
• A term applied to all human sciences
  anthropology, psychology, architecture, history,
  etc.
• Reaction to modernism systematic skepticism
• Anti-foundational

POSTMODERNISM
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What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age

• The Enlightenment project is dead.

POSTMODERNISM
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Frederick Jameson
Culture Capital

• Modernism and postmodernism are cultural
  formations that accompany specific stages of
  capitalism
• 1. Market capitalism 18th-19th C. Steam
  locomotive Realism
• 2. Monopoly capitalism Late 19th C to
  WWII Electricity and automobile Modernism
• 3. Multinational/consumer capitalism Nuclear
  and electronics Postmodernism

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• Life just is
• Rejection of all master narratives
• All truths are contingent cultural constructs
• Skepticism of progress anti-technology bias
• Sense of fragmentation and decentered self
• Multiple conflicting identities
• Mass-mediated reality

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• All versions of reality are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS
• Concepts of good and evil
• Metaphors for God
• Language
• The self
• Gender
• EVERYTHING!

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
Language As Social Construct

• Language is a social construct that speaks
  identifies the subject
• Knowledge is contingent, contextual and linked to
  POWER
• Truth is pluralistic, dependent upon the frame of
  reference of the observer
• Values are derived from ordinary social
  practices, which differ from culture to culture
  and change with time.
• Values are determined by manipulation and
  domination

POSTMODERNISM
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Richard Rorty (1931-)
Relativism Pluralism

• A pragmatic philosopher
• Anti-foundationalist
• No reality independent of our minds
• Truth is the result of inter-subjective agreement
  between members of a community
• We must choose between self-defeating relativism
  or solidarity of thought within our group
• The goal of the search for truth is to help us
  carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and
  more democratic society

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodern View of Language
The Observer is King

• Observer is a participant/part of what is
  observed
• Receiver of message is a component of the message
• Information becomes information only when
  contextualized
• The individual (the subject) is a cultural
  construct
• Consider role of own culture when examining
  others
• All interpretation is conditioned by cultural
  perspective and mediated by symbols and practice

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModern Literature
Play and Parody

• Extreme freedom of form and expression
• Repudiation of boundaries of narration genre
• Intrusive, self-reflexive author
• Parodies of meta-narratives
• Deliberate violation of standards of sense and
  decency (which are viewed as methods of social
  control)
• Integration of everyday experience, pop culture

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModern Literature
Fragmented Identities

• Parody, play, black humor, pastiche
• Nonlinear, fragmented narratives
• Ambiguities and uncertainties
• Conspiracy and paranoia
• Ironic detachment
• Linguistic innovations
• Postcolonial, global-English literature

POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity PostModern
Binary Oppositions

• History as fact
• Faith in social order
• Family as central unit
• Authenticity of originals
• Mass consumption

• Written by the victors
• Cultural pluralism
• Alternate families
• Hyper-reality (MTV)
• Niches small group identity

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
A gay Southern Baptist who practices Buddhist
meditation and believes in the Big Bang theory.
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
An Epochal Shift in Thinking

• The narrative is unravelled, the author is dead,
  the Enlightenment project is toast, and history
  is history.
• An epochal shift in the basic condition in
  being.
• --Geoffrey Nunberg

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
Battle of World Views

• A Global Battle THE OBJECTIVISTS vs.
  THE CONSTRUCTIVISTS

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
My Way

• OBJECTIVISTS

When I said during my presidential bid that I
would only bring Christians and Jews into the
government, I hit a firestorm. How dare you
maintain that those who believe in the
Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to
govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My
simple answer is, Yes, they are.' -from
Pat Robertson's "The New World Order"
POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
Metaphors Kill

• People were burned at the stake for believing
  there was more than one version of reality.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
God is Not Dead

• Our public schools have become a postmodern
  battleground.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
God is Not Dead

• You can be a Christian (or Buddhist, or
  Hindu, etc.) in the postmodern world.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
We Live in the Middle

• We all slip and slide between the objective and
  constructive views
• 1. We live in a world of naïve realism.
• 2. But when we think about things, or
  have to explain our views, we become
  constructivists.

POSTMODERNISM
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How Popular Culture Changes
as

• RAYMOND WILLIAMS
• Dominant ideology controls
• Human agency people work together to bring
  about change
• Takes into account pluralismof a culture

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
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How Popular Culture Changes
Acceptance of Pluralism
Playboy Bunnies June Cleaver
Carrie in Sex The City
Samantha in Sex The City
Monica in Friends
Courtney Love
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PostModernism
Celebrating Diversity

• THE HOPE OF POSTMODERNISTS
• The deconstruction of foundational views will
  lead to a recognition and acceptance of a
  pluralistic worldview.
• Create a truly global civilization.

POSTMODERNISM
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Literary FilmTheory
Celebrating Diversity

• Different constructs of reality
• Lenses through which we see the world

?
POSTMODERNISM