Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a recent movement in the humanities characterized by denial of the possibility of knowing objective truth, and which asserts that assertions of objective knowledge are generally impossible. For example, the postmodern will look at a statement primarily in terms of the motives of the person making it. It emphasizes the role of language, and of power relations involved in being male (versus female), straight (versus gay), white (vesus colored), and imperial (versus colonial).
Postmodernity has influenced many disparate fields of the humanities, such as literary criticism, linguistics, art history, and photography. It promotes the study of gay culture (called Queer Theory) as well as Women's Studies. It is weakly represented in historiography and the social sciences, and practically does not exist in the sciences or engineering.
Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from modern approaches that had previously been dominant. The term "postmodernism" comes from its rejection of the "modern" scientific mentality created by the Enlightenment. Both movements coexist today, as does traditionalism.
Contents
History
Postmodernism emerged from "structuralism" and "poststructuralism" in French philosophy of the 1960s, who were influenced by the German philosopher Nietzsche (1844-1900); it adopted a good deal of poststructuralism, but it broadened and extended poststructuralism to topics that focused on a wide-ranging critique of the modern world.[1] Influential French postmodernists include Lyotard (who identified and rejected the master narratives of modernism), Derrida (with his notion of deconstruction if a text to see what really motivated it), Foucault (who stressed that power creates or causes accepted knowledge) and Baudrillard (who introduced notions of implosion, hyperreality, and simulacra).
Other favorite terms are: spectacle, pastiche, ambiguity, doubt, contradiction, novelty, reflexivity, otherness, difference, identity, heterogeneity, upheaval, carnival, turbulence, instability, discontinuity, limitless choice, and flux.
Ideas
Some postmodernist ideas are:
- Truth is often constructed and manipulated by a society's leaders, privileged classes, and institutions of power. [2]
- A society's language reflects their general perceptions of the rules by which the world operates.[3] (This perhaps fueled thepolitical correctness movement of the 1990's).
- There is no one superior culture; it is a fallacy to presume that Western culture is somehow better than others, a position often taken by people locked inside the culture who have not been able to take a broader viewpoint.
- Postmodernists often use irony and wordplay to shift the meanings of words, so that readers can better realize the unspoken assumptions they have been making.
- Gender roles, sexuality and race are socially constructed, not inborn traits that are the same forever in all societies.
Critics of postmodernism include traditionalists who believe that truths from authoritative sources should always be believed, and modernists who believe that rational, scientific approaches can lead to the discovery of the truth.
Postmodernism, antiamericanism, and reverse racism
Postmodernism can be used to criticize interventionist foreign policy--especially U.S. policies--claiming that forcing other cultures into a Western democratic mold before they are ready for it is a bad idea.
A major theme is to attack the culture of "dead white males," by claiming that such cultural output was imposed by patriarchal or imperialistic forces.
Postmodernism and immorality
As postmodernism teaches that there is no revealed truth, it likewise teaches that there is no divinely revealed absolute morality.
Discredited in science
Alan Sokal famously exposed postmodern approaches to the hard sciences as deeply flawed in 1996 by successfully publishing nonsense in a postmodern humanities journal, making it a laughing stock among scientists.[4]
See Also
Further reading
- Best, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner. Postmodern Theory (1991) excerpt and text search
- Best, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner. The Postmodern Turn (1997) excerpt and text search
- Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. (2002) online edition
References
- ↑ Historian Arnold Toynbee first used the term "postmodern" in 1954, but in a very different sense.
- ↑ Sarbin, Theodore R. "The Social Construction of Truth." in Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Vol 18(2), Fal 1998, 144-150.
- ↑ http://www.modern-thinker.co.uk/6%20-%20language%20and%20society.htm
- ↑ http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html
