Postmodernism

Post-modernism started during 1960s but term came later in 1980s. Modernists still believed in social order and science but the Postmodernists did not believe in anything, often used parody and collage. Both used typical fragmentation but whereas Modernists needed some artistic purpose and believed art can change something (moralistic attitude to art), Post-modernists wanted to show that nothing makes sense and you cannot even communicate (Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot - words have empty meaning, no sense). Modern period started with belief in progress but nothing is truthful in post-modernism. Like with Derrida’s theory, nothing can be definite.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD is the major theorist of postmodernism, one of the first studying mass culture and its effects on human mind. For him postmodernism means “loss of the real” because of watching TV, ads, games, the Internet which is blurring boundary between reality and imagination and creates hyperality. Also the audience is not shocked by anything. We are getting so many images that we are not sensitive to them anymore and we need bigger and bigger stimulation to care for them.

DON DELILLO wrote a postmodern novel White Noise about a professor of Hitler studies whose family spends weekends at shopping malls and cannot imagine any other ways of spending time. When they sit in a living room, they only watch TV and once they watch news of an explosion near their house but nobody tries to see it from the window, they stick to telly which is more real for them than what is really happening outside. He coined the term simulation = what we get on TV is not a representation, rather a simulation as news are not real images but illustrated images and views are getting more and more passive.

JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD is his essay What is Postmodernism? talks about the crisis of the narrative concepts. The beliefs of an era are legitimized by a certain meta-narrative story and justice is related to this original narrative. However, the science proved these concepts false which lead to the crisis of meta-physical philosophy. The narrative loses its big hero, grave dangers and the great goal and institutions that are dependent on it are also in crisis. These once grand narratives dissolve into the linguistic aspects which are, nevertheless, not stable and determined only locally.

THOMAS KUHN deals with the structure of scientific revolution and coined the term paradigm (the same as episteme) = system of theories that are generally accepted in a certain time period. He believed that the only way to change something is not through slow linear development but revolutionary overthrow of existing theories to new theories which are often in contrast to old one. These changes have repeating pattern, neo-classicism was opened, Victorian era was closed and modern was again opened and revolutionary.

GEORGE STEINER is a contemporary author who wrote New Illiteracy. He stated that nowadays people can find anything on the internet but our knowledge is lessening as our concentration ability degrades. The previous grammar school students knew Latin, Greek, German, French and could play at least one musical instrument. However, for many thinkers like Lyotard, universities should forget their false humanism because there is nothing like common shared ideals and we should only provide technical intelligence needed. He basically claimed all students of humanities as useless.

DONALD BARTHELME’s poem The Glass Mountain is an excellent example of postmodernist fragmentation since it is in a form of a list with 100 numbered sentences. It is a symbolic-anti-symbolic story working with paradox, both confirming and doubting the meaningfulness of symbols. Everybody is the town knows about the glass mountain that end in the sky but nobody was so far able to climb it, it can a symbol of impossible goal. The on-lookers enjoy watching climbers falling, stealing upon their belongings; they do not care about some symbol. The protagonist starts to climb and attracts attention right away. He calls them “acquaintance” even though he do not know them but points to sarcasm since people are badmouthing him, waiting for him to fall, however, he calls it “offer encouragement.” He ironically describes “sidewalks full of dogshit in brilliant colours.”

While the protagonist ascends the glass mountain, he ponders his reasons, why he climbs it at all when many “knights” failed. But were they real knights? The on-lookers are stealing their watches! He finds his goal in “the castle of pure gold” at the top where is supposed to be “a beautiful enchanted symbol.” He decides to believe in symbols, asking himself questions “Do today’s stronger egos still need symbols? I decided that the answer was yes, otherwise what was I doing here?” Then he argues that “the conventional symbol (such as nightingale, often associated with melancholy), even though it is recognized only though agreement, is not a sing because it arouses deep feelings, possessing properties beyond what the eye sees.”

He sees a “conventional means” of reaching the castle in the eagle carrying him and he decides to follow the same method. He finally sees the beautiful enchanted symbol. “I approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed into only a beautiful princess.” He throws the princess down the mountain as he experiences the failure of meaning-giving function of the symbol. By losing the layers of meaning, the symbol loses the function of the symbol and becomes only a beautiful princess, the object itself, nothing more.