Postmodernity

Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art critics and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century life. Among these features are included globalization, consumerism, the fragmentation of authority, and the commoditization of knowledge. (See Modernity)

Brief Introduction to the Uses of the Term

The term postmodernity is used in a number of ways. Most generally, postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern (i.e., after or in reaction to what is modern), particularly in reference to postmodern art and postmodern architecture. In philosophy and critical theory, postmodernity more specifically refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. A related term is postmodernism, which refers to movements, philosophies or responses to the state of postmodernity, or in reaction to modernism.

Related Topics:
Postmodern art - Postmodern architecture - Philosophy - Critical theory - Modernity - Postmodernism - Modernism

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Most theorists of postmodernity view it as a historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity, which is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment. One "project" of modernity is said to have been the fostering of progress, which was thought to be achievable by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into aspects of public and artistic life. (see also post-industrial, Information Age). This usage is ascribed to the philosophers Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard. Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of progress, and postmodernity to represent the culmination of this process, where constant change has become a status quo and the notion of progress, obsolete. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge, Lyotard also further argued that the various "master-narratives" of progress, such as positivist science, Marxism, and Structuralism, were defunct as a method of achieving progress.

Related Topics:
Modernity - Industrial Revolution - The Enlightenment - Progress - Rationality - Hierarchy - Post-industrial - Information Age - Jean-François Lyotard - Jean Baudrillard - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Master-narratives - Science - Marxism - Structuralism

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The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey have identified post-modernity with "late capitalism" or "flexible accumulation;" that is, the stage of capitalism following finance capitalism. This stage of capitalism is characterized by a high degree of mobility of labor and capital, and what Harvey called "time and space compression." They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which they believe defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also Consumerism, Critical theory)

Related Topics:
Fredric Jameson - David Harvey - Late capitalism - Finance capitalism - Bretton Woods system - Consumerism - Critical theory

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Many philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as being within the modern project, use post-modernity with the reverse implication: the presumed results of holding post-modernist ideas. Most prominently this includes Jürgen Habermas and others who contend that post-modernity represents a resurgence of long running counter-enlightenment ideas.

Related Topics:
Jürgen Habermas - Counter-enlightenment

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"Post-modernity" is also used to demark a period in architecture beginning in the 1950's in response to the International Style, or an artistic period characterized by the abandonment of strong divisions of genre, "high" and "low" art, and the emergence of the global village. Postmodernity is said to be marked by the re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, non-orthogonal angles such as the Sydney Opera House and the buildings of Frank Gehry.

Related Topics:
International Style - Genre - Global village - Sydney Opera House - Frank Gehry

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For some of its critics, "post modernism" is simply cynical belief, the dissolution of cause and effect, the absence of order.

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