What is Post-Modernism?

[GenMarshall]

This is something that I have heard a lot lately in regards to the philosophical school in regards to Post-Modernism. I dont fully understand what Post-Modernism (Philosophy) is so I am asking "What is Post-Modernism?"

Let the philosophical discussion beguin.

 

[Godwynn]

I thought Post-Modernism was a school of architecture..?

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

I thought it was a school of art?

 

[GenMarshall]

I thought Post-Modernism was a school of architecture..?

Thats what I thought untill I ran into a series in Western Philosophy in Wiki as well as discussions in American Lit class:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy

 

[tomsnowman123]

Well, I was going to read the Wiki on it, but it's huge. Is this a politcal thing to?

 

[Mr. Dictator]

i always thought post modernism was a bunch of wannabe indie kids sipping coffee, wearing either all black or odd colored sweaters, and smoking their parliament cigarettes while complaining...

hmm...maybe i'm wrong.

 

[Masquerouge]

It all makes much more sense when you realize that what Modernism refers to is actually pre-20th century stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

So basically post-modernism is just what happens after Modernism, whether as a continuation or as a break (usually as a break because if it's like Modernism, then it's Modernism). This applies to music, art, pilosophy...

 

[Lambert Simnel]

"What is Post-Modernism?"

We'll find out tomorrow.

 

[QuoVadisNation]

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following: - Richard Dawkins, in Postmodernism disrobed.


Postmodernism means different things in different fields. For example, I have no idea in hell what Postmodernist art is. Outside of art, postmodernism is the deconstruction of "reality" into its elements. By doing so, you can expose the reality for what it really is.

annotated example:
The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. . . From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.

ya gotta love Luce Irigaray!

but I'm kidding, I'm sure there are some useful postmodernists out there..

somewhere.

 

[C~G]

That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
- Jean-François Lyotard

I would personally describe it "The Emperor's New Clothes"-phenomena.

An emperor hires two tailors who promise to make him a set of remarkable new clothes that will be invisible to anyone who is either incompetent or stupid. When the emperor goes to see his new clothes, he sees nothing at all — for the tailors are swindlers and there aren't any clothes. Afraid of being judged incompetent or stupid, the emperor pretends to be delighted with the new clothes and “wears” them in a grand parade through the town. Everyone else also pretends to see them, until a child yells out, “He hasn't got any clothes on!”

In postmodern story the kid would start to laugh since emperor has nonexistant clothes which everyone still think of seeing so maybe after all nobody is wearing any clothes but they just acknowledge their existence nevertheless so they don't end up being judged to be incompetent and stupid.
I would bet that in traditional interpretarion of the story nobody could come to such conclusion.

QuoVadisNation, there are many impostors in the modern tradition as well. Example in modern academic philosophy who don't regard postmodern as nothing.

But the postmodern is sleigh of hand-trick in order to show that we are all impostors in one way or another, only thing separating the genuine impostors from everyone else is to find no use for their Impostrous work.

EDIT: Did I just end the message with postmodern note as I came up with new language since is "impostoreous" even real word?
EDIT II: Forget it, it was just spelling error.

 

[GinandTonic]

The modernists threw out al the neoclassical nonsense but believed they could find redemption through art and took themselves terribly seriously. The postmodernists realised it was all nonsense, a game with which we distract ourselves. However cynical people are about it we live in a postmodern world.

 

[Perfection]

This is Post-Modernism

Spoiler :

 

[Masquerouge]

This is Post-Modernism

Spoiler :

Pah. It is way too self-explanatory to be anything but modernist.

 

[C~G]

This is Post-Modernism

Very good, you described how human history is seen in post-modernism.

Only thing missing from that are the children trying to find some food and shelter from that trash pileage, since post-modernism loves the human condition and experience more than anything.

 

[Atlas14]

Can't wait to hear Fifty's explanation.

 

[Fifty]

I'd just like to point out that despite what you may have heard, postmodernism has little influence in academic philosophy, and nearly all other academic disciplines for that matter (of course it has major influences in some disciplines like English and Anthropology).

The ambiguous (i.e. completely crappy) definition of postmodernism is what makes it so easy to mistake it as having an influence on various discipliens when in fact it doesn't. This, in large part, is what Dawkins refers to when he talks about the lack of content in post-modernism. When something has a really crapass definition it is really easy for non-experts to look like they know what they are talking about by attributing various parts of the definition to some movement/person/line of thought in a discipline.

I cannot emphasize enough, though, that philosophers in general do not take postmodernism seriously, and it has little to no influence outside the fringes of the discipline. I think that people think it does because Wittgensteinian Quietism and, to a lesser extent, Quine's naturalism, seem vaguely postmodern. This is no fault of Wittgenstein or Quine's, though, it is simply by virtue of the fact that Post Modernism has a crappy ambiguous definition.

In fact, I think Mr. Dictator's definition comes the closest to encapsulating what postmodernism is about in practice. There are a few "favorite terms and names" among "coffee shop philosophers", and post-modernism is definitely one of them (a few others are existentialism, deconstructionism, phenomenology, Sartre, Foucault, Voltaire, Kierkegaard, etc.) Why those terms are favored by coffee shop philosophers, I have no idea.

 

[C~G]

Why I have terrible feeling that something just touched the sweet spot of someone that happens to like academic authority.

Since that what "postmodern" is. The ultimate demise of all authority.
Some people are just freaking scared of it that the theoremas presented in their academic hallways hold no secret code to anything substantial or power outside their own spheres but are as much of useless explanations as everyone elses.

EDIT: No doubt it holds no significance in academic circles, since academy is all about traditions that "cannot be broken". But it's hard to yell "Fire!" anymore since the water broke already.
EDIT II: Of course to be more precise I'm more commenting the postmodernism in general rather than branch of philosophy.

 

[GinandTonic]

Why I have terrible feeling that something just touched the sweet spot of someone that happens to like academic authority.

Since that what "postmodern" is. The ultimate demise of all authority.
Some people are just freaking scared of it that the theoremas presented in their academic hallways hold no secret code to anything substantial or power outside their own spheres but are as much of useless explanations as everyone elses.

Yup, ive always felt a certain section of academe is against postmodernism because it said "this is all bollox, pretensious psudes". Pointing out the Emperor has no clothes doesnt make you any friends.

 

[Fifty]

C~G, have you even read your supposed hero Mr. Wittgenstein? If you have, and you have the slightest clue of his influence (as well as that of Quine), you would know that everything you just said makes absolutely no sense.

 

[C~G]

C~G, have you even read your supposed hero Mr. Wittgenstein? If you have, and you have the slightest clue of his influence (as well as that of Quine), you would know that everything you just said makes absolutely no sense.

And yours does?

You ask question whether I have read someone (How this affect anything here and I return the question by asking: have you?) which you refer to be my hero (I have never stated to be so) and then refer to someone's influence (which shouldn't mean a heck in the discussion) and declare I make no sense (without substantial evidence or any kind of grounding why it is so).

Also in your original message it was about fifth or sixth time that you say on this forum that mantra of yours about how "insignificant postmodernism is in..."

If you have problems what I'm saying about postmodernism in general, please show where I go astray, I really like to hear it from your "academical" point of view. Just maybe you have absolutely yourself no idea what postmodernism is all about since you have declared them to be coffee shop philosophers which is the truth of course. Problem is that so has been every other philosopher in the history of mankind who's followers just take their "lessons" a bit too seriously.

And I'm not favouring postmodernism over some modern practices if you think. I try to see them as oddcouple working together rather than separate ideologies. If it doesn't fit your ball game, I'm sorry for you.

Pointing out the Emperor has no clothes doesnt make you any friends.

Especially if it's linked with postmodern thought that also could mean you are without clothes too. It kind of reinfoces the message.