Postmodernism

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Sam Binkley

The word "postmodernism" means many things to many people. To some it describes a fad or a personal style, to others, a theory of society, a philosophy of human significance (or its lack thereof), a historical epoch, a phase of capitalist development, or a curious feeling of personal weightlessness in a world of synthetic pleasures and meanings. Unlike most "isms," postmodernism has no stock tenets or creeds to fall back on, relying instead on a general attitude of misgiving for all things "modern." The foundational assumptions that undergird modern personal and social beliefs, even the belief in "reality" itself, are, for postmodernists, canon fodder in a relentless "ungrounding" assault waged on modernity. This essay will assess the relevance and achievements of the postmodern critical enterprise (which are significant), while exercising a healthy skepticism about some of postmodernism's more lofty assertions. Postmodernism will be understood for what it is--a product of an academic "idea" industry, meant to describe an awkward period in the history of western society. In this way, postmodernism, the academic fad, will be explained via the use of postmodernism, the critical "ungrounding" of cultural assumptions and beliefs.

To call postmodernism an intellectual fad is neither disparaging nor inaccurate: all cultures are subject to fads, and intellectuals, as any postmodernist would assure you, are no exception. Postmodernism has its origins in the erudite practices of the academic and scholarly world, where new ideas are generated regularly, contested and advanced through the commerce of publishing, hobnobbing at academic conferences, power politicking at faculty meetings and on department budget committees--all processes which are driven by academics' desire to expand personal influence by thinking of something new to say. Beginning in the early 1980s, postmodernism began to emerge as a vanguard movement in the idea market, with all the equipment for a successful intellectual coup--its own fancy vocabulary, a cryptic set of canonical texts, and a seemingly inexhaustible ability to come off cleverer than any of its challengers. Indeed, the ability of the postmodern rhetorician to inflate the significance of familiar issues by describing them with thick jargon has proven a fruitful intellectual stratagem for postmodernists, one whose success rivals that enjoyed by structural functionalist sociologists of the 1950s who, under the leadership of Talcott Parsons, stormed American sociology in a whirlwind of technical sounding lingo.

By the 1990s, the term "postmodern" had crept into the vernacular of American cultural commentary, in much the way that such terms as "existential angst," "mass culture," and "the medium is the message" once held sway over their own distinct periods, promising the key theoretical and rhetorical tools for unlocking the social and cultural mysteries of their time. Of course, fads are never arbitrary: they only catch on because they seem meaningful to people and offer some help in the interpretation of their real lives and the conditions under which they live. For America in the 1980s, many confusing social changes seemed to lend themselves to a postmodern analysis: a new Reagan era emphasis on media theatrics over political realities; a deepening permeation of TV, home videos, and MTV into the most intimate recesses of personal and everyday life; the waning of the promise of left social movements; and the failure in the 1970s of any cultural movements capable of countering the hegemony of consumerism and its seductive culture of images. All suggested a society that had to be fundamentally rethought. In addressing these conditions, postmodernism provided an anti-foundationalist theory for a society struggling with its slipping grasp on any founding reality or system of its own.

To understand postmodernism, we must first understand what postmodernists mean when they speak of "modernity" (a broad term that includes a sweeping host of thinkers and artists from Descartes and Darwin to Jackson Pollock and Mick Jagger). "Modern" thought defines an outlook that grounds human history, social organization, and the human condition in certain essential personal qualities which are, happily, perfecting themselves over time. Modernism proposes that the human capacity for reason, justice, and enlightened knowledge about the world is gradually becoming clearer and more defined, and with those changes, modern society is becoming an increasingly pleasant place to live: modern governments are fairer; technology more capable; capitalist systems, though prone to hard times, are better and more efficient than the older ones they replace; and scientific knowledge is superior to superstition, mysticism, and bunk. Modernists also assume that the greatest share of progress in the development of those personal qualities and the social products they engender has fallen on the shoulders of the Occidental West, and in particular, its ruling elites. It is thus the duty of those elites to inspire progress elsewhere in the world as best they can. Though this is not an easy task, it is nonetheless a burden modern nations must undertake, even (as critics say) if it means establishing huge colonial empires, stigmatizing and exploiting women, minorities, and other less modern types, and making oneself very rich and influential in the process. In fact, the myth of "progress" provided an immense carpet under which all voices of discontent emanating from the less modern quarter could be quickly and easily swept. In short, modernists maintain that being modern is a fundamentally good and desirable thing for anyone who wants to perfect their innate cognitive and moral potentials (which everyone does, whether they realize it or not).