Defining Postmodernism is un-Postmodern itself, seeing as Postmodernism aims to debase all perceptions of "truth", highlighting its subjectivity and inside-contradiction.
I'll post my notes for you, Simon <3 lol
While Modernists presented fragmentation as something tragic, symbolic of loss and mourning, Postmodernists relish the idea of fragmentation. Modernists upheld the idea that works of art provide unity, meaning and coherence; Postmodernists promote reflexivity, self-consciousness, fragmentation, discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanised subject.
Postmodernist thinkers address and readdress present situations and interrogate the ways of “knowing the present”. In other words, Postmodernists question the idea of “truth”. Postmodernism was a rebellion against Modernism, embracing popular culture and appropriating Modernist works into new pieces of art. Postmodernism incorporates:
• Appreciation of diversity and plurality. This means that Postmodern texts promote the expression of voices other than those of the dominant social groups.
• Flexibility in the construction, style and format of texts. Rigid obedience to the accepted rules of a genre (or type of text) is not required. Postmodern texts combine different styles and formats.
• A critical attitude towards an “all-knowing” text or education/social elite. The idea that any text can reflect a concrete (solid or absolute) truth about all human beings or reality is changed by postmodern texts.
• The obvious acknowledgement that texts are not “real”, but are reflections of the composer’s “reality” which is not necessarily true for everyone. The composer incorporates devices or techniques to ensure that the responder is aware that the text is a creative work.
An excellent example of a Postmodernist work is Shrek, the movie. It demonstrates a “re-think” of traditional fairy stories and “normal” expectations of a romance. The prince is not the hero of the story; the princess is not passive and traditionally beautiful; the hero is rather an ugly ogre who uses earwax for candles.
Specific Characteristics of Postmodernism
• Irony
o Meaning something different to what you say
o Knowing and cynical
• Cynicism
o Our postmodern knowledge has given us the power to “see through” things: we know that the media are all constructions, and that we cannot trust media products to represent reality truthfully. We can see that we are controlled by family, church, education and other institutions. If nothing is certain, and if the corporate powers that control our lives are too strong, this can lead to the sense of powerlessness sometimes evoked by postmodern texts.
• Knowingness
o Postmodernism is built on countless theories about society, the media, knowledge of the world. However, we are reminded constantly that there is no ultimate way of making sense of the world. Postmodernism is comfortable with lack of certainty.
• Pleasure
o With our knowledge, uncertainty and powerlessness, it is left to us to live “in the moment” to play, and to celebrate our limited power to be what we want to be. Uncertainty is a freedom from limitations. The feeling that there are no boundaries, that we are in a state of change and expansion leads to exciting experimentation. Playfulness of design, use of puzzles and false leads, it is an important feature of many Modernist texts.
• Blurring the boundaries
o Before postmodernism, aesthetic products could be classified into discrete areas: fiction, fact, high culture, low culture, Westerns, musicals, documentaries, plays, films, operas, pop music and so on. Postmodernism likes to blue these boundaries and create hybrids.
• Reality
o Postmodernism is often a debate about reality and identity. If the world is entirely questionable and constructed, what are we left with? The reality question also deals with “humanness”. Replicants are near human because so many human characteristics have been incorporated into their construction that telling the difference is a tease. Conversely, today it is possible to import machine features into human experience and bodies to such an extent that the conventional limits of the body are now in question.
Techniques
• “Postmodernism operates as a catchcry to describe the whole condition of the world in the late 20th century. It is resolutely diverse and multiple, but also historical, and therefore acknowledges the heritage of its own critical culture (modernism) and defines itself by what it is not. Some key concept are:
o Death of enlightenment’s grand narratives of truth and order
o Death of the authority of the canon, and its power to control discourse
o Death of the individual and the stable self
o The birth of global communities
o The reign of poly vocality
o The loss of the “real” through the birth of technology and its simulations.
o Tendency to be non-traditional and anti-authoritarian.
• Self-referentiality
• Pastiche
o Appropriation (borrowing) and combination of different cultural elements into a new form. In all kinds of appropriation, the original sign/signifier makes links with other texts.
• Self-reflexivity
o In order to disrupt the reading process, postmodern texts explore their own textual nature. Authors and composers utilise a range of self-reflexive devices to break illusion and to engage the reader in the process of making the meaning of the text, rather than simply receiving it. The responder becomes a “producer” rather than “consumer”. Frame, parody, pastiche, appropriation, metatext (text within a text) disrupted gender and disruption (intrusion, broken time frames etc) all serve to turn the text in on itself, drawing attention to itself as a text rather than reality.
