Postmodernism......WHAT THE HELL!!! (1 Viewer)

[enter~space~cap]

In my first history exte3nsion class yesterday i was given a sheet on postmodernism and was told to read it..

.....after i gone through the whole thing, i still have NO idea what the hell postmodernism is....i dont even know what the meaning of the word is.....

.....can someone please gimmie a link that has a simple explanation on postmodernism, at least it includes an understandable meaning and is written in a form where it can be read by normal human beings.

 

[MiuMiu]

Postmodernism is a general concept (that is, not just related to history) that purports the notion that fact is not possible.

In the historical sense of the term, postmodernist historians say that historical objectivity can never be achieved, that we can never fully know the truth, as the historian's background and upbringing biases them so they can never be objective in collecting the 'truth'.

A very primitve explanantion but that is the general gist.

 

[AsyLum]

Originally posted by enter~space~cap
In my first history exte3nsion class yesterday i was given a sheet on postmodernism and was told to read it..

.....after i gone through the whole thing, i still have NO idea what the hell postmodernism is....i dont even know what the meaning of the word is.....

.....can someone please gimmie a link that has a simple explanation on postmodernism, at least it includes an understandable meaning and is written in a form where it can be read by normal human beings.

hmm not fact as soo much as one absolute and general truth, rather they are constructed with each and every persons own perspectives and as such the search for the "truth" by historians really is a folly, due to this unintentional bias which is purported by our individual perspectives as well as the lack of language to fully comprehend and express the 'true' meaning....

basically post modernism is just stating you cant have a truth, and everyones opinion is on equal grounding...and thus revisionism ...

 

[HannieStar]

it essentially means that there is not an absolute point of reference about anything- an event, meaning of a poem etc etc, in this case perceptions or opinions about the past- and that therefore objectivity cannot be achieved as each individual's perception is constructed by their context thus effecting their perception rendering objectoive study of history and finding the absolute' truth is not possible-

kind of hahaha

 

[MiuMiu]

Originally posted by AsyLum

basically post modernism is just stating you cant have a truth, and everyones opinion is on equal grounding...and thus revisionism ...

Thats actually post structuralist.

Post modernism doesn't believe in one truth.

 

[tink 18]

It is against the point of postmodernism to define it! But what you could say is that it is against a single unified way of looking at the world

The 'post' in 'postmodernism' means "after", so 'postmodernism' means "after modernism"
modernism has 4 major beliefs which are:
* people share a certain level of experience and/or beliefs in common with each other, regardless of spatio-temporal location. There is a universal system of meaning.
*Transcendant meaning and truth can be achieved
*reality can be apprahended and comprahended
*ideas and concepts are determinate.

so postmodernists believe that allknowledge is situated; we are influenced by our personal context and we cannot seperate ourselfs from this

The postmodernist approach to history is that we should not look for connections, causes/effects, etc. In other words, you should not write extended historical narratives, because the broader the historical subject, the more assumptions, confusions, language mistakes, etc there are to make the whole narrative meaningless.

I hope this helped and made sense, postmodernists excel inconfusing you, they enjoy being obscure!

 

[Aaron1911]

Postmodernism is the idea that you cannot have one absolute truth. You will have many different truths about the same event/person etc. Therefore when a historian writes about something, he/she will be affected by their own bias. Their 'history' is not looked at as what actually happened but a narrative of what the historian think may have happened.

 

[MiuMiu]

Originally posted by tink 18

The 'post' in 'postmodernism' means "after", so 'postmodernism' means "after modernism"
modernism has 4 major beliefs which are:
* people share a certain level of experience and/or beliefs in common with each other, regardless of spatio-temporal location. There is a universal system of meaning.
*Transcendant meaning and truth can be achieved
*reality can be apprahended and comprahended
*ideas and concepts are determinate.

And this post in itself is something that modernists rebut, saying that postmodernists are all about fancy and confusing jargon and not about historical research.

 

[KarmaKitten]

god.. i feel your pain.
but my first ext history was a bit different, just analysing this ancient history historian. ugh, i hate ancient history!
Im a modern history person

 

[Bl@h]

amongst all this talk of postmodernism, would some one care to define the difference between post structuralism and postmodernism. I was under the belief that poststructuralism was just a branch of postmodernism, and considering that in a sense postmodernism has created a pretence by which there can be no further historical/intellectual movement by using the guise of relativity. Any way instead of getting myself more confused by going into that if any one could please tell me the difference would be much appriciated! thanks

 

[lazybum]

cute !!!!! your first history extension class - get ready for a fantastic and believe me STRENUOUS yr ahead
( i did understand that correctly? you are in yr 12 2004???????

 

[Bl@h]

thanks heaps for that!! needed I have to say both theories are utter BS and they r so hypocrytical but meh just my view! thanks for helping

 

[AsyLum]

Originally posted by Ms 12
Thats actually post structuralist.

Post modernism doesn't believe in one truth.

err yeah thats what i sed.....CANT have a truth....

 

[NeverSummer]

Originally posted by Whitey
Poststructuralism emerged as a theory of language.

What people call 'negative postmodernism' is in fact 'poststructuralism'.

'Positive postmodernism' is true postmodernism - it's post "Modernism", building and referring to modernist theories of art, literature, language, etc. It builds on previous theories, rather than destroying them.

A brief overview of poststructuralism... There are infinite numbers of meanings for any given sentence or word. This means that primary sources are irrelevant. It also means secondary sources are too. It means a history book doesn't actually record history, because everyone who reads it takes a different meaning from it. And since there can only be one true history, and everyone takes different meanings from recorded history, the whole school of modern history is irrelevant too. So we cannot ever know what happened in the past, and shouldn't try to write it down.

The main problem with poststructuralism is that it's completely unbelivable, and "poststructuralist/postmodernist historians" are writing stuff which, according to their theory, has no meaning, so why write it?

I'm still not getting the differences.....
Is poststructuralism really really generally like a more extreme postmodernism? and concerned more with language and its inherent bias?

 

[AsyLum]

Post-modernism and all its little variants = HEADACHE!!!

 

[gloria*]

HAHA asylum. let us pretend to be entirely beyond it all now.

ps NeverSummer YES-- the writers of post-structuralist works and theory are more concerned with language, though more than just its inherent bias. authority, power, layers within deconstruction et cetera. i read this FUCKED UP historiographical post-structuralist thing the other day conerning analysis of what's NOT in texts (via assumption of value & context) uggghhhh

 

[amyb]

Post structuralism defines that there cannot be a single truth because any 'history' that is written down is done so by one person. This person will comprehend different meanings to words/sentences than the next person. It is about connotations and such in writing that mean that anything i read and understand to be a certain way, you could read and get a different meaning from it. Therefore, every source ever written is useless because the only person who knows what it truly means is the person who wrote it.
Post modernists believe that there is no single truth, that ecery source contains bias, as we humans cannot escape our contexts, and thus history is FICTION!!!