Postmodernism

"[16] From an opposing perspective, media theorist Dick Hebdige criticized the vagueness of the term, enumerating a long list of otherwise unrelated concepts that people have designated as postmodernism, from "the décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear armageddon and the "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything that could signify all of those things was "a buzzword".

[17] All this notwithstanding, scholar Hans Bertens offers the following: If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense.

[22] In philosophy, education, history, politics, and many other fields, it encourages critical re-examination of established institutions and social norms, embracing diversity, and breaking down disciplinary boundaries.

[36] In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell, president of St. Stephen's College and also an Episcopal priest, published Postmodernism and Other Essays, which marks the first use of the term to describe an historical period following modernity.

[45] In the mid-1970s, the American sociologist Daniel Bell provided a general account of the postmodern as an effectively nihilistic response to modernism's alleged assault on the Protestant work ethic and its rejection of what he upheld as traditional values.

[51][3] Their stance against modernist poetry – and Olson's Heideggerian orientation – were influential in the identification of postmodernism as a polemical position opposed to the rationalist values championed by the Enlightenment project.

[3] The literary critic Irving Howe, for instance, denounced postmodern literature for being content to merely reflect, rather than actively attempt to refashion, what he saw as the "increasingly shapeless" character of contemporary society.

Taking the Black Mountain poets an exemplary instance of the new postmodern type, Hassan celebrates its Nietzschean playfulness and cheerfully anarchic spirit, which he sets off against the high seriousness of modernism.

[3][53] (Yet, from another perspective, Friedrich Nietzsche's attack on Western philosophy and Martin Heidegger's critique of metaphysics posed deep theoretical problems not necessarily a cause for aesthetic celebration.

[3] Jenckes, much influenced by the American architect Robert Venturi,[55] celebrated a plurality of forms and encourages participation and active engagement with the local context of the built environment.

[e] The philosopher Israel Scheffler, for instance, argued that the ever-expanding body of scientific knowledge embodies a sort of "moral principle" protecting society from its authoritarian and tribal tendencies.

[76] The French political philosophers Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry began a series of responses to this interpretation of postmodernism, and these inspired the physicist Alan Sokal to submit a deliberately nonsensical paper to a postmodernist journal, where it was accepted and published in 1996.

[93] The Judson dancers "[stripped] dance of its theatrical conventions such as virtuoso technique, fanciful costumes, complex storylines, and the traditional stage [and] drew on everyday movements (sitting, walking, kneeling, and other gestures) to create their pieces, often performing them in ordinary spaces.

According to scholar David Herwitz, American writers such as John Barth (who had controversially declared that the novel was "exhausted" as a genre), Donald Barthelme, and Thomas Pynchon responded in various ways to the stylistic innovations of Finnegans Wake and the late work of Samuel Beckett.

[113][114] Across musical traditions, postmodernism can be identified through several core characteristics: genre mixing; irony, humor, and self-parody; "surface" exploration with less concern for formal structure than in modernist approaches; and a return to tonality.

[116] In 2023, music critic Andy Cush described Talking Heads as "New York art-punks" whose "blend of nervy postmodernism and undeniable groove made them one of the defining rock bands of the late 1970s and '80s.

"[117] Media theorist Dick Hebdige, examining the "Road to Nowhere" music video in 1989, said the group "draw eclectically on a wide range of visual and aural sources to create a distinctive pastiche or hybrid 'house style' which they have used since their formation in the mid-1970s deliberately to stretch received (industrial) definitions of what rock/pop/video/Art/ performance/audience are", calling them "a properly postmodernist band.

[120] Her self-aware constructs of gender and identity, and classic film references in music videos for "Material Girl" (1984) and "Express Yourself" (1989), made her a favorite of cultural theorists, who saw her as "enacting postmodernist models of subjectivity.

[128] Poststructuralists, like structuralists, start from the assumption that people's identities, values, and economic conditions determine each other as parts of a common whole, rather than having intrinsic properties that can be understood in isolation.

Drawing upon some of the technical vocabulary of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Baudrillard argued that social production had shifted from creating real objects to instead producing signs and symbols.

[145][i] By "metanarratives", Lyotard meant such overarching narrative frameworks as those provided by Christianity, G. W. F. Hegel, and Karl Marx that unite and determine our basic sense of our place and significance in the world.

[186] Jane Jacobs's 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities,[187] was a sustained critique of urban planning as it had developed within modernism,[188] and played a major role in turning public opinion against modernist planners, notably Robert Moses.

He notes that the typology should be considered "provisional and fallible [yet] not entirely arbitrary", having met two main criteria: each is an approach taken by more than one theologian, and each "believes itself to be responding to, rejecting, or passing through modernity, not inhabiting it.

"[196] One manifestation of postmodernism in fashion explored alternatives to conventional concepts of elegance: Rei Kawakubo’s Spring/Summer 1997 collection featured "dresses asymmetrically padded with goose down, creating bumps in unexpected areas of the body".

As these styles gained mainstream popularity, critics claim they lost their deeper meaning: "the adoption of surface attributes offers the frisson of rebellion without a commitment to a subcultural lifestyle.

Editor Corin Hughes-Stanton concluded, "Post-Modernism' is an attitude that takes the form of a creative response to unfolding developments in the socio-economic sphere; it is a sign of active engagement rather than an academic retreat from its commercial and professional concerns.

Swift's success "suggests a significant shift from deconstructive to reconstructive positions regarding the self and its surroundings", noting that her "post-postmodern engagement, enthusiasm and sincerity" appeared to be "somewhat superficial, sociopathic, and couched in fabulation.

[207][208][209] A small group of critics has put forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles Lipovetsky (hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud (altermodern), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism).

[citation needed] Writing in 2022, Steven Connor argues that, despite continuing reports of its death or imminent demise, postmodernism has instead undergone a kind of disappearance into our culture by way of assimilation.

According to Connor, postmodernism in the 2020s is a sensibility that has been integrated into everyday life, having been subject to a considerable degree of shifting, perhaps temporarily, from irony, pluralism and ambivalence to urgency, indignation, and reductive absolutism.