What is “Postmodernism”?

Modern:Linear progress in historyBoundaries, social class,

race and genderFormality, emphasis on

authoritarian perspectives

Scientific rationality, unified theory of progress

Essentialism, seeking “real” essences

Grand narrativePrescriptionNormative

Postmodern:“Historicity”, historicization,

socio-cultural locatedness of moments in history

Critical study of class, race, and gender; uses other perspectives

Intertextuality, self-reflexivity, montage, pastiche

Signs, image, reproductive social order

Local accountsDescriptionGenerative, Geneaological,

Archaeological

First, what is “modern”? Depends on Discipline.

The break away from 19th-century values is often classified as modernism, and carries the connotations of transgression and rebellion. However, the last twenty years has seen a change in this attitude towards focusing upon a series of unresolvable philosophical and social debates, such as race, gender and class. Rather than challenging and destroying cultural definitions, as does modernism, post-modernism resists the very idea of boundaries. It regards distinctions as undesirable and even impossible, so that an almost Utopian world, free from all constraints, becomes possible.

(The Prentice Hall Guide to English Literature, Marion Wynne-Davies, ed. First Prentice Hall edition, copyright 1990 by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 812-13)

“Post-modernism has many interpretations and no single definition is adequate. Different disciplines have participated in the post-modernist movement in varying ways … in architecture, traditional limits have become indistinguishable, so that what is commonly on the outside of a building is placed within, and vice versa. In literature, writers adopt a self-conscious intertextuality sometimes verging on pastiche, which denies the formal propriety of authorship and genre. In commercial terms post-modernism may be seen as part of the growth of consumer capitalism into multinational and technological identity.”

"Its all-embracing nature thus makes post-modernism as relevant to street events as to the “avant garde”, and is one of the major focal points in the emergence of interdisciplinary and cultural studies."

(The Prentice Hall Guide to English Literature, Marion Wynne-Davies, ed. First Prentice Hall edition, copyright 1990 by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 812-13)

…postmodernity (involves) the end of an overarching belief in scientific rationality and a unitary theory of progress, the replacement of empiricist theories of representation and truth, and increased emphasis on the importance of the unconscious, on free-floating signs and images, and a plurality of viewpoints … a shift from a `productive' to a ‘reproductive’ social order, in which simulations and models -- and more generally, signs -- increasingly constitute the world, so that any distinction between the appearance and the ‘real’ is lost. Lyotard, for example, speaks especially of the replacement of any *grand narrative* [les grands recits] by more local `accounts' of reality as distinctive of postmodernism and postmodernity. Baudrillard talks of the `triumph of signifying culture.'

(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)

“Another feature of postmodernism seen by some theorists is that the boundaries between `high' and `low' culture tend to be broken down, for example, motion pictures, jazz, and rock music (see Lash, 1990). According to many theorists, postmodernist cultural movements, which often overlap with new political tendencies and social movements in contemporary society, are particularly associated with the increasing importance of new class fractions, for example, ‘expressive professions’ within the service class (see Lash and Urry, 1987)."

(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)

Among the characteristic gestures of postmodernist thinking is a refusal of the `totalizing' or ‘essentialist’ tendencies of earlier theoretical systems, especially classic Marxism, with their claims to referential truth, scientificity, and belief in progress.

Postmodernism, on the contrary, is committed to modes of thinking and representation which emphasize fragmentations, discontinuities and incommensurable aspects of a given object, from intellectual systems to architecture.

GETncm/justsaycust-recrate-itemcommunittg/stores/dtg/stores/d-favorite-lis

Postmodernist analysis is often marked by forms of writing that are more literary, certainly more self-reflexive, than is common in critical writing - the critic as self-conscious creator of new meanings upon the ground of the object of study, showing that object no special respect. It prefers montage to perspective, intertextuality to referentiality, ‘bits-as-bits’ to unified totalities. It delights in excess, play, carnival, asymmetry…

Modern:Linear progress in historyBoundaries, social class,

race and genderFormality, emphasis on

authoritarian perspectives

Scientific rationality, unified theory of progress

Essentialism, seeking “real” essences

Grand narrativePrescriptionNormative

Postmodern:“Historicity”, historicization,

socio-cultural locatedness of moments in history

Critical study of class, race, and gender; uses other perspectives

Intertextuality, self-reflexivity, montage, pastiche

Signs, image, reproductive social order

Local accountsDescriptionGenerative, Geneaological,

Archaeological

Postmodern histories of education that critique concepts like “truancy”

and “at risk”

Postmodern treatments of medicine, psychology, and incarceration

Postmodern treatments of the history of sexuality

Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon, "The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the

Postmodern State of Knowledge”, Journal of Social History, Volume 36, (Spring 2003) Issue 3

Refutes how microhistorians try to link up small units of research to a larger macro-context

Wants historians to cut ties with grand narratives

Proposes a “singularization of history”

Interested in the details, nuances of events, and broadening objects of research (personal documents, etc.)

Sumit Sarkar, "Post-modernism and the Writing of History." Studies in History 15, no. 2 (1999): 293-322.

Interested in life histories; people of lower strata and their convictions, ideals

Radical departure from conventional focus on “leaders”

Concern for movements between public and private spheres

Lived experience, daily routine, social patterns and aesthetic preferences of different levels of society

Individual life histories shed new light on political and economic situations

The question of nationalism at the beginning of the 21st Century

The 1980’s and 1990’s see a change in focus, away from “unilinear teleologies of nationalism and modernity”

Beyond assumptions of homogeneous nationality

Beyond imperialist and colonialist attitudes

…but what should be the status of “heroic emancipatory narratives”?

Joan Wallach Scott, "The Campaign Against Political Correctness:  What's Really at Stake“ in PC Wars : politics and theory in the academy, Jeffrey

Williams, New York : Routledge, 1995, also in"The P.C. Wars; After The Wall" Radical History Number 54, Fall 1992

"The new populations in the universities bring with them histories of their own that have not been part of the traditional curriculum; their presence challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about what counts as knowledge and how it is produced."

Communities of difference, challenging hierarchies of power

Multiculturalism, pluralism, ethnicities

Does this mean we have to sacrifice standards or evaluative practices?

An example of postmodernism on campus?VSU Cultural Diversity Council

http://www.valdosta.edu/eopma/diversityCouncil.shtml

“Achieving Excellence through Diversity”The mission of the Valdosta State University

Cultural Diversity Council is to work with faculty, staff and students in the university community to create an environment that is strengthened and empowered by its diversity. The Council attempts to increase communication, understanding and respect among people of diverse backgrounds and addresses some of the important systemic issues of multiculturalism facing our society, but more importantly those of our own campus.

The major goals of the Council are to:Offer an opportunity for in-depth diversity

training and skills-building.Focus on some of the unique issues that

faculty, students and staff face working with a culturally diverse population.

Create a multicultural environment in which an open, cross-cultural dialogue can occur.

Additional Bibliographic Information• Ball, Stephen J. 1991. Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge, Routledge • Carlen, Pat and Denis Gleeson, Julia Wardhaugh, 1992. Truancy: The Politics of Compulsory Schooling,

Open University Press• Carlen, Pat, 1996. Jigsaw: A Political Criminology of Youth Homelessness, Open University Press • The Economist, July 13, 1999. A Fading Hell. The Economist, vol. 352, issue 8130, following 46, p10-13.• Foucault, Michel, 1986. Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality (Volume 2), Vintage Books USA• Foucault, Michel, 1988. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Vintage

Books USA• Foucault, Michel, 1990. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (History of Sexuality Volume 1) Vintage

Books USA; Reissue edition• Foucault, Michel, 1994. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, Vintage Books

USA; Reprint edition• Foucault, Michel and Alan Sheridan,1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage Books

USA• Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. “The Clash of Civilizations? The Next Pattern of Conflict.” Foreign Affairs,

Summer 93, vol. 72, issue 3, p22-50.• Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996, 3rd edition, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press• Lukcs (Lukacs), Georg, 1972. History and Class Consciousness, The MIT Press• Mottahedeh, Roy P. 1995. The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist’s Critique. Harvard Middle Eastern

and Islamic Review, vol. 2, p1-26.• Olson, Richard, 1995. Science Deified & Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in

Western Culture : From the Early Modern Age Through the Early Romantic Era (2 volumes), University of California Press; Reprint edition

• Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, Intl Specialized Book Service Inc; 2nd edition

• Said, Edward. 2001. The Clash of Ignorance. The Nation, 10/22/2001, vol. 273, issue 12, p. 11-13.• Stars and Stripes. Letters from the Pacific Edition, 10/22/02-10/26/02 http://

www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=&article=12419&archive=true