Postmodernism

Written and Compiled by: Arslan Haider

Outline:
 Brief History of Postmodernism
 Manifestations in Different Fields
1. Architecture
2. Art
3. Music
4. Literature
5. Philosophy
 Some Important Philosophers
1. Lyotard
2. Jacques Derrida
3. Michel Foucault
 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
 Deconstruction
 Foucault Concept of Power
 Concept of Episteme in Foucault’s Archaeology
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Brief History of Postmodernism:

Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western
philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by
broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general
suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role
of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and
economic power.
Postmodernism is largely a reaction against
the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period
 in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th
through the 19th century).

Key Points/Debates:
1) There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and
properties are logically independent of human beings—of their minds,
their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques.
Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such
reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is
a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language.

2) The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians

can, in principle, be objectively true or false. The postmodern denial
of this viewpoint—which follows from the rejection of an objective natural
reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing
as Truth.

3) Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more specialized
tools provided by science and technology, human beings are likely to
change themselves and their societies for the better. It is reasonable to
expect that future societies will be more humane, more just,
more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now.
Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith in science and
technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many
postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific
and technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for
killing on a massive scale in World War II. Some go so far as to say
that science and technology—and even reason and logic—are
inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used
by evil people, especially during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress
others.

4) Reason and logic are universally valid—i.e., their laws are the same for,
or apply equally to, any thinker and any domain of knowledge. For
postmodernists, reason and logic too are merely conceptual constructs
and are therefore valid only within the established intellectual
traditions in which they are used.

5) There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes,

or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth
 rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists
insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are
completely socially determined.

6) Language refers to and represents a reality outside itself. According to

postmodernists, language is not such a “mirror of nature,” Inspired
by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,
postmodernists claim that language is semantically self-
contained, or self-referential:
the meaning of a word is not a static thing in the world or even an idea
in the mind but rather a range of contrasts and differences with the
meanings of other words. The postmodern view of language and
discourse is due largely to the French philosopher and literary
theorist Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), the originator and leading
practitioner of deconstruction.

7) Human beings can acquire knowledge about natural reality, and this
knowledge can be justified ultimately on the basis of evidence or
principles that are, or can be, known immediately, intuitively, or
otherwise with certainty. Postmodernists reject philosophical
foundationalism—the attempt, perhaps best exemplified by the 17th-
century French philosopher René Descartes’s dictum cogito, ergo sum (“I
think, therefore I am”), to identify a foundation of certainty on which to
build the edifice of empirical (including scientific) knowledge.

8) It is possible, at least in principle, to construct general theories that

explain many aspects of the natural or social world within a given domain
of knowledge—e.g., a general theory of human history, such as dialectical
materialism. Postmodernists dismiss this notion as a pipe dream and
indeed as symptomatic of an unhealthy tendency
within Enlightenment discourses to adopt “totalizing” systems of thought
(as the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas called them) or grand
“metanarratives” of human biological, historical, and social
development (as the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard claimed).

Manifestations in Different Fields:

1) Architecture:
As with many cultural movements, one of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible
ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional, and formalized, shapes and spaces of
the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics; styles
collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space
abound.
2) Arts:
 Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art,
postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction. A
postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and high art forms.
3) Music:
Postmodern music is both a musical style (Electric Guitar playing style) and a
musical condition. As a musical style, postmodern music contains characteristics
of postmodern art—that is, art after modernism (see Modernism in Music).
4) Literature:
Postmodern literature argues for expansion, the return of reference, the celebration of
fragmentation rather than the fear of it, and the role of reference itself in literature.
5) Philosophy:
Postmodern philosophy is a radical criticism of Western philosophy, because it rejects the
universalizing tendencies of philosophy. It applies to movements that include post-
structuralism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, neo-relativism, neo-marxism, gender
studies and literary theory. It emerged beginning in the 1950s as a rejection of doctrines
such as positivism, Darwinism, materialism and objective idealism.

Reference Link: (for other fields also)

https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Manifestations_of_Postmodernism
Some Important Philosophers:
1) Lyotard:
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was a French philosopher whose best known work—often to
his chagrin—was his 1979 The Postmodern Condition.
He gave the concept of End of Metanarrative in Postmodernism .In which he says that
metanarratives have ended like Marxism of Karl Marx, now the world consists of small realities
for short time only.
2) Jacques Derrida:
Jacques Derrida, (born July 15, 1930, El Biar, Algeria—died October 8, 2004, Paris, France),
French philosopher whose critique of Western philosophy and analyses of the nature
of language, writing, and meaning were highly controversial yet immensely influential in much
of the intellectual world in the late 20th century.
3) Michel Foucault:
He was a French philosopher. He defined postmodernity with reference to two guiding
concepts: Discourse and Power. He said that Power is Everywhere; Concept of Decentralization
of Power.

Deconstruction:
Deconstruction, form of philosophical and literary analysis, derived mainly from work begun in
the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that questions the
fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close
examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts.
 In the 1970s the term was applied to work by Derrida, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and Barbara
Johnson, among other scholars. In the 1980s it designated more loosely a range of radical
theoretical enterprises in diverse areas of the humanities and social sciences, including—in
addition to philosophy and literature—law, psychoanalysis, architecture, anthropology,
theology, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, political theory, historiography, and film theory.
The oppositions challenged by deconstruction, which have been inherent in Western philosophy
since the time of the ancient Greeks, are characteristically “binary” and “hierarchical,” involving
a pair of terms in which one member of the pair is assumed to be primary or fundamental, the
other secondary or derivative. Examples include nature and culture, speech and writing, mind
and body, presence and absence, inside and outside, literal and metaphorical, intelligible and
sensible, and form and meaning, among many others. To “deconstruct” an opposition is to
explore the tensions and contradictions between the hierarchical ordering assumed (and
sometimes explicitly asserted) in the text and other aspects of the text’s meaning, especially
those that are indirect or implicit or that rely on figurative or performative uses of language.

Structuralism and Post structuralism:

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism are two different literary movements.

Structuralism proposes that the world should be understood through structures. For example,
let us take language. A language should be understood as a structure because the
individual words gain their meaning due to the existence of the structure. Structuralists
emphasized the idea that truth and reality were to be identified within the structure.
Objects are defined by the set of relationships of which they are part and not by the qualities
possessed by them taken in isolation.

Post-Structuralism, on the other hand, criticized this foundation of structuralism. According to

Post-Structuralism, there were no realities or truths; all such elements have to be understood as
constructions.
Objects are not defined by the set of relationships of which they are part, but by the qualities
possessed by them taken in isolation.

Foucault Concept of Power:

Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of 'episodic' or
'sovereign' acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as dispersed and pervasive. 'Power
is everywhere' and 'comes from everywhere' so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure
(Foucault 1998: 63). It is a kind of ‘Meta-power’ or ‘regime of truth’ that pervades society, and
which is in constant flux and negotiation.
Concept of Episteme in Foucault’s Archaeology:
Episteme:

Episteme is a philosophical term that refers to a principled system of understanding;

scientific knowledge.

Episteme, according to Foucault (1970) are implicit 'rules of formation' which govern what
constitutes legitimate forms of knowledge for a particular cultural period. They are the
underlying codes of a culture that govern its language, its logic, its schemas of
perception, its values and its techniques, etc.

It is the parallel relationship between various discourses of a given time which Foucault
describes as the episteme: ‘the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the
discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly
formalized systems’.

Archaeology:

The definition of Archaeology is the study of human history, particularly the culture of
historic and prehistoric people through the discovery and exploration of remains, structures
and writings.

Archeology is the term Foucault gives to his method, which seeks to describe discourses in
the conditions of their emergence and transformation rather than in their deeper, hidden
meaning, their propositional or logical content, or their expression of an individual or
collective psychology.

Article from Paradigmshift (Title: Postmodernism)

Introduction
The sense of the world is perceived by us through different narratives.
These narratives are created through words, structures,
sentences, ideas, beliefs, and identities, all combining
knowledge provided to us through different social interactions and
exchanges between individuals.

After being widely accepted, these narratives shape into theories, but
there can’t be a meta-theory or a meta-narrative with its
totalizing essence, as the ideas and beliefs established are never
eternal. They die and are altered with time, with individuals
bringing in new ideas and narratives as a mode of progress on the
basis of new social interactions. This is the deconstruction of ideas;
ideas submerged in a never-ending loop of deconstruction and
reconstruction. This is what we call the constructivist approach, quite
similar in its dimensions to the theory of postmodernism.

Critical in nature and identified as a cultural movement against

modernism, postmodernism rejects the realization and the legacy of
enlightenment by mounting powerful arguments against essential
elements of modern philosophy. Popularly defined as the theory of
‘unbelief about metanarratives’, it is a theory tending to help make
sense of the abstract identities of ideas, that through a
deconstruction of existing thoughts and reconstruction of new
ones, individuals can progress and evolve.

It is a theory that criticizes modernity and its dichotomies, a

theory that debates essentially the concrete nature of scientific
reasoning through its negation of absolute knowledge and meta-
narratives. It is a theory regarded as widely popular in the discourse of
politics and international relations, for what are the concepts of war
and peace and security and alliance, if not abstract beliefs upon which
the international system rests?

Postmodernism Theory
Initiated in the late 1960-70s by a group of French philosophers,
notably including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Lyotard, and
others, the post-modern theory is a critical theory as it aims to provide
a detailed and radical criticism of modern philosophy by finding
roots in the ideas described by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Marx.

It’s the theory that deconstructs the previous knowledge by criticizing

it and then reconstructs new thoughts through new individual
interactions. As the name suggests, it is the theory that came after
the modernism theory and hence is regarded as the approach which
heavily criticizes modern ideas and modern philosophy.

A Critique of Postmodernism
Postmodernism, in its essence, rejects the universal acceptance of
modernism by rejecting the enlightenment with its criticism drawn
upon the basis of the enlightenment’s modern
universalism and objectivity of reason. Instead of modern
objective truth, it encourages subjectivity in the interpretation of the
truth.

It criticizes the ideas about reality and truth, reason and

experience, equality and liberty, peace and justice, and beauty
and progress by saying that ‘truth’ is just a myth and ‘reason’ is
just a white male eurocentric construct. ‘Equality’ just serves
as the mask for oppression. As for ‘peace’ and ‘progress’, they
are, according to postmodernists, just reminders of power and
exploitation.

According to postmodernism, liberal capitalism is just another

form of slavery in which the proletariats and the employees are the
slaves. Similarly, the theory favors the idea of subjective
interpretation over the idea of absolute knowledge, paving the way to
Derrida’s thought of there being no ‘coherent center.’

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Postmodernism in International Relations

The sphere of international relations has long been dominated by
theories such as realism and liberalism which exert assumptions to
make sense of the international system and to understand why states
behave the way they do. With the passage of time, new debates came
forward in this field such as the neo-neo debate and critical
theories.

Postmodernism is among those debatable approaches but a new one

that was initiated in the 1980s for critically analyzing the nature of
the international world and relations which is solely based on
‘power’.
Being a radical critique of modern politics, the postmodern
international theory rejects the brands of realism and
liberalism and is skeptical of Marxism by criticizing their absolute
reality-based agendas of peace, conflict, equality, and
democracy. It has developed a critical attitude, fundamentally
questioning the ways of representation of dominance.

Postmodernism sees the international system in the form of webbed

power relations between the countries in the international arena. It
rejects how modern power politics legitimatize marginalizing
the knowledge of distinct ideas. Thus setting up a grand narrative
upon which the whole system needs to forward.

Anti-capitalistic and against globalization, the postmodern theory

provides a way for the dissolution of current social identities on the
basis of which the international system is constructed and instead
emphasizes the role of new identities in order to understand
the nature of the global system outside the boundaries of the
existing realistic and liberalistic narratives.

Postmodernism theory further challenges international relations and

the international system on central epistemological and ontological
grounds of world politics. Prevailing theories and approaches tend to
view the international arena as anarchical in nature with states as the
major subjects concerned with sovereignty, violence, war, and
conflicts. Postmodernism theory is bent on deconstructing the
prevailing problematic socially constructed identities by re-
conceptualizing the political imagery through alternative
conceptual language in order to think beyond the ideas of sovereignty
as well beyond the confines of modern philosophy.

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Analysis
The entire thesis of postmodernism is the antithesis of
modernism. After the theological sun was blocked by the dark cloud
of rationalistic philosophies, religious philosophy lost itself in science.
Science declared itself as the be-all and end-all of knowledge thus
overshadowing individual perspectives and leading to the objectivity of
ideas.

Later, postmodernism was born, carrying the guilt of its

‘modern’ mother. So far, postmodernism has been successful in its
mission embedded in the vision of identifying the flaws of the
modern era and bringing them out on the table by providing criticism
with much audacity.

Although its assumptions are not extensively accepted and

adopted, it is a theory nonetheless, which has proven that no
narrative, no theory is immune to criticism, not even the theory
based on reason, facts and science. It is to be said that any theory or
any narrative that claims to be universal i.e. outside the parameters of
criticism automatically drills holes into itself.