Definitional issues

The term "Postmodernism" is often used to refer to different, sometimes contradictory concepts.
Conventional definitions include:

 Compact Oxford English Dictionary: "a style and concept in the arts characterized by
distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."[2]
 Merriam-Webster: Either "of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one", or "of,
relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically
characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by
ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)", or, finally "of, relating to, or being a
theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity,
history, or language".[3]
 American Heritage Dictionary: "Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts
against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements
of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: 'It [a roadhouse] is so
architecturally interesting ... with its postmodern wooden booths and sculptural clock.'"[4]

While the term "Postmodern" and its derivatives are freely used, with some uses apparently
contradicting others, those outside the academic milieu have described it as merely a buzzword
that means nothing. Dick Hebdige, in his text "Hiding in the Light", writes:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the
design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a
television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the
layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within
epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the
collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting
disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a
proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes
and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-
centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary
power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the
collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction,
the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies,
broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense
(depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical
regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it
becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current
abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.[5]

British historian Perry Anderson's history of the term and its understanding, "The Origins of
Postmodernity", states that the contradictions are only apparent, and that "postmodernism" as a
category and a phenomenon is important in the analysis of contemporary culture.[6]
In addition to the possible terms given, Kaya Yilmaz presents the idea that when studying this
theory one must remember that there is not one definition, hence the multiple provided. The term
itself does not allow it to own one specific definition, rather it contains specific attributes and
characteristics that can be agreed upon. Yamaz also acknowledges the very important idea that
this idea of postmodernism can and does alter depending on the location on the globe. There are
three reasons behind the lack of concrete definition. One being that the disposition itself, is that
the theory is “anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist”. The idea of postmodernism in its
entirety is not to be clearly defined or predictable. The second reason is that it is a theory that is
contrasting and does not have a specific way of presenting or explaining itself. Finally, the
theory is not even clearly defined by its inventors and researchers. Those scholars who first
founded this ideal intentionally did not give it a clear, concrete diagnosis.[7]

Deconstruction

One of the most popular postmodernist tendencies within aesthetics is deconstruction.

"Deconstruction" is a Derridean approach to textual analysis (typical literary criticism, but
variously applied). Deconstructions work entirely within the studied text to expose and
undermine its frame of references, assumptions, and ideological foundations. [8] Although
Deconstructions can be developed using different methods and techniques, the process typically
involves demonstrating the multiple interpretations of a text and their resulting internal conflicts,
and subversive binary oppositions (e.g. masculine/feminine, old/new). Jacques Derrida's theories
on "Deconstruction" influenced the creation of Deconstructivism, a postmodern architectural
movement characterized by fragmentation, distortion and dislocation of elements such as
structure and envelope. The Indian theorist Gayatri Spivak, described Deconstruction as an
approach fundamental to many different fields of postmodernist thought, including
postcolonialism.[9]

Postmodernism and Structuralism

Structuralism was a broad philosophical movement that developed particularly in France in the
1950s, partly in response to French Existentialism, but is considered by many to be an exponent
of High-Modernism,[by whom?] though its categorization as either a Modernist or Postmodernist
trend is contested. Many Structuralists later moved away from the most strict interpretations and
applications of "structure", and are thus called "Post-structuralists". Though many Post-
structuralists were referred to as Postmodern in their lifetimes, many explicitly rejected the term.
Notwithstanding, Post-structuralism in much American academic literature in the Humanities is
very strongly associated with the broader and more nebulous movement of Postmodernism.
Thinkers most typically linked with Structuralism include anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss,
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, the early writings of
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the early writings of literary theorist Roland Barthes, and the
semiotician Algirdas Greimas. Philosophers commonly referred to as Post-structuralists include
Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze (all of whom began their
careers within a Structuralist framework), Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-François
Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and, sometimes, the American cultural
theorists, critics and intellectuals they influenced (e.g. Judith Butler, Jonathan Crary, John Fiske,
Rosalind Krauss, Hayden White).

Though by no means a unified movement with a set of shared axioms or methodologies, Post-
structuralism emphasizes the ways in which different aspects of a cultural order, from its most
banal material details to its most abstract theoretical exponents, determine one another (rather
than espousing a series of strict, uni-directional, cause and effect relationships – see
Reductionism – or resorting to Epiphenomenalism). Like Structuralism, it places particular focus
on the determination of identities, values and economies in relation to one another, rather than
assuming intrinsic properties or essences of signs or components as starting points. [10] In this
limited sense, there is a nascent Relativism and Constructionism within the French Structuralists
that was consciously addressed by them but never examined to the point of dismantling their
reductionist tendencies. Unlike Structuralists, however, the Post-structuralists questioned the
division between relation and component and, correspondingly, did not attempt to reduce the
subjects of their study to an essential set of relations that could be portrayed with abstract,
functional schemes or mathematical symbols (as in Claude Lévi-Strauss's algebraic formulation
of mythological transformation in "The Structural Study of Myth"[11]).

Post-structuralism

Post-Structuralists generally reject the notion of formulations of “essential relations” in primitive

cultures, languages, or descriptions of psychological phenomena being forms of Aristotelianism,
Rationalism, or Idealism. Another common thread among thinkers associated with the Post-
Structuralist movement is the criticism of the absolutist, quasi-scientific claims of Structuralist
theorists as more reflective of the mechanistic bias [12] inspired by bureaucratization and
industrialization than of the inner-workings of actual primitive cultures, languages or psyches.
Generally, Post-structuralists emphasize the inter-determination and contingency of social and
historical phenomena with each other and with the cultural values and biases of perspective.
Such realities were not to be dissected, in the manner of some Structuralists, as a system of facts
that could exist independently from values and paradigms (either those of the analysts or the
subjects themselves), but to be understood as both causes and effects of each other. [13] For this
reason, most Post-structuralists hold a more open-ended view of function within systems than did
Structuralists and were sometimes accused of circularity and ambiguity. Post-structuralists
countered that, when closely examined, all formalized claims describing phenomena, reality, or
truth, rely on some form or circular reasoning and self-referential logic that is often paradoxical
in nature. Thus, it was important to uncover the hidden patterns of circularity, self-reference and
paradox within a given set of statements rather that feign objectivity, as such an investigation
might allow new perspectives to have influence and new practices to be sanctioned or adopted.
In this latter respect, Post-structuralists were, as a group, continuing the philosophical project
initiated by Martin Heidegger, who saw himself as extending the implications of Friedrich
Nietzsche's work.

Post-structuralist writing tends to connect observations and references from many, widely
varying disciplines into a synthetic view of knowledge and its relationship to experience, the
body, society and economy - a synthesis in which it sees itself as participating. Structuralists,
while also somewhat inter-disciplinary, were more comfortable within departmental boundaries
and often maintained the autonomy of their analytical methods over the objects they analyzed.
Post-structuralists, unlike Structuralists, did not privilege a system of (abstract) "relations" over
the specifics to which such relations were applied, but tended to see the notion of “the relation”
or of systemization itself as part-and-parcel of any stated conclusion rather than a reflection of
reality as an independent, self-contained state or object. If anything, if a part of objective reality,
theorization and systemization to Post-structuralists was an exponent of larger, more nebulous
patterns of control in social orders – patterns that could not be encapsulated in theory without
simultaneously conditioning it. For this reason, certain Post-structural thinkers were also
criticized by more Realist, Naturalist or Essentialist thinkers of anti-intellectualism or anti-
Philosophy. Post-structuralists, in contrast to Structuralists, tend to place a great deal of
skepticism on the independence of theoretical premises from collective bias and the influence of
power, and reject the notion of a "pure" or "scientific" methodology in social analysis, semiotics
or philosophical speculation. No theory, they said – especially when concerning human society
or psychology – was capable of reducing phenomena to elemental systems or abstract patterns,
nor could abstract systems be dismissed as secondary derivatives of a fundamental nature:
systemization, phenomena, and values were part of each other.[citation needed]

Postmodernism and Post-postmodernism

Recently the notions of metamodernism, Post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism"

have been increasingly widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoborek noted in his introduction to a
special issue of the journal Twentieth Century Literature titled "After Postmodernism" that
"declarations of postmodernism's demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group
of critics has put forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture and/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). None of these new theories and labels
have so far gained very widespread acceptance. The exhibition Postmodernism - Style and
Subversion 1970-1990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 24 September 2011 – 15
January 2012) was billed as the first show ever to document postmodernism as a historical
movement.

History of term

The term "Postmodern" was first used around the 1870s. John Watkins Chapman suggested "a
Postmodern style of painting" as a way to move beyond French Impressionism.[14] J. M.
Thompson, in his 1914 article in The Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review), used it
to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion: "The raison d'etre of Post-
Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of Modernism by being thorough in its
criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic
tradition."[15]

In 1917, Rudolf Pannwitz used the term to describe a philosophically-oriented culture. His idea
of post-modernism drew from Friedrich Nietzsche's analysis of modernity and its end results of
decadence and nihilism. Pannwitz's post-human would be able to overcome these predicaments
of the modern human. Contrary to Nietzsche, Pannwitz also included nationalist and mythical
elements in his use of the term.[16]

In 1921 and 1925, Postmodernism had been used to describe new forms of art and music. In
1942 H. R. Hays described it as a new literary form. However, as a general theory for a historical
movement it was first used in 1939 by Arnold J. Toynbee: "Our own Post-Modern Age has been
inaugurated by the general war of 1914-1918."[17]

In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, and led to the
postmodern architecture movement,[18] perhaps also a response to the modernist architectural
movement known as the International Style. Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the re-
emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture,
historical reference in decorative forms, and non-orthogonal angles.

After that, Postmodernism was applied to a whole host of movements, many in art, music, and
literature, that reacted against tendencies in the imperialist phase of capitalism called
"modernism," and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques. [19]
Walter Truett Anderson identifies Postmodernism as one of four typological world views. These
four world views are the Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; the
scientific-rational, in which truth is found through methodical, disciplined inquiry; the social-
traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization; and the
neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual
exploration of the inner self.[20]

Postmodernist ideas in philosophy and the analysis of culture and society expanded the
importance of critical theory and has been the point of departure for works of literature,
architecture, and design, as well as being visible in marketing/business and the interpretation of
history, law and culture, starting in the late 20th century. These developments—re-evaluation of
the entire Western value system (love, marriage, popular culture, shift from industrial to service
economy) that took place since the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of
1968—are described with the term Postmodernity, Influences on postmodern thought, Paul
Lützeler (St. Louis) as opposed to Postmodernism, a term referring to an opinion or movement.
Postmodernism has also been used interchangeably with the term post-structuralism out of which
postmodernism grew, a proper understanding of postmodernism or doing justice to the
postmodernist thought demands an understanding of the poststructuralist movement and the
ideas of its advocates. Post-structuralism resulted similarly to postmodernism by following a
time of structuralism. It is characterized by new ways of thinking through structuralism, contrary
to the original form.[21] "Postmodernist" describes part of a movement; "Postmodern" places it in
the period of time since the 1950s, making it a part of contemporary history.

Influence on art

Architecture

.
The movement of Postmodernism began with architecture, as a response to the perceived
blandness, hostility, and Utopianism of the Modern movement. Modern Architecture, as
established and developed by people such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Philip Johnson,
was focused on the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection, and attempted harmony of form and
function,[22] and dismissal of "frivolous ornament." [23][24] Critics of modernism argued that the
attributes of perfection and minimalism themselves were subjective, and pointed out
anachronisms in modern thought and questioned the benefits of its philosophy.[25] Definitive
postmodern architecture such as the work of Michael Graves and Robert Venturi reject the
notion of a 'pure' form or 'perfect' architectonic detail, instead conspicuously drawing from all
methods, materials, forms and colors available to architects.

Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is associated with the phrase "less is more"; in contrast
Venturi famously said, "Less is a bore." Postmodernist architecture was one of the first aesthetic
movements to openly challenge Modernism as antiquated and "totalitarian", favoring personal
preferences and variety over objective, ultimate truths or principles.

It is this atmosphere of criticism, skepticism, and emphasis on difference over and against unity
that distinguishes the postmodernism aesthetic. Among writers defining the terms of this
discourse is Charles Jencks, described by Architectural Design Magazine as "the definer of Post-
Modernism for thirty years" and the "internationally acclaimed critic..., whose name became
synonymous with Post-modernism in the 80s".[26]

Urban planning

Postmodernism is a rejection of 'totality', of the notion that planning could be 'comprehensive',

widely applied regardless of context, and rational. In this sense, Postmodernism is a rejection of
its predecessor: Modernism. From the 1920s onwards, the Modern movement sought to design
and plan cities which followed the logic of the new model of industrial mass production;
reverting to large-scale solutions, aesthetic standardisation and prefabricated design solutions
(Goodchild 1990). Postmodern also brought a break from the notion that planning and
architecture could result in social reform, which was an integral dimension of the plans of
Modernism (Simonsen 1990). Furthermore, Modernism eroded urban living by its failure to
recognise differences and aim towards homogenous landscapes (Simonsen 1990, 57). Within
Modernism, urban planning represented a 20th century move towards establishing something
stable, structured, and rationalised within what had become a world of chaos, flux and change
(Irving 1993, 475). The role of planners predating Postmodernism was one of the 'qualified
professional' who believed they could find and implement one single 'right way' of planning new
urban establishments (Irving 1993). In fact, after 1945, urban planning became one of the
methods through which capitalism could be managed and the interests of developers and
corporations could be administered (Irving 1993, 479).

Considering Modernism inclined urban planning to treat buildings and developments as isolated,
unrelated parts of the overall urban ecosystems created fragmented, isolated, and homogeous
urban landscapes (Goodchild, 1990). One of the greater problems with Modernist-style of
planning was the disregard of resident or public opinion, which resulted in planning being forced
upon the majority by a minority consisting of affluent professionals with little to no knowledge
of real 'urban' problems characteristic of post-Second World War urban environments; slums,
overcrowding, deteriorated infrastructure, pollution and disease, among others (Irving 1993).
These were precisely the 'urban ills' Modernism was meant to 'solve', but more often than not, the
types of 'comprehensive', 'one size fits all' approaches to planning made things worse., and
residents began to show interest in becoming involved in decisions which had once been solely
entrusted to professionals of the built environment. Advocacy planning and participatory models
of planning emerged in the 1960s to counter these traditional elitist and technocratic approaches
to urban planning (Irving 1993; Hatuka & D'Hooghe 2007). Furthermore, an assessment of the
'ills' of Modernism among planners during the 1960s, fuelled development of a participatory
model that aimed to expand the range of participants in urban interventions (Hatuka & D'Hooghe
2007, 21).

Jane Jacobs's 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was a sustained critique of
urban planning as it had developed within Modernism and marked a transition from modernity to
postmodernity in thinking about urban planning (Irving 1993, 479). However, the transition from
Modernism to Postmodernism is often said to have happened at 3:32pm on the 15th of July in
1972, when Pruitt Igoe; a housing development for low-income people in St. Louis designed by
architect Minoru Yamasaki, which had been a prize winning version of Le Corbusier's 'machine
for modern living' was deemed uninhabitable and was torn down (Irving 1993, 480). Since then,
Postmodernism has involved theories that embrace and aim to create diversity, and it exhaults
uncertainty, flexibility and change (Hatuka & D'Hooghe 2007). Postmodern planning aims to
accept pluralism and heighten awareness of social differences in order to accept and bring to
light the claims of minority and disadvantaged groups (Goodchild 1990). It is important to note
that urban planning discourse within Modernity and Postmodernity has developed in different
contexts, even though they both grew within a capitalist culture. Modernity was shaped by a
capitalist ethic of Fordist-Keynesian paradigm of mass, standardized production and
consumption, while postmodernity was created out of a more flexible form of capital
accumulation, labor markets and organisations (Irving 1993, 60). Also, there is a distinction
between a postmodernism of 'reaction' and one of 'resistance'. A postmodernism of 'reaction'
rejects Modernism and seeks to return to the lost traditions and history in order to create a new
cultural synthesis, while Postmodernity of 'resistance' seeks to deconstruct Modernism and is a
critique of the origins without necessarily returning to them (Irving 1993, 60). As a result of
Postmodernism, planners are much less inclined to lay a firm or steady claim to there being one
single 'right way' of engaging in urban planning and are more open to different styles and ideas
of 'how to plan' (Irving 474).[27][28][29][30]

Literature

Literary postmodernism was officially inaugurated in the United States with the first issue of
boundary 2, subtitled "Journal of Postmodern Literature and Culture", which appeared in 1972.
David Antin, Charles Olson, John Cage, and the Black Mountain College school of poetry and
the arts were integral figures in the intellectual and artistic exposition of postmodernism at the
time.[31] boundary 2 remains an influential journal in postmodernist circles today.[32]

Jorge Luis Borges's (1939) short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, is often considered
as predicting postmodernism[33] and conceiving the ideal of the ultimate parody.[34] Samuel
Beckett is sometimes seen as an important precursor and influence. Novelists who are commonly
connected with postmodern literature include Vladimir Nabokov, William Gaddis, John Hawkes,
William Burroughs, Giannina Braschi, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E.L.
Doctorow, Jerzy Kosinski, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, Ana
Lydia Vega, and Paul Auster.

In 1971, the Arab-American scholar Ihab Hassan published The Dismemberment of Orpheus:
Toward a Postmodern Literature, an early work of literary criticism from a postmodern
perspective, in which the author traces the development of what he calls "literature of silence"
through Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Beckett, and many others, including
developments such as the Theatre of the Absurd and the nouveau roman. In 'Postmodernist
Fiction' (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that
the former is characterized by an epistemological dominant[clarification needed], and that postmodern
works have developed out of modernism and are primarily concerned with questions of ontology.
In Constructing Postmodernism (1992), McHale's second book, he provides readings of
postmodern fiction and of some of the contemporary writers who go under the label of
cyberpunk. McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007)[1], follows Raymond Federman's
lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism.

Music

Postmodern music is either music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetic and
philosophical trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement
formed partly in reaction to the ideals of the modernist. Because of this, Postmodern music is
mostly defined in opposition to modernist music, and a work can either be modernist, or
postmodern, but not both. Jonathan Kramer posits the idea (following Umberto Eco and Jean-
François Lyotard) that postmodernism (including musical postmodernism) is less a surface style
or historical period (i.e., condition) than an attitude.

The postmodern impulse in classical music arose in the 1960s with the advent of musical
minimalism. Composers such as Terry Riley, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, Henryk
Górecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, George Crumb, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael
Nyman, and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal
academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant
harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged the prevailing Narratives of beauty
and objectivity common to Modernism. Some composers have been openly influenced by
popular music and world ethnic musical traditions.

Postmodern Classical music as well is not a musical style, but rather refers to music of the
postmodern era. It bears the same relationship to postmodernist music that postmodernity bears
to postmodernism. Postmodern music, on the other hand, shares characteristics with
postmodernist art—that is, art that comes after and reacts against modernism (see Modernism in
Music).

Though representing a general return to certain notions of music-making that are often
considered to be classical or romantic [citation needed], not all postmodern composers have eschewed
the experimentalist or academic tenets of modernism. The works of Dutch composer Louis
Andriessen, for example, exhibit experimentalist preoccupation that is decidedly anti-romantic.
Eclecticism and freedom of expression, in reaction to the rigidity and aesthetic limitations of
modernism, are the hallmarks of the postmodern influence in musical composition.

Other

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, part of the Metal Gear series, is widely considered to be an
example of a postmodern video game and a case for video games as art. The game explores the
relationship between the player, character, and narrative in a manner widely considered
groundbreaking, as well as exploring themes such as censorship, memes, and the flaws of
democracy.

Influential postmodernist philosophers

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)

Rejected the philosophical basis of the concepts of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" and
asserted that similar grounding oppositions in logic ultimately refer to one another.
Instead of resisting the admission of this paradox in the search for understanding,
Heidegger requires that we embrace it through an active process of elucidation he called
the "Hermeneutic Circle". He stressed the historicity and cultural construction of
concepts while simultaneously advocating the necessity of an atemporal and immanent
apprehension of them. In this vein, he asserted that it was the task of contemporary
philosophy to recover the original question of (or "openness to") Dasein (translated as
Being or Being-in-the-World) present in the Presocratic philosophers but normalized,
neutered and standardized since Plato. This was to be done, in part, by tracing the record
of Dasein's sublimation or forgetfulness through the history of philosophy which meant
that we were to ask again what constituted the grounding conditions in ourselves and in
the World for the affinity between beings and between the many usages of the term
"being" in philosophy. To do this, however, a non-historical and, to a degree, self-
referential engagement with whatever set of ideas, feelings or practices would permit
(both the non-fixed concept and reality of) such a continuity was required - a continuity
permitting the possible experience, possible existence indeed not only of beings but of all
differences as they appeared and tended to develop. Such a conclusion led Heidegger to
depart from the Phenomenology of his teacher Husserl and prompt instead an (ironically
anachronistic) return to the yet-unasked questions of Ontology, a return that in general
did not acknowledge an intrinsic distinction between phenomena and noumena or
between things in themselves (de re) and things as they appear (see qualia): Being-in-the-
world, or rather, the openness to the process of Dasein's/Being's becoming was to bridge
the age-old gap between these two. In this latter premise, Heidegger shares an affinity
with the late Romantic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, another principal forerunner of
Post-structuralist and Postmodernist thought. Influential to thinkers associated with
Postmodernism are Heidegger's critique of the subject-object or sense-knowledge
division implicit in Rationalism, Empiricism and Methodological Naturalism, his
repudiation of the idea that facts exist outside or separately from the process of thinking
and speaking them (however, Heidegger is not specifically a Nominalist), his related
 admission that the possibilities of philosophical and scientific discourse are wrapped up
in the practices and expectations of a society and that concepts and fundamental
constructs are the expression of a lived, historical exercise rather than simple derivations
of external, apriori conditions independent from historical mind and changing experience
(see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist, Weltanschauung and Social
Constructionism), and his Instrumentalist and Negativist notion that Being (and, by
extension, reality) is an action, method, tendency, possibility and question rather than a
discreet, positive, identifiable state, answer or entity (see also Process Philosophy,
Dynamism, Instrumentalism, Pragmatism and Vitalism).
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
Re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in general;
sought to undermine the language of 'presence' or metaphysics in an analytical technique
which, beginning as a point of departure from Heidegger's notion of Destruktion, came to
be known as Deconstruction. Derrida utilized, like Heidegger, references to Greek
philosophical notions associated with the Skeptics and the Presocratics, such as Epoché
and Aporia to articulate his notion of implicit circularity between premises and
conclusions, origins and manifestations, but - in a manner analogous in certain respects to
Gilles Deleuze - presented a radical re-reading of canonical philosophical figures such as
Plato, Aristotle and Descartes as themselves being informed by such "destabilizing"
notions.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Introduced concepts such as 'discursive regime', or re-invoked those of older philosophers
like 'episteme' and 'genealogy' in order to explain the relationship among meaning,
power, and social behavior within social orders (see The Order of Things, The
Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality). In
direct contradiction to what have been typified as Modernist perspectives on
epistemology, Foucault asserted that rational judgment, social practice and what he called
'biopower' are not only inseparable but co-determinant. While Foucault himself was
deeply involved in a number of progressive political causes and maintained close
personal ties with members of the far-Left, he was also controversial with Leftist thinkers
of his day, including those associated with various strains of Marxism, proponents of Left
libertarianism (e.g. Noam Chomsky) and Humanism (e.g. Jürgen Habermas), for his
rejection of what he deemed to be Enlightenment-derived concepts of freedom,
liberation, self-determination and human nature. Instead, Foucault focused on the ways in
which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and exclusion. In line with
his rejection of such 'positive' tenets of Enlightenment-era Humanism, he was active,
with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, considering
much of institutionalized psychiatry and, in particular, Freud's concept of repression
central to Psychoanalysis (which was still very influential in France during the 1960s and
70s), to be both harmful and misplaced. Foucault was known for his controversial
aphorisms, such as "language is oppression", meaning that language functions in such a
way as to render nonsensical, false or silent tendencies that might otherwise threaten or
undermine the distributions of power backing a society's conventions - even when such
distributions purport to celebrate liberation and expression or value minority groups and
perspectives. His writings have had a major influence on the larger body of Postmodern
academic literature.
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998)
Identified in The Postmodern Condition a crisis in the 'discourses of the Human Sciences'
latent in Modernism but catapulted to the fore by the advent of the "computerized" or
"telematic" era (see Information Revolution). This crisis, insofar as it pertains to
academia, concerns both the motivations and justification procedures for making research
claims: unstated givens or values that have validated the basic efforts of academic
research since the late 18th century might no longer be valid (particularly, in Social
Science & Humanities research, though examples from Mathematics are given by
Lyotard as well). As formal conjecture about real-world issues becomes inextricably
linked to automated calculation, information storage and retrieval, such knowledge
becomes increasingly "exteriorised" from its knowers in the form of information.
Knowledge is materialized and made into a commodity exchanged between producers
and consumers; it ceases to be either an idealistic end-in-itself or a tool capable of
bringing about liberty or social benefit; it is stripped of its humanistic and spiritual
associations, its connection with education, teaching and human development, being
simply rendered as "data" - omnipresent, material, unending and without any contexts or
pre-requisites.[35] Furthermore, the 'diversity' of claims made by various disciplines begins
to lack any unifying principle or intuition as objects of study become more and more
specialized due to the emphasis on specificity, precision and uniformity of reference that
competitive, database-oriented research implies. The value-premises upholding academic
research have been maintained by what Lyotard considers to be quasi-mythological
beliefs about human purpose, human reason and human progress - large, background
constructs he calls "Metanarratives". These Metanarratives still remain in Western society
but are now being undermined by rapid Informatization and the commercialization of the
University and its functions. The shift of authority from the presence and intuition of
knowers - from the good-faith of Reason to seek diverse knowledge integrated for human
benefit or truth fidelity - to the automated database and the market had, in Lyotard's view,
the power to unravel the very idea of 'justification' or 'legitimation' and, with it, the
rationale for research altogether - esp. in disciplines pertaining to human life, society and
meaning. We are now controlled not by binding extra-linguistic value paradigms defining
notions of collective identity and ultimate purpose, but rather by our automatic responses
to different species of "language games" (a concept Lyotard imports from JL Austin's
theory of Speech Acts). In his vision of a solution to this "vertigo," Lyotard opposes the
assumptions of universality, consensus, and generality that he identified within the
thought of Humanistic, Neo-Kantian philosophers like Jürgen Habermas and proposes a
continuation of experimentation and diversity to be assessed pragmatically in the context
of language games rather than via appeal to a resurrected series of transcendentals and
metaphysical unities.
Richard Rorty (1931–2007)
Argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary Analytic philosophy
mistakenly imitates scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the traditional
epistemological perspectives of Representationalism and Correspondence theory that rely
upon the independence of knowers and observers from phenomena and the passivity of
natural phenomena in relation to consciousness. As a proponent of anti-foundationalism
and anti-essentialism within a Pragmatist framework, he echoes Postmodern strains of
 Conventionalism and Philosophical Relativism, but opposes much Postmodern thinking
with his commitment to Social Liberalism.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007),
In Simulacra and Simulation, introduced the concept that reality or the principle of the
"real" is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative
and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies. Baudrillard
proposes the notion that, in such a state, where subjects are detached from the outcomes
of events (political, literary, artistic, personal, or otherwise), events no longer hold any
particular sway on the subject nor have any identifiable context; they therefore have the
effect of producing widespread indifference, detachment, and passivity in industrialized
populations. He claimed that a constant stream of appearances and references without any
direct consequences to viewers or readers could eventually render the division between
appearance and object indiscernible, resulting, ironically, in the "disappearance" of
mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or holographic state, composed only of
appearances.
Fredric Jameson (born 1934)
set forth one of the first expansive theoretical treatments of Postmodernism as a historical
period, intellectual trend and social phenomenon in a series of lectures at the Whitney
Museum, later expanded as Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991). Eclectic in his methodology, Jameson has continued a sustained examination of
the role that Periodization continues to play as a grounding assumption of critical
methodologies in Humanities disciplines. He has contributed extensive effort to
explicating the importance of concepts of Utopianism and Utopia as driving forces in the
cultural and intellectual movements of Modernity, and outlining the political and
existential uncertainties that may result from the decline or suspension of this trend in the
theorized state of Postmodernity. Like Susan Sontag, Jameson served to introduce a wide
audience of American readers to key figures of the 20th Century Continental European
intellectual Left, particularly those associated with the Frankfurt School, Structuralism
and Post-Structuralism. Thus, his importance as a 'translator' of their ideas to the common
vocabularies of a variety of disciplines in the Anglo-American academic complex is
equally as important as his own critical engagement with them.
Douglas Kellner (born 1943)
In "Analysis of the Journey," a journal birthed from postmodernism, Kellner insists that
the "assumptions and procedures of modern theory" must be forgotten. His terms defined
in the depth of postmodernism is based on advancement, innovation, and adaptation.
Extensively, Kellner analyzes the terms of this theory in real life experiences and
examples. Kellner used science and technology studies as a major part of his analysis; he
urged that the theory is incomplete without it. The scale was larger than just
postmodernism alone, it must be interpreted through cultural studies where science and
technology studies play a huge role. The reality of the September Eleventh attacks on the
United States of America is the catalyst for his explanation. This catalyst is used as a
great representation due to the mere fact of the planned ambush and destruction of
"symbols of globalization", insinuating the World Trade Centers. One of the numerous,
yet appropriate definitions of postmodernism and the qualm aspect aids this attribute to
seem perfectly accurate. In response, Kellner continues to examine the repercussions of
understanding the affects of the September Eleventh attacks. He questions if the attacks
 are only able to be understood in a limited form of postmodern theory due to the level of
irony.[36] In further studies, he enhances the idea of semiotics in alignment with the
theory. Similar to the act of September Eleventh and the symbols that were interpreted
through this postmodern ideal, he continues to even describe this as "semiotic systems"
that people use to make sense of their lives and the events that occur in them. Kellner's
adamancy that signs are necessary to understand one's culture is what he analyzes from
the evidence that most cultures have used signs in place of existence. Finally, he
recognizes that many theorists of postmodernism are trapped by their own cogitations. He
finds strength in theorist Baudrillard and his idea of Marxism. Kellner cannot deny
Marxism's end and lack of importance to his theory.
The conclusion he depicts is simple: postmodernism, as most utilize it today, will decide
what experiences and signs in one's reality will be one's reality as they know it.[37]

Criticisms

Criticism of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the assertions that

postmodernism is meaningless and promotes obscurantism. For example, philosopher Noam
Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or
empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals do not respond like people in
other fields when asked, "what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they
based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc?...If [these requests] can't be met,
then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames."[38]

Formal, academic critiques of postmodernism can also be found in works such as Beyond the
Hoax and Fashionable Nonsense.