POSTMODERN, POSTMODERNISM AND POSTMODERNITY:

 

A CLARIFICATION OF THE TERM

Here I can deal with two differently charged meaning of the prefix "post".

The "post" in "postmodernity" correlated with modernity, refers to a protracted period at the beginning of which we find ourselves living today.

The "post" with "postmodernism" correlated with modernism in the initial period of entry into that larger period of postmodeernity.

In other words modernism is the concluding period of the epoch of modernity, while posmodernism is the first period of the epoch of postmodernity

POSTMODERN

It refers to time, e.g. a postmodern age. It is difficult to determinate when exactly the postmodern age began. Some have proposed that it began with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Some dated it much earlier. I suggest it must be considered a slow process and it can located between the end of the sixty's and the 1989.

POSTMODERNISM

It refers to the ideology, intellectual framework, or worldview that gives rise to the postmodern age.

POSTMODERNITY

It refers to the social or cultural phenomena that are mainly caused by the postmodeern worldview (postmodernism).

I can agree with the following definitions:

"Not all social or cultural phenomena in the postmodern age are postmodern phenomena, i.e. postmodernity, because a social a cultural or social phenomenon can be caused by some other social and cultural factors not directly related top the postmodern worldview. For example, people still wear clothes when they walk on the streets in a postmodern age, but this is not a so-called postmodern phenomenon, i.e.; postmodernity, since it is not mainly caused by the postmodern worldview".

"Postmodern existed even before the postmodern age began. Some suggest that the postmodern that the posmodern worldview can be traced back to Nietzche's nihilism".

"Why we label our age as postmodern age is that the postmodern worldview has come to a point that its manifestation becomes so penetrating in our society. We can see more and more postmodern phenomena not only in the intellectual or academic circle but also in everyday living".

POSTMODERN BRIEF: A WAY OF ANALYSIS

 

POSTMODERNITY VERSUS MODERNITY

It refuses the objectivity and rationality of modernity; the absolute and the individual are dethroned from their position of western myths. Modernity collapse by the push of the quick science and technology .Modernity so is unable to find the truth within itself.

"LATE CAPITALISM"

It is the condition guaranteed by the third capitalistic stage. The late capitalism is characterized by the multinational power over the world, with its logic of replicating, reproducing and reinforcing the logic of consumer capitalism.

TECHNO-SCIENCE UNLIMITED POWER

It is the era in which the technology and the science spread widely any activity, replacing, simplifying and conditioning men's way of living.

However humanity is worried by the incapability of figuring out where technology can arrive and how much can replace and influence the society growth.

"GLOBAL VILLAGE"

It is the glorification of the communication.

The world is a wide community, based on a interconnection computer net. In any moment any individual from any place can spread its voice to the whole world.

AT this point rise the problem of a probable exclusion for whom is not connected to the new "virtual dimension". In such a way the world net, internet, represent a new universal or multicultural society, that of course exist just in an artificial way.

SPACE AND TIME

Space engross time. There is the just in time. The global village erases the conception of "natural time" to increase the "human" one. In fact the "human time" has no more limit. Even time has been reduced.

SIMULACRA AND MEDIA SOCIETY

Media spread the whole society. They neutralize reality.

At the first stage they reflect it; then they mask and pervert it; next they have to mask its; and finally they produce the simulacrum of the real

DEATH OF MEANING

The postmodern order is also devoid of meaning. the simulacrum is the destruction of the meaning and its relation with the reality.

DEATH OF THE SUBJECT

The modern strong bourgeois subject loses its identity.

TAKING AWAY THE IMAGINARY

The postmodern society is implosive, with reality and fiction dissolving into the hippereal. Simirlary, information and meaning implode in to noise.

PASTICHE

It is the presence and the reproduction of the past. It is the reemergence and perpetuation of past styles to the point of stagnation and death of style.

History becomes de-totalized; all its event gets facts and it loses any structure.

The postmodern representation, fixtion is un-stuctured, un-finished, fragmented.