Teach Yourself Postmodernism

• Book:Teach Yourself Postmodernism. By Glenn Ward

Summary

Michel Bauwens, 2003:

- Modernity can be seen as characterized by a faith in

   - Progress
   - Optimism
   - Rationality
   - the search for absolute 'objective' knowledge
   - the search for a 'true self'

- By contrast, postmodernity can be seen as characterized by:

   - the erosion of the distinction between low and high culture
   - fascination by the domination of visual media
   - the recognition that we live in a universe of signs
   - definitions of human identity are changing
   - scepticism about grand narratives

- Postmodernism is about:

   - I. Changes in society
   - II. Changes in art and culture.
   - Thus about the world, and our interpretations about it.

- The main themes of postmodern discourse seem to be:

   - the end of history: there is no progress
   - the end of 'man': humankind is a social construction and is now challenged by machines
   - the death of the real, as we live in a universe of signs

- Expressions in literature

   - From Realist fiction and the all-knowing author to modernist literature of a selective, struggling author to:
   - Postmodern literature as meta-fiction, conscious of itself, capable of using irony

- Expressions in art:

   - Uses 'plural coding'; it allows myriad access points, an infinitude of interpretative responses; it is a constant testing and playing with boundaries
   - Modernist art had a spiritual mission, struggling both against tradition and against mass culture: postmodernism has abandoned that struggle

- Planet Baudrillard: The world has emancipated itself, only referring to other signs, and no longer to any underlying reality. We live in a world of images ruled by the principle of simulation, "in a centerless network of communication". It is in fact the simulation which produces the real. This then generates 'panic', and a rush to experience reality, hence a hyper-reality is manufactured, such as extreme sports, reality TV, piercing ... But of course, they are also simulations

Chapter 5: Structuralism and after

- The 3 theses of structuralism:

   - Language constructs reality: reality cannot be separated  from its representation
   - Meanings can only happen in relation to structures: no single thing gives meaning by itself
   - Language demonstrates the structural/relational properties of meaning.

Structuralism does not look at history, but at the present workings of a system; not on the content of what it studies, but on the relationship between its elements; it sees everything as texts.