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.

Just as language, society is also made up of signs, whose structure can be examined (the science of semiology/semiotics)

A language consists of rules of combination, and so are other systems, such as fashion, etc .. These systems of signs precede any individual intention, and this also applies to art and literature (and thus questions the romantic notion of the original author with unique works).

The meaning of a sign is never its own property but is the product of its difference with other signs. Thus the key question of structuralism is: where does meaning come from ?