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Introduction to Postmodernism

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Title: Introduction to Postmodernism


1
Introduction toPostmodernism
2
Why Reality Isnt What It Used to Be
3
Deconstructing Mrs. Miller
4
Questions
  • 1. What is postmodernism?
  • 2. Why should we care about it?
  • 3. Have you received a modern or postmodern
    education?
  • 4. What does postmodernism have to say about
    your identity?
  • 5. What does postmodernism have to say about
    truth, beauty, and goodness?
  • 6. How postmodernism is impacting K-12
    education, religion, the arts, and our daily
    lives.

5
Evolution of Western Thought
Timeline
as
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
6
Modernity
Timeline
  • RENAISSANCE TO ABOUT 1900 (/- 30 years)
  • Baudrillard
  • Early modernity Renaissance to Industrial
    Revolution
  • Modernity Industrial Revolution
  • Postmodernity Period of mass media
  • The world according to white Anglo-Saxon males
    from Europe

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
7
Your Place in History
Timeline
14th C 1900
2000
  • Modern
  • Modernism
  • Postmodernism

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
8
Your Place in History
Timeline
as
14th C 1900
2000
  • Modern
  • Modernism
  • Postmodernism

Your teachers were / are here
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
9
Modernity
Newtonian Order
  • God, reason and progress
  • There was a center to the universe.
  • Progress is based upon knowledge, and man is
    capable of discerning objective absolute truths
    in science and the arts.
  • Modernism is linked to capitalismprogressive
    economic administration of world
  • Modernization of 3rd world countries (imposition
    of modern Western values)

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
10
Language Truth
What Is Language?
as
  • People are the same everywhere
  • There are universal laws and truths
  • Knowledge is objective, independent of culture,
    gender, etc.
  • Language is a man-made tool that refers to real
    things / truths
  • I, the subject, speak language
  • I have a discernible self
  • The self is the center of existence

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
11
Liberal Humanism View of Literature
Purpose of Literature
  • Good literature is of timeless significance.
  • The text will reveal constants, universal truths,
    about human nature, because human nature itself
    is constant and unchanging.

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
12
Modernism
Death of the Old Order
  • Early 1900s
  • World War I
  • Worldwide poverty exploitation

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
13
Modernism
Death of the Old Order
  • Early 1900s
  • World War I
  • Worldwide poverty exploitation
  • Intellectual upheaval
  • Freud psychoanalysis
  • Marx class struggle
  • Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Neitzsche
  • Picasso, Stravinsky, Kafka, Proust, Brecht,
    Joyce, Eliot

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
14
Relativism
The Bending of Time Space
  • Einstein relativity, quantum mechanics
  • Refutation of Newtonian science
  • Time is relative
  • Matter and energy are one
  • Light as both particle and wave
  • Universe is strange

Emc2
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
15
Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules
  • Cubism
  • Surrealism
  • Dadaism
  • Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
16
Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules
  • Cubism
  • Surrealism
  • Dadaism
  • Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
17
Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules
  • Cubism
  • Surrealism
  • Dadaism
  • Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
18
Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules
  • Cubism
  • Surrealism
  • Dadaism
  • Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
19
Modernist Literature
A World with No Center
  • Things fall apart,The centre cannot hold,Mere
    anarchy is loosed upon the world.
  • --Yeats, The Second Coming

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
20
Modernist Literature
Breaking the Rules
  • Emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity
  • Movement away from objective third-party
    narration
  • Tendency toward reflexivity and
    self-consciousness
  • Obsession with the psychology of self
  • Rejection of traditional aesthetic theories
  • Experimentation with language

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
21
What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age
  • Continuation of modernist view
  • Does not mourn loss of history, self, religion,
    center
  • A term applied to all human sciences
    anthropology, psychology, architecture, history,
    etc.
  • Reaction to modernism systematic skepticism
  • Anti-foundational

POSTMODERNISM
22
What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age
  • The Enlightenment project is dead.

POSTMODERNISM
23
Frederick Jameson
Culture Capital
  • Modernism and postmodernism are cultural
    formations that accompany specific stages of
    capitalism
  • 1. Market capitalism 18th-19th C. Steam
    locomotive Realism
  • 2. Monopoly capitalism Late 19th C to
    WWII Electricity and automobile Modernism
  • 3. Multinational/consumer capitalism Nuclear
    and electronics Postmodernism

POSTMODERNISM
24
Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives
  • Life just is
  • Rejection of all master narratives
  • All truths are contingent cultural constructs
  • Skepticism of progress anti-technology bias
  • Sense of fragmentation and decentered self
  • Multiple conflicting identities
  • Mass-mediated reality

POSTMODERNISM
25
Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives
  • All versions of reality are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS
  • Concepts of good and evil
  • Metaphors for God
  • Language
  • The self
  • Gender
  • EVERYTHING!

POSTMODERNISM
26
Postmodernism Basic Concepts
Language As Social Construct
  • Language is a social construct that speaks
    identifies the subject
  • Knowledge is contingent, contextual and linked to
    POWER
  • Truth is pluralistic, dependent upon the frame of
    reference of the observer
  • Values are derived from ordinary social
    practices, which differ from culture to culture
    and change with time.
  • Values are determined by manipulation and
    domination

POSTMODERNISM
27
Richard Rorty (1931-)
Relativism Pluralism
  • A pragmatic philosopher
  • Anti-foundationalist
  • No reality independent of our minds
  • Truth is the result of inter-subjective agreement
    between members of a community
  • We must choose between self-defeating relativism
    or solidarity of thought within our group
  • The goal of the search for truth is to help us
    carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and
    more democratic society

POSTMODERNISM
28
Postmodern View of Language
The Observer is King
  • Observer is a participant/part of what is
    observed
  • Receiver of message is a component of the message
  • Information becomes information only when
    contextualized
  • The individual (the subject) is a cultural
    construct
  • Consider role of own culture when examining
    others
  • All interpretation is conditioned by cultural
    perspective and mediated by symbols and practice

POSTMODERNISM
29
PostModern Literature
Play and Parody
  • Extreme freedom of form and expression
  • Repudiation of boundaries of narration genre
  • Intrusive, self-reflexive author
  • Parodies of meta-narratives
  • Deliberate violation of standards of sense and
    decency (which are viewed as methods of social
    control)
  • Integration of everyday experience, pop culture

POSTMODERNISM
30
PostModern Literature
Fragmented Identities
  • Parody, play, black humor, pastiche
  • Nonlinear, fragmented narratives
  • Ambiguities and uncertainties
  • Conspiracy and paranoia
  • Ironic detachment
  • Linguistic innovations
  • Postcolonial, global-English literature

POSTMODERNISM
31
Modernity PostModern
Binary Oppositions
  • History as fact
  • Faith in social order
  • Family as central unit
  • Authenticity of originals
  • Mass consumption
  • Written by the victors
  • Cultural pluralism
  • Alternate families
  • Hyper-reality (MTV)
  • Niches small group identity

POSTMODERNISM
32
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
33
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
34
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
35
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
36
Modern or Postmodern?
A gay Southern Baptist who practices Buddhist
meditation and believes in the Big Bang theory.
POSTMODERNISM
37
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
38
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
39
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
40
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
41
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
42
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
43
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
44
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
45
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
46
Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
47
PostModernism
An Epochal Shift in Thinking
  • The narrative is unravelled, the author is dead,
    the Enlightenment project is toast, and history
    is history.
  • An epochal shift in the basic condition in
    being.
  • --Geoffrey Nunberg

POSTMODERNISM
48
PostModernism
Battle of World Views
  • A Global Battle THE OBJECTIVISTS vs.
    THE CONSTRUCTIVISTS

POSTMODERNISM
49
PostModernism
My Way
  • OBJECTIVISTS

When I said during my presidential bid that I
would only bring Christians and Jews into the
government, I hit a firestorm. How dare you
maintain that those who believe in the
Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to
govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My
simple answer is, Yes, they are.' -from
Pat Robertson's "The New World Order"
POSTMODERNISM
50
PostModernism
Metaphors Kill
  • People were burned at the stake for believing
    there was more than one version of reality.

POSTMODERNISM
51
PostModernism
God is Not Dead
  • Our public schools have become a postmodern
    battleground.

POSTMODERNISM
52
PostModernism
God is Not Dead
  • You can be a Christian (or Buddhist, or
    Hindu, etc.) in the postmodern world.

POSTMODERNISM
53
PostModernism
We Live in the Middle
  • We all slip and slide between the objective and
    constructive views
  • 1. We live in a world of naïve realism.
  • 2. But when we think about things, or
    have to explain our views, we become
    constructivists.

POSTMODERNISM
54
How Popular Culture Changes
as
  • RAYMOND WILLIAMS
  • Dominant ideology controls
  • Human agency people work together to bring
    about change
  • Takes into account pluralismof a culture

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
55
How Popular Culture Changes
Acceptance of Pluralism
Playboy Bunnies June Cleaver
Carrie in Sex The City
Samantha in Sex The City
Monica in Friends
Courtney Love
56
PostModernism
Celebrating Diversity
  • THE HOPE OF POSTMODERNISTS
  • The deconstruction of foundational views will
    lead to a recognition and acceptance of a
    pluralistic worldview.
  • Create a truly global civilization.

POSTMODERNISM
57
Literary FilmTheory
Celebrating Diversity
  • Different constructs of reality
  • Lenses through which we see the world

?
POSTMODERNISM
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