Editing Postmodernity (section)

== Uses of the term ==
''Postmodernity'' is the state or condition of being postmodern – after or in reaction to that which is modern, as in [[postmodern art]] (''see [[postmodernism]]''). [[Modernity]] is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the [[Progressive Era]], the [[Industrial Revolution]], or [[Age of Enlightenment|the Enlightenment]]. In philosophy and [[critical theory]] ''postmodernity'' refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity, a historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity. This usage is ascribed to the philosophers [[Jean-François Lyotard]] and [[Jean Baudrillard]].

One "project" of modernity is said by [[Jürgen Habermas]] to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of [[rationality]] and [[hierarchy]] into public and artistic life. (See also [[Post-industrial society|post-industrial]], [[Information Age]]) Lyotard understood [[modernity]] as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of [[progress]]. Postmodernity then represents the culmination of this process where constant change has become the ''status quo'' and the notion of progress obsolete. Following [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'s critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge, Lyotard further argued that the various [[metanarrative]]s of progress such as [[Positivism|positivist]] science, [[Marxism]], and [[structuralism]] were defunct as methods of achieving progress.

The literary critic [[Fredric Jameson]] and the geographer [[David Harvey]] have identified postmodernity with "[[late capitalism]]"<ref>{{cite book |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |date=1997 |title=The Condition of Postmodernity : An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change |publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]] |page=42}}</ref> or "flexible accumulation", a stage of capitalism following [[finance capitalism]], characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hassan |first=Robert |date=2020 |chapter=1989: David Harvey's Postmodernity: The Space Economy of Late Capitalism |title=The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life |publisher=[[University of Westminster Press]] |pages=13–34}}</ref> They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the [[Bretton Woods system]] which, they believe, defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also [[consumerism]], [[critical theory]].) Other academics, such as the archaeologist Artur Ribeiro, also identify postmodernity with late capitalism.{{sfn|Ribeiro|2023|p=123}} Though in the case of Ribeiro, he places the start of modernity at the beginning of the Bretton Woods system.{{sfn|Ribeiro|2023|p=125}}

Those who generally view modernity as obsolete or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution leading to disasters like [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] and [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Hiroshima]], see postmodernity as a positive development. Other philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as within [[the Modern Project]], see the state of postmodernity as a negative consequence of holding postmodernist ideas. For example, [[Jürgen Habermas]] and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running [[Counter-Enlightenment]] ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that [[Universal (metaphysics)|universality]] cannot be so lightly dispensed with. Postmodernity, the consequence of holding postmodern ideas, is generally a negative term in this context.