Editing Postmodernity (section)

== Descriptions ==

=== Distinctions in philosophy and critical theory ===
The debate on postmodernity has two distinct elements that are often confused; (1) the nature of contemporary society and (2) the nature of the critique of contemporary society. The first of these elements is concerned with the nature of changes that took place during the late 20th century. There are three principal analyses. Theorists such as [[Alex Callinicos]] and [[Craig Calhoun]] offer a conservative position on the nature of contemporary society, downplaying the significance and extent of socio-economic changes and emphasizing a continuity with the past.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Callinicos |first=Alex |author-link=Alex Callinicos |date=1991 |title=Marxism and imperialism today |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/callinicos/1991/xx/imperialism.html |magazine=[[International Socialism]] |volume=2 |number=50 |pages=3–48 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Calhoun |first=Craig |author-link=Craig Calhoun |date=1995 |title=Critical social theory: culture, history, and the challenge of difference |series=Twentieth-century social theory |publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell]] |location=Cambridge, MA |isbn=9781557862884}}</ref> Second a range of theorists have tried to analyze the present as a development of the "modern" project into a second, distinct phase that is nevertheless still "modernity": this has been termed the "second" or "risk" society by [[Ulrich Beck]],{{sfn|Beck|1992}} "late" or "high" modernity by Giddens,{{sfn|Giddens|1990|pp=163–164}}{{sfn|Giddens|1991|p=3}}  "liquid" modernity by Bauman,{{sfn|Bauman|2000}} and the "network" society by [[Manuel Castells]].{{sfn|Castells|1996|pp=xviii–xix}} Third are those who argue that contemporary society has moved into a literally post-modern phase distinct from modernity. The most prominent proponents of this position are Lyotard and Baudrillard.

Another set of issues concerns the nature of critique, often replaying debates over (what can be crudely termed) [[Universality (philosophy)|universalism]] and [[relativism]], where modernism is seen to represent the former and postmodernity the latter. [[Seyla Benhabib]] and [[Judith Butler]] pursue this debate in relation to feminist politics,{{sfn|Benhabib|1995|p=?}}{{sfn|Butler|1995|p=?}}  Benhabib arguing that postmodern critique comprises three main elements; an [[Anti-foundationalism|anti-foundationalist]] concept of the subject and identity, the [[The End of History and the Last Man|death of history]] and of notions of [[teleology]] and progress, and the death of [[metaphysics]] defined as the search for objective truth. Benhabib argues forcefully against these critical positions, holding that they undermine the bases upon which feminist politics can be founded, removing the possibility of agency, the sense of self-hood and the appropriation of women's history in the name of an emancipated future. The denial of normative ideals removes the possibility for utopia, central for ethical thinking and democratic action.

Butler responds to Benhabib by arguing that her use of postmodernism is an expression of a wider paranoia over anti-foundationalist philosophy, in particular, [[post-structuralism]].

{{quote|A number of positions are ascribed to postmodernism – Discourse is all there is, as if discourse were some kind of monistic stuff out of which all things are composed; the subject is dead, I can never say "I" again; there is no reality, only representation.  These characterizations are variously imputed to postmodernism or poststructuralism, which are conflated with each other and sometimes conflated with deconstruction, and understood as an indiscriminate assemblage of French feminism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian analysis, Rorty's conversationalism, and cultural studies ... In reality, these movements are opposed: Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against poststructuralism, that Foucauldian rarely relate to Derridideans ... Lyotard champions the term, but he cannot be made into the example of what all the rest of the purported postmodernists are doing.  Lyotard’s work is, for instance, seriously at odds with that of Derrida}}

Butler uses the debate over the nature of the post-modernist critique to demonstrate how philosophy is implicated in power relationships and defends poststructuralist critique by arguing that the critique of the [[Subject and object (philosophy)|subject]] itself is the beginning of analysis, not the end,  because the first task of enquiry is the questioning of accepted "universal" and "objective" norms.

The Benhabib-Butler debate demonstrates that there is no simple definition of a postmodern theorist as the very definition of postmodernity itself is contested. [[Michel Foucault]] rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews yet is seen by many, such as [[Seyla Benhabib|Benhabib]], as advocating a form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with utopian and transcendental "modern" critiques by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens rejects this characterisation of "modern critique", pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals was central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]].{{sfn|Giddens|1990|pp=46–49}}

=== Postmodern society ===
Jameson views a number of phenomena as distinguishing postmodernity from modernity. He speaks of "a new kind of [[superficiality]]" or "depthlessness" in which models that once explained people and things in terms of an "inside" and an "outside" (such as [[hermeneutics]], the [[dialectic]], [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] [[Repression (psychoanalysis)|repression]], the [[Existentialism|existentialist]] distinction between [[Authenticity (philosophy)|authenticity]] and inauthenticity, and the [[Sign (semiotics)|semiotic]] distinction of signifier and signified) have been rejected.

Second is a rejection of the modernist "[[Utopia]]n gesture", evident in [[Vincent van Gogh|Van Gogh]], of the transformation through art of misery into beauty whereas in the postmodernism movement the object world has undergone a "fundamental mutation" so that it has "now become a set of texts or [[Simulacrum|simulacra]]".{{sfn|Jameson|1993|p=38}} Whereas modernist art sought to redeem and sacralize the world, to give life to world (we might say, following Graff, to give the world back the enchantment that science and the decline of religion had taken away from it), postmodernist art bestows upon the world a "deathly quality… whose glacéd X-ray elegance mortifies the reified eye of the viewer in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death or the death obsession or the death anxiety on the level of content" (ibid.). Graff sees the origins of this transformative mission of art in an attempted substitution of art for religion in giving meaning to the world that the rise of science and [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] [[rationality]] had removed – but in the postmodern period this is seen as futile.

The third feature of the postmodern age that Jameson identifies is the "waning of affect" – not that all [[emotion]] has disappeared from the postmodern age but that it lacks a particular kind of emotion such as that found in "[[Arthur Rimbaud|Rimbaud]]'s magical flowers 'that look back at you'". He notes that "[[pastiche]] eclipses parody" as "the increasing unavailability of the personal style" leads to pastiche becoming a universal practice.

Jameson argues that distance "has been abolished" in postmodernity, that we "are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial co-ordinates". This "new global space" constitutes postmodernity's "moment of truth". The various other features of the postmodern that he identifies "can all now be seen as themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of the same general spatial object". The postmodern era has seen a change in the [[Structural functionalism|social function]] of culture. He identifies culture in the modern age as having had a property of "semi-autonomy", with an "existence… above the practical world of the existent" but, in the postmodern age, culture has been deprived of this autonomy, the cultural has expanded to consume the entire social realm so that all becomes "cultural". "Critical distance", the assumption that culture can be positioned outside "the massive Being of [[Capital (economics)|capital]]" upon which left-wing theories of cultural politics are dependent, has become outmoded. The "prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating and colonizing those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and [[Archimedean property|Archimedean]] footholds for critical effectivity".{{sfn|Jameson|1991|p=54}}

=== Social sciences ===
[[History of sociology#20th century: functionalism, structuralism, critical theory and globalization|Postmodern sociology]] can be said to focus on conditions of life which became increasingly prevalent in the late 20th century in the most industrialized nations, including the ubiquity of mass media and mass production, the rise of a global economy and a shift from manufacturing to [[service economy|service economies]]. Jameson and Harvey described it as [[consumerism]], where manufacturing, distribution and dissemination have become exceptionally inexpensive but social connectedness and community have become rarer. Other thinkers assert that postmodernity is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting in a society conditioned to mass production and mass politics. The work of [[Alasdair MacIntyre]] informs the versions of postmodernism elaborated by such authors as Murphy (2003) and Bielskis (2005), for whom MacIntyre's postmodern revision of [[Aristotelianism]] poses a challenge to the kind of consumerist ideology that now promotes [[capital accumulation]].

The sociological view of postmodernity ascribes it to more rapid transportation, wider communication and the ability to abandon standardization of mass production, leading to a system which values a wider range of capital than previously and allows value to be stored in a greater variety of forms. Harvey argues that postmodernity is an escape from "[[Fordism]]", a term coined by [[Antonio Gramsci]] to describe the mode of industrial regulation and accumulation which prevailed during the Keynesian era of economic policy in OECD countries from the early 1930s to the 1970s. Fordism for Harvey is associated with Keynesianism in that the first concerns methods of production and capital-labor relations while the latter concerns economic policy and regulation. [[Post-Fordism]] is therefore one of the basic aspects of postmodernity from Harvey's point of view.

[[Cultural artifact|Artifacts]] of postmodernity include the dominance of television and popular culture, the wide accessibility of information and mass telecommunications. Postmodernity also exhibits a greater resistance to making sacrifices in the name of progress discernible in environmentalism and the growing importance of the [[anti-war movement]]. Postmodernity in the industrialised core is marked by increasing focus on [[Civil and political rights|civil rights]] and [[equal opportunity]] as well as movements such as [[feminism]] and [[multiculturalism]] and the backlash against these movements. The postmodern political sphere is marked by multiple arenas and possibilities of citizenship and [[political action]] concerning various forms of struggle against oppression or alienation (in collectives defined by sex or ethnicity) while the modernist political arena remains restricted to class struggle.

Theorists such as [[Michel Maffesoli]] believe that postmodernity is corroding the circumstances that provide for its subsistence and will eventually result in a decline of individualism and the birth of a new [[Neotribalism|neo-Tribal]] era.

According to theories of postmodernity, economic and [[Technology|technological]] conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society in which ideas are only [[Simulacrum|simulacra]], inter-referential representations and copies of each other with no real, original, stable or objective source of communication and meaning. [[Globalization]], brought on by innovations in communication, manufacturing and [[transport]]ation is often{{Citation needed|date=April 2007}} cited as one force which has driven the [[Decentralization|decentralized]] modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication or intellectual production. The postmodernist view is that [[Intersubjectivity|intersubjective]], not objective, knowledge will be the dominant form of [[discourse]] under such conditions and that ubiquity of dissemination fundamentally alters the relationship between reader and that which is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce.

=== Postmodernity as a shift of epistemology ===
Another conception of postmodernity is as an [[paradigm shift|epistemological shift]]. This perspective suggests that the way people communicate and justify knowledge (i.e. epistemology) changes in conjunction with other societal changes, that the cultural and technological changes of the 1960s and 1970s included such a shift, and that this shift should be denoted as from modernity to postmodernity. [See French (2016),<ref>{{Cite journal |last=French |first=Robert P. |date=1 January 2016 |title=Deconstructing The End of Leadership |journal=SAGE Open |language=en |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=2158244016628588 |doi=10.1177/2158244016628588 |issn=2158-2440|doi-access=free}}</ref> French & Ehrman (2016),<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=French II |first1=Robert P. |last2=Ehrman |first2=James E. |date=1 January 2016 |title=Postmodernity as an Epistemological Shift: Kony 2012 as a Case Study for the Global Influence of Postmodernity |jstor=10.5325/jworlchri.6.2.0237 |journal=[[Journal of World Christianity]] |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=237–249 |doi=10.5325/jworlchri.6.2.0237}}</ref> or Sørensen (2007)].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Missiological Mutilations - Prospective Paralogies: Language and Power in Contemporary Mission Theory |last=Sorensen |first=Jorgen Skov |date=2 January 2007 |publisher=[[Peter Lang (publisher)|Peter Lang]] |isbn=9780820487045 |edition=1 |language=en}}</ref>