postmodern primer
Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:42 am
(The following will not include references, wikipepeepees, or any other sources of authority, if you would permit me. This is two cups of tea, and one-hour of streaming what-all's been gathered over the years from seminars-in, essays-read, books consumed, passing conversations had, and tidbits from academics and/or writers of a reasonable level of familiarity with postmodernism qua postmodernism - in other words, what follows is some signature ingredients on the subject, collected over time, and baked into a pye.)
Postmodern shall mean a neutral, descriptive term that describes a set of cultural characteristics/features of the given age.
Postmodernist shall mean a person who freely seizes upon and/or utilizes those cultural characteristics/features of the given age.
Some people believe the postmodern age began around the WWI era, when nationalism for its own sake (a feature of modern period values) reached its untenable height, and senseless killing machines came out of these clashing nationalistic narratives. Right then, they say, the most optimistic of values (nationalism) brought forth the most pessimistic view of what it all meant. Take note it's not long after this, western culture is having a flapper age of flipped values, and things like dadaism, the art of meaninglessness, have made it onto the scene. To hell with everything, there's no meaning in it all . . . .
Some people believe that the postmodern age began synonymously with, and because of, the rise of industrial capitalism (which is why some people use the phrase "capital culture" and "postmodernism" synonymously). As soon as the self-subsisting village/fiefdom thing was no longer workable, villagers had to follow the resources and work into the cities, and there, whatever "master narrative" they understood of the world in their self-subsisting culture is now meeting conflicting master narratives from all over the place, and now nobody's narrative seems any more defensible than anyone else's.
This is characterized anywhere and everywhere in postmodernism as "The Death of the Master Narrative." This metaphor is implying an age for humans when collected (i.e. "absolute") beliefs were possible among groups, but then the splintering/regathering of cultures to serve the movement of capital permanently alters that.
The good news: now humans are able to realize that no one can necessarily put forth a "master narrative" i.e. story of the world in order to rule, misguide, abuse.
The bad news: people don't know what the frack anymore.
More bad news: the new master narrative in place of nothing is money. The movement of money becomes culture itself.
Please note that the death of the master narrative is occurring as well in the WWI explanation. Nationalism - a patri-otic absolutism - is a worthy feature of the optimism of the modern age. But it's bad news. All of these clashing narratives from cultures and nationalities seem to cancel each other out in the absurdity of the war and the unravelling of the age.
Wherever people think the thing started, it can be well-understood through the following transitions between modern and postmodern ages:
Because there is no master narrative - no story-of-all-stories for the world :
Truth becomes validity.
Rather than one master narrative of the world, there are 7 billion master narratives of the world, each one occupying a space relative to all; hence, each one valid in its relationship to everything else. Validity become the newly mitigated truth-word to understand a thing through its own relation to things.
Text becomes context.
Without any individual in possession of the god's-eye view (the master narrative), Text - The Word - can no longer be seen for itself. It has to be seen in context - that point of all relations that bear upon the individual message.
The medium is [now] the message.
To understand anything is to look at what is delivering it to you. Text can no longer be trusted as an authority-location in itself, hence, attention is now upon the medium that delivers it to you; in fact, the deliverer IS the message itself. Marshall McLuan coined this in trying to explain that the nine-year old child's view and utterances of the world are as complete and as truthful as anyone else's; His/her story is just as "valid." Witness how media conforms to this understanding in the world of dial-your-bias news.
Form becomes over content
With no content any more authoritative than anyone else's content, all the attention is drawn to the form - the medium, the deliverer - and the shape of that form, its features in thick description - well, these are the things there are to "know" about anything when essentially, all content is now the surface. Postmodern art would be those kinds of expressions that drawn attention on purpose to the form, form for its own sake and delight in same. The features of this age have a significant impact upon architecture, where form breaks away from classical groundedness and symmetrical order and starts confusing inside-and-outside, with glass and mall-features, because . . . .
There is no center anymore
In the wake of the characteristics/features of the age, one cannot find the center that holds - and this is true of our current view of the cosmos and/or multiple universes, because we're set loose thinking this way now. No center just many many points, or nodes on the internet grid, many many forms of narratives. I've heard some interesting comment here why in this state, people are more acutely driven to tribe back up somewhere, get some kind of thing to collect around, maybe sort of some nostalgia for the days of a possible master narrative.
Production become reproduction
(In both industrial and technological capitalism)
In image, word, deed, cover tunes, consumer items, prequels and sequels, everything about our age speaks more toward reproduction - re-doing, re-copying, re-peating those cultural configurations that have best moved money. It's now the successful form we pay attention to, so you can plug Lady Gaga into Madonna, you can repeat one successful formula after another, just switch up the form of the delivery. Think of Andy Warhol's Marilyn. It's really marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn ker-chunck, ker-chunk, like an assembly line. Anything that moves money gets a new and improved form. Someday a distant species will dig up all the chia pets from our archeology and think they must have had a very important symbolic role in our society. Oh, but they did. They moved money, and that's all that's needed.
In summary, the postmodern age is a fractal age, since the death of the master narrative. We can feel it in our computers and computer life, in our consuming lives, in the culture at large, a free-for-all that has now for its only authority the ability to grab your attention with its appealing form and the capacity to move your money (away from you:). There is no center anymore and anybody's story is a self-story and any content to be had is wearing on the sleeve; it's the sleeve itself. The postmodernist is happy about the features of this age - free to explore form for its own sake, free from repressive master narratives, free to see the entire human marketplace of narratives at the corner of everyone's blog. It is the flapper age of surface, relativity, and for some, an occasion to dance free of all foundations but one's own; a chance to dance with others over theirs.
Postmodern shall mean a neutral, descriptive term that describes a set of cultural characteristics/features of the given age.
Postmodernist shall mean a person who freely seizes upon and/or utilizes those cultural characteristics/features of the given age.
Some people believe the postmodern age began around the WWI era, when nationalism for its own sake (a feature of modern period values) reached its untenable height, and senseless killing machines came out of these clashing nationalistic narratives. Right then, they say, the most optimistic of values (nationalism) brought forth the most pessimistic view of what it all meant. Take note it's not long after this, western culture is having a flapper age of flipped values, and things like dadaism, the art of meaninglessness, have made it onto the scene. To hell with everything, there's no meaning in it all . . . .
Some people believe that the postmodern age began synonymously with, and because of, the rise of industrial capitalism (which is why some people use the phrase "capital culture" and "postmodernism" synonymously). As soon as the self-subsisting village/fiefdom thing was no longer workable, villagers had to follow the resources and work into the cities, and there, whatever "master narrative" they understood of the world in their self-subsisting culture is now meeting conflicting master narratives from all over the place, and now nobody's narrative seems any more defensible than anyone else's.
This is characterized anywhere and everywhere in postmodernism as "The Death of the Master Narrative." This metaphor is implying an age for humans when collected (i.e. "absolute") beliefs were possible among groups, but then the splintering/regathering of cultures to serve the movement of capital permanently alters that.
The good news: now humans are able to realize that no one can necessarily put forth a "master narrative" i.e. story of the world in order to rule, misguide, abuse.
The bad news: people don't know what the frack anymore.
More bad news: the new master narrative in place of nothing is money. The movement of money becomes culture itself.
Please note that the death of the master narrative is occurring as well in the WWI explanation. Nationalism - a patri-otic absolutism - is a worthy feature of the optimism of the modern age. But it's bad news. All of these clashing narratives from cultures and nationalities seem to cancel each other out in the absurdity of the war and the unravelling of the age.
Wherever people think the thing started, it can be well-understood through the following transitions between modern and postmodern ages:
Because there is no master narrative - no story-of-all-stories for the world :
Truth becomes validity.
Rather than one master narrative of the world, there are 7 billion master narratives of the world, each one occupying a space relative to all; hence, each one valid in its relationship to everything else. Validity become the newly mitigated truth-word to understand a thing through its own relation to things.
Text becomes context.
Without any individual in possession of the god's-eye view (the master narrative), Text - The Word - can no longer be seen for itself. It has to be seen in context - that point of all relations that bear upon the individual message.
The medium is [now] the message.
To understand anything is to look at what is delivering it to you. Text can no longer be trusted as an authority-location in itself, hence, attention is now upon the medium that delivers it to you; in fact, the deliverer IS the message itself. Marshall McLuan coined this in trying to explain that the nine-year old child's view and utterances of the world are as complete and as truthful as anyone else's; His/her story is just as "valid." Witness how media conforms to this understanding in the world of dial-your-bias news.
Form becomes over content
With no content any more authoritative than anyone else's content, all the attention is drawn to the form - the medium, the deliverer - and the shape of that form, its features in thick description - well, these are the things there are to "know" about anything when essentially, all content is now the surface. Postmodern art would be those kinds of expressions that drawn attention on purpose to the form, form for its own sake and delight in same. The features of this age have a significant impact upon architecture, where form breaks away from classical groundedness and symmetrical order and starts confusing inside-and-outside, with glass and mall-features, because . . . .
There is no center anymore
In the wake of the characteristics/features of the age, one cannot find the center that holds - and this is true of our current view of the cosmos and/or multiple universes, because we're set loose thinking this way now. No center just many many points, or nodes on the internet grid, many many forms of narratives. I've heard some interesting comment here why in this state, people are more acutely driven to tribe back up somewhere, get some kind of thing to collect around, maybe sort of some nostalgia for the days of a possible master narrative.
Production become reproduction
(In both industrial and technological capitalism)
In image, word, deed, cover tunes, consumer items, prequels and sequels, everything about our age speaks more toward reproduction - re-doing, re-copying, re-peating those cultural configurations that have best moved money. It's now the successful form we pay attention to, so you can plug Lady Gaga into Madonna, you can repeat one successful formula after another, just switch up the form of the delivery. Think of Andy Warhol's Marilyn. It's really marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn ker-chunck, ker-chunk, like an assembly line. Anything that moves money gets a new and improved form. Someday a distant species will dig up all the chia pets from our archeology and think they must have had a very important symbolic role in our society. Oh, but they did. They moved money, and that's all that's needed.
In summary, the postmodern age is a fractal age, since the death of the master narrative. We can feel it in our computers and computer life, in our consuming lives, in the culture at large, a free-for-all that has now for its only authority the ability to grab your attention with its appealing form and the capacity to move your money (away from you:). There is no center anymore and anybody's story is a self-story and any content to be had is wearing on the sleeve; it's the sleeve itself. The postmodernist is happy about the features of this age - free to explore form for its own sake, free from repressive master narratives, free to see the entire human marketplace of narratives at the corner of everyone's blog. It is the flapper age of surface, relativity, and for some, an occasion to dance free of all foundations but one's own; a chance to dance with others over theirs.