Friend

I am inquiring about the difference in characteristics of modernity and postmodernity. Does one provide a better opporunity for humanity to succeed and achieve? Are there drastic differences between the two?

Thanks.

~ Friend ~

mhc

From the postmodern viewpoint, we have no choice between the two. It's not as though we could choose to live in the modern era; it's now as defunct as the middle ages was to the Enlightenment. It's humanistic ideals were shown to serve the white Western male bourgeoisie at the expense of others. It's ideals have crumbled, it's not like we can go back.
But that's just the postmodern view, and in our postmodern times, it itself is one among many.

sodium

I view Postmodernism as not too different from more traditional criticisms of Modernism. The main difference being that traditional Anti-Modernism tends to come from a specific religious viewpoint, Christianity in the West. Postmodernism tends to reject Christianity, at least in traditional form. But both tend to denigrate reason as unworkable, and therefore, in practice, both have to make decisions based on beliefs which cannot be questioned. Also, as this limits the role for debate, both have had a tendency to want to impose speech codes or blasphemy laws, as the case may be. So, I pretty much see Postmodernism as a rode to a new Middle Ages. But some may disagree And of course, it all depends on how you define the terms.

kenaz

postmodernism is many things, but i think it too sweeping to say it denigrates reason as unworkable, that it is based on beliefs that cannot be questioned, that it has the tendency to impose speech codes and blasphemy laws.
what po-mo does, more often than not, is to deconstruct the lines of forces that build the metanarratives of reason, codes and laws. It does not seek to build or replace these monolithic power structures with its own, but to question premises that are in dominant play & oft taken without question. In doing so it ruptures stablized centres of meanings, & gives the opportunity for individual points of resistance. It therefore shouldn't be compared unfairly to the anti-modernism that is spun outta western christianity's debunking reason/enlightenment for their own agenda of religious mystification, yet another metanarrative, another power dominatrix wannabe.

jig

The above post is a good example of why I have never truly understood postmodernism.

Does anybody have a translation?

Neilium

My limited understanding of postmodernism is that there is not a post-modern time. We are living in the modern age, and postmodernism stands as a critique and reassessment of modernism. Postmodernism is a mirror, and what it reflects depends on who is tilting that mirror.

-neil

sodium

Consulting my Postmodernist->Modernist dictionary, I came up with the following. Of course, this is just my interpretation, so no offence intended if I got it wrong. Sometimes it sounds a bit clunky, but translations usually do.

jig

Well, thank you. That is much more understandable. I'm rather dubious with regards to the claims about 'motivations' (or metanarratives as you may) behind reason, but otherwise it sounds reasonable and really sounds no different to the age old philosophical adage of 'question everything', only in much more fancy terms.

God Fearing Atheist

Characteristics of postmodernism include references to penises, poo and nonsense more generally:

"The anal penis...fuctions within a devalued metonymic continuity, whereas the notion of the phallomorphic turd functions within the realm of metaphorical substitution. If the bodily in masculinity is encountered in all its rectal gravity, the specular mode by which others become shit is disrupted" -Calvin Thomas

"Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance, not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the [-square root of -1] of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it restores by the coefficient of its statement to the function of lack of signifier (-1)." -Jacques Lacan

"Nevertheless,...structure-or rather, the structurability of structure-although it has always been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or refering it to a point of presence, a fixed origin" - Jacques Derrida, on the word "center"



-GFA

sodium

True, but you left out my favourite,

Is e=mc2 a sexed equation?...Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest...
Luce Irigaray
--Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?

More seriously, I think there's an important distinction that has to be made. "Question Everything" is the first rule of critical thinking. This doesn't contradict Modernism, it's pretty much the idea.