…At least that is what some have been saying. But just as God was once declared dead, I wonder if postmodernism, like God, ever existed or was ever alive.
I believe that much was done to raise, to project into and under one name, Postmodernisn, perspectives that were never as afr and wide or unique to a time after modernism and indeed even Modernism represents an idol with a hollow inside.
Any definition I could give of “modernism” or postmodernism will be insufficient and partial, and my argument will be defined by some as a straw man. I thus only direct myself here to modernism as defined by Wikipedia- easy tool with wide-distribution- and do not presume to refute of attack all possible definitions of modernism. That said:
“Modernism is a trend of thought which affirms the power of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct and reshape their built and designed environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic.”
Wiki also says of postmodernism:
"Postmodernism is an idea that has been extremely controversial and difficult to define among scholars, intellectuals, and historians, because the term implies to many that the modern historical period has passed. "
Because of this, it gives a few candidates:
1- “Others believe the world has changed so profoundly that the term applies to nearly everything, and use postmodernism in a broad cultural sense. People who believe postmodernism is really just an aspect of the modern period may instead use terms such as “late modernism”.
2- “Postmodernism is incredulity towards metanarratives.” Jean-Francois Lyotard”
3- “It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism,” Al Gore
There are more many more, because it is a term that can be glued to all aspects of life including literature and religion.
But when one considers the recorded history one finds that this is not one event after modernism but a repetition in a cyclic revolution. That is, that thinkers have for centuries, from ancient greece, to the Romans and beyond, into the enlightement, modernity, Comte, positivists, been divided between those who set forth optimistic systems and those who doubt them. The “progress”, or change from one to another system, is an effect of this doubt, this scepticism.
But doubt does not define a time after modernity, nor modernity a time after scepticism. Both co-exist and interact. Just as a person can be optimistic and a pessimist in one life. It is not that one no longer believes in “metanarratives”, but that one no longer believes one certain mat-narrative because of another one one now believes.
The fact that one does not believe in anything, still leaves one with that belief. The paradox, the irony cannot be escaped.
For this reason, it is now easy to find that indeed postmodernism, or late-modernism, is dead, because it was never alive, it was never in existence except for the minds and for the minds of those who had an agenda, and posmodern definetly were political, and who had use for a perspective of history subdivided along these lines. In their vivisection of history they were as optimistic as the most advanced theoretical scientist, though he meant to be “post” that. The fact is that our tendency has been, and probably will be, to be optimistic and pessimistic at once. It seems strange but one’s negativity towards a thing or idea comes from an optimistic attitude towards another idea. If I do not believe in one narrative it is by virtue of another which I do believe. Even my unbelief is still a belief. My atheism a religion, a faith. If there is no end, that in itself becomes an end.
The details changes, but nature remains.
For these reasons, it seems to me, that too much is made about postmodernism and modernism prior to that. Much the same was done with the death of God. Many people wish to get beyond when they have not even arrived at. There was no concerted movement of disbelief by the whole of humanity, just as there was never a collective faith, or belief in metanarratives. The world has always had it’s atheists, and the atheists have had to contend with the believers, and more ironic than that is that the biggest disbeliever in one, say, religion, is often one from a different religion.
It is not because the democritization of the mediums, the activity in the receptors, and all this by technology, that has lead to the demise of such a movement that never wanted to be defined anyway. Modernism never went away and neither did God die. People went to church and still accepted Jesus as their personal savior etc, etc. Same with reality, with truth, and narratives. They remained, and gave way to a new revolution of the eternal wheel of chaos and order, multiplicity and singularity, of expansion and contraction, the ascendancy of one not meaning the obliteration of the Other but the down-turn, provisional and never metaphysical.
That is my narration…