1. Postmodernism: theoretical background
Part 1
Postmodernism: theoretical background

2. Modernism and postmodernism in literature and the other arts
Next week…
Part 2
Modernism and postmodernism in
literature and the other arts

3. SYNOPSIS (Mis)conceptions of postmodernism Truth in postmodernism
Influential theories in/of postmodernism (deconstruction, hyperreality, grand narratives)
Chaos or complexity? (entropy as a metaphor, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon)

4. MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT POSTMODERNISM
Denial of the existence of ANY truth
Radical skepticism about ABSOLUTE TRUTH
Representation of the COMPLEXITY of the world
Representation of the CHAOTIC nature of the contemporary world
Postmodernist thought aims at a PLAYFUL restructuring of our ordinary ways of perceiving and representing the world
Postmodernism is about DESPAIR and the MEANINGLESSNESS of life

5. Postmodernism in the broadest sense
is a conscious problematization of what is “true” and “real”/an inquiry into how “truth” and “reality” are made rather than found.
Questioning the Platonist/metaphysical foundations of Western philosophy

6. Socrates  Plato  Aristotle
METAPHYSICS
Socrates  Plato  Aristotle
WORLD
Appearance
Replica (copy)
Contingent
Perishable
Physical
Material
Reality
Ideal form
Essential
Eternal
Mental
Non-Material
VS.

7. TRUTH IN POSTMODERNISM

8. Friedrich Nietzsche
“Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying ‘there are only facts,’ I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations…”
PERSPECTIVISM
There can be several co-existing conceptual schemes within which “truths”/“facts” can be established.

9. Walter Truett Anderson: “Four Different Ways to Be Absolutely Right”
Four worldviews:
(a) the neo-romantic
(b) the social-traditional
(c) the scientific-rational
(d) the postmodern-ironist
Truth is…
(a) found through harmony with nature/exploration of inner self
(b) in the historical heritage of (Western) civilization
(c) discovered through science/scientific methods
(d) a social construction

10. THEORIES OF POSTMODERNISM

11. “Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”
DECONSTRUCTION
(Post-structuralism)
Jacques Derrida
( )
“Structure Sign and Play
in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”
(1966)

12. Fredinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Language is a system of differences
STRUCTURALISM
Fredinand de Saussure ( )
Langue Parole
(Language as a system) (Actual utterances)
Sign
Signifier Signified
Referent
Language is a system of differences

13. STRUCTURALISM

14. POST-STRUCTURALISM
(Deconstruction)

15. The “deconstruction” of structures
We like to see the world organized into structures
Structures are always built around a center
All centers are arbitrarily chosen, giving us the semblance of a structure

19. STRUCTURALISM
Sign
Signifier Signified
Referent

20. SIGNIFIER

21. Signified
Signified
Signified
SIGNIFIER
Signified
Signified
Signified
Signified
Signified
Signified
Signified

22. SIMULACRUM AND HYPERREALITY Simulacra and Simulation
Jean Baudrillard
Simulacra and Simulation
(1981)

23. “It’s a new reality show about a producer trying to make a reality show about a family obsessed with reality shows.”

24. Simulacrum: a copy or replica of something
Baudrillard: simulacrum is not just a copy of an “original,” but a representation which becomes a “truth” in its own right
Hyperreality: the representation is experienced as more real than the

25. An illustration of the logic of the simulacrum:
Disneyland

29. DISTRUST OF GRAND NARRATIVES
Jean-Francois Lyotard:
The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge
(1979)

30. “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. […] To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, to the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements—narrative [...]. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?”

31. CHAOS OR COMPLEXITY?

32. The term was coined by Rudolf Clausius in 1865
Entropy (transfer content)  Energy (work content)
The term was coined by Rudolf Clausius in 1865

33. Definitions of entropy
The 2nd law of thermodynamics:
The amount of energy in a thermodynamic system (e.g. a heat engine) that is not available for doing work (i.e. the amount of energy that gets lost).

34. Science (physics): The final stage reached in the degradation of matter and energy in a closed system. (All closed systems, including the universe will run down and end in heat death)

35. Statistical mechanics: The condition of a mechanical system
Statistical mechanics: The condition of a mechanical system. (The more run-down the given machinery, the higher its entropy is.)

36. Communication/ Information theory:
The effectiveness of a certain system of signs (such as language) in transmitting new information. (The more new information a statement carries, the higher its entropy is).

37. Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)
“Entropy” (1960)

38. Callisto’s apartment
Callisto is dictating his memoirs to his lover, Aubade,
and is brooding over entropy and apocalypse.
Washington D.C.
February 1957
Temperature: 37 F (cca. 2-3 ºC)
Meatball’s apartment
Meatball is throwing a raucous party,
where a host of diverse guests are
arriving .
Saul’s apartment
Saul has just had an argument with his wife over
communication theory.

39. (1961)

40. (1963)

41. (1966)

42. (1973)