Dueling Paradigms: Modernist V. Postmodernist Thought

Modernist thought sends back to the Enlightenment period.

Postmodernism developed in Europe after the 2nd War World. It is a revived form of Modernism but at the same time Postmodernists are fundamentally opposed to modernist thought.

In this extract the writer has identified eight dimensions as a basis of comparison between Modernism and Postmodernism.

1)The nature of society and social structure.

Modernist society should look for equilibrium, order, homogeneity, totality and closure.

During Postmodernism society changed: it was characterized by flux, change, spontaneity, irony and the impossibility of formal closure. Society could only express chaos.

At the center of Modernist thought there was logos. 

The chaos theory on the contrary is a key element during Postmodernism: it privileged disorder rather than order.

2)The nature of roles.

Modernist thought focused on  role-taking, socialization, integration, the primacy to the "me" and the importance of the symphony orchestra player.

The postmodernist view underlined a role-making, variability, privileging the "I" and the importance of the jazz player.

3)The nature of subjectivity.

The Modernist thought privileges the idea of the individual, the oversocialized conception, the good, the importance of "cogito ergo sum" and the logos. In Modernist thought important is also the homo duplex view in wichh nature loks for a balance  between  egoism and altruism.

Postmodernist  thought offered the idea of the decentred subject that is polyvalent and  the subject of desire.

4)The nature of discourse.

Modernists focused the attention on a conscious level in which discourses are coordinated by the paradigmativ axis and the horizontal axis. They considered Discourses neutral.

Postmodernist discourse focused on the regime of signs, the hysteric analysis, the primacy to the semiotic axes methapor and verb forms.

5)The nature of knowledge.

Modernist thought underlined a global, dominant and scientific knowledge.

Postmodernists celebrated a local knowledge, a fragmented truth, metanarratives and the importance of repressed voices.

6)The nature of space and time.

In Modernists' opinion space had three dimensions and it is based on Newtonian mechanics, characterized by Euclidean geometry and Cartesian coordinates.

On the contrary Postmodernists thought that space is multidimensional, the geometry is non Euclidean and the most important theory is chaos theory.

7)The nature of causality.

In Modernist thought what is considered important is positivism, determinism and Newtonian physics ("God does not play dice"). It underlined that future was fixed by past.

Postmodernist thought was based on Godel's theorem, the theory of chaos.

8)The nature of social change.

Modernist thought was based on a theory of evolution, in various versions of Darwinian dymnamics. What often underlies these approaches is some linear conception of historical change.

Postmodernist thought was focused on nonlinear conceptions of historical change but on genealogical analysis.

This summary meant to  offer  some of themost relevant differences between modernist and postmodernist thought.