My approach to Postmodernism.

It is difficult to define Postmodernism because we are still living it.

As S. Jobs discussed in his speech at Stanford University in 2005, it is just possible to “connect the dots” looking backwards in the past, so we cannot clearly understand what Postmodernism is until it will become past.

In addition Postmodernism is difficult to read because it is conceptual, abstract, dis-orienting and apparently without direction.

Despite all that, human research does not give up the study of Postmodernism. It  mostly originated during the 60s at Berkley University in America and at Sorbonne in Europe.

Since language always hides meanings, it is useful to consider  the word “Postmodernism” from a linguistic point of view.

The prefix “post” can either refer to time, by meaning “after” or “beyond” Modernism, or qualify the relationship with Modernism, by meaning “in opposition to it” or going beyond. 

“Modernism” clearly makes reference to Modernist culture, which covered the three first decades of the twentieth century. The suffix “-ism” underlines a negative attitude: Postmodernism broke with traditions.

Secondly, as researchers do to find out theb law of a phenomenon, it is important to describe the features of the  object of one's study.

There are three main features of Postmodernism: it puts into discussions the meanings of authority, centre and truth with notable effects.

To begin with,  the concepts of author and authority crumbled. As a result the idea of creation does not come ab nihilo, but it is always the result of intertextuality. So, all works of art do not have origin in themselves, but they are the product of a dialogue between other texts and their conventions.

The idea that there are no origins but just production is proved by the repetition in Pop Art.  

In the second place, Postmodernist thought defeated the idea of a single centre, which also represented authority. Postmodernism introduce the existence of many centers: the world appears like a net. As a result, the global system of nodes brekes when one of the centers upsets. A considerable effect of such structure is shown in the  human feeling of decentralization and in relativism. Interconnection and intertextuality are also consequences of that.

Thirdly the concept of truth, in its philosophical implications, crumbled. This is the reason why there is no certainty about what is right and what is wrong: values are relative and thought is weak and nomadic.

In the art of humanity, for example, any form of hierarchy between high culture and low culture was rejected. As a result art becomes inclusive and including different languages and media.

All that makes the conceptions of fragmentariness of life, hybridism, collages and intertextuality be rooted in Postmodern thought.

Consequences in communication are relevant. Text is produced by a context as a form of communication, so a text is the result of networks of other texts.

The Hours by M. Cunningham is a good application of the concept: V. Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is the ipo-text of the writing.

Furthermore the same communication is perceived in as many ways as the number of readers.

The Hours is again an example of that: three women respond to the same book is three different ways, according to their individuality.

Therefore language in Postmodernism is unstable and dynamic. It is also due to the slip of the relationship between signifier and signified. The theme is expressed by I. Calvino’s Le città invisibili.

In literature semiotic materialism catches on. It is explained in the sentence “We are not what we speak but what speaks us”.

The awareness of communication is linked to the slip of identity.

Consequently Postmodernism’s result is the complexity of reality.

Complexity is mainly perceived by the impossibility of common people to find a link (which is not logic) between different codes and elements.

People might either feel lost in such a complexity or eager to find out the multiplicity of possibility.

In my opinion studying Postmodernism is a challenge: it requires to think in parallelism (not just logically), to connect different elements and to try to understand the world I am living in.

It will be an intriguing challenge.