Postcolonialism And Postmodernism

[Giovanni Sealy]

Mostscholars would agree that modernism began around 1900 and continued on as the dominant cultural force in the intellectual circles of Western culture well into the mid-twentieth century.[1][2] Like all eras, modernism encompasses many competing individual directions and is impossible to define as a discrete unity or totality. However, its chief general characteristics are often thought to include an emphasis on "radical aesthetics, technical experimentation, spatial or rhythmic, rather than chronological form, [and] self-conscious reflexiveness"[3] as well as the search for authenticity in human relations, abstraction in art, and utopian striving. These characteristics are normally lacking in postmodernism or are treated as objects of irony.

Postmodernism arose after World War II as a reaction to the perceived failings of modernism, whose radical artistic projects had come to be associated with totalitarianism[4] or had been assimilated into mainstream culture. The basic features of what is now called postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s, most notably in the work of Jorge Luis Borges.[5] However, most scholars today would agree that postmodernism began to compete with modernism in the late 1950s and gained ascendancy over it in the 1960s.[6] Since then, postmodernism has been a dominant, though not undisputed, force in art, literature, film, music, drama, architecture, history, and continental philosophy. Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels,[7] a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism towards a "grand narrative" of Western culture,[8] a preference for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what "the real" constitutes)[9] and a "waning of affect"[10] on the part of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly reproducible signs inducing a state of consciousness similar to schizophrenia.[11]

Since the late 1990s, there has been a small but growing feeling both in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion."[12] However, there have been few formal attempts to define and name the era succeeding postmodernism, and none of the proposed designations has yet become part of mainstream usage.

Consensus on what constitutes an era can not be easily achieved while that era is still in its early stages. However, a common theme of current attempts to define post-postmodernism is emerging as one where faith, trust, dialogue, performance, and sincerity can work to transcend postmodern irony. The following definitions, which vary widely in depth, focus, and scope, are listed in the chronological order of their appearance.

In his 1999 book on Russian postmodernism, the Russian-American Slavist Mikhail Epstein suggested that postmodernism "is ... part of a much larger historical formation," which he calls "postmodernity".[16] Epstein believes that postmodernist aesthetics will eventually become entirely conventional and provide the foundation for a new, non-ironic kind of poetry, which he describes using the prefix "trans-":

In considering the names that might possibly be used to designate the new era following "postmodernism," one finds that the prefix "trans" stands out in a special way. The last third of the 20th century developed under the sign of "post," which signalled the demise of such concepts of modernity as "truth" and "objectivity," "soul" and "subjectivity," "utopia" and "ideality," "primary origin" and "originality," "sincerity" and "sentimentality." All of these concepts are now being reborn in the form of "trans-subjectivity," "trans-idealism," "trans-utopianism," "trans-originality," "trans-lyricism," "trans-sentimentality" etc.[17]

In his 2006 paper The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, the British scholar Alan Kirby formulated a socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls "pseudo-modernism".[19] Kirby associates pseudo-modernism with the triteness and shallowness resulting from the instantaneous, direct, and superficial participation in culture made possible by the internet, mobile phones, interactive television and similar means: "In pseudo-modernism one phones, clicks, presses, surfs, chooses, moves, downloads."[19]

Pseudo-modernism's "typical intellectual states" are furthermore described as being "ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety" and it is said to produce a "trance-like state" in those participating in it. The net result of this media-induced shallowness and instantaneous participation in trivial events is a "silent autism" superseding "the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism." Kirby sees no aesthetically valuable works coming out of "pseudo-modernism". As examples of its triteness he cites reality TV, interactive news programs, "the drivel found ... on some Wikipedia pages", docu-soaps, and the essayistic cinema of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock.[19] In a book published in September 2009 titled Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture, Kirby developed further and nuanced his views on culture and textuality in the aftermath of postmodernism.

In 2010, the cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker introduced the term metamodernism[20] as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate. In their article "Notes on Metamodernism" they assert that the 2000s are characterized by the emergence of a sensibility that oscillates between, and must be situated beyond, modern positions and postmodern strategies. As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker cite the "informed naivety", "pragmatic idealism" and "moderate fanaticism" of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the financial crisis, and (geo)political instability.

In his 2020 paper Hyperhybridism: Postmodernism is Old but not Old Fashioned[22] scholar Mehdi Ghasemi introduces hyperhybridism as the heir of postmodernism. He formulates a cultural and literary assessment of post-postmodernism and argues that the contemporary era is defined by multidirectionality. He discusses that hyperhybridism exists synchronically along with its ancestor and recalibrates some of its key assumptions.

In his 2022 paper Post-postmodernism and the Emergence of Heterolinational Literatures [23] Ghasemi also introduces heterolinationalism as another successor to postmodernism and draws upon some paradigms of heterolinational literatures, including post-academia, postnationalism and polyliterature, polyvocalism and plurilingualism, self-publishing, social media and multimediality as well as transtextuality and fanfiction.

In his 2023 book chapter Paradigms of Cyberculturalism in Post-postmodernity[24] Ghasemi develops yet another heir to postmodernism, which he calls Cyberculturalism, and argues that we have moved into a new artistic, literary, social, media and economic period, wherein cyberculture reigns at the crossroads of real and virtual spaces and affects our literary and artistic productions, publication outlets, communication means and economic transactions. To show this, he elaborates on paradigms of cyberculturalism, including artificial intelligence, multimediality, omnipresence of social media, Twitterature, cybercommerce and cryptocurrency, in art, literature, culture and economics.

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break with modernism. What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrow contexts.

"Postmodernism" is "a highly contested term",[1] referring to "a particularly unstable concept",[2] that "names many different kinds of cultural objects and phenomena in many different ways".[3] It is "diffuse, fragmentary, [and] multi-dimensional".[4] Critics have described it as "an exasperating term"[5] and claim that its indefinability is "a truism".[6] Put otherwise, postmodernism is "several things at once".[5] It has no single definition, and the term does not name any single unified phenomenon, but rather many diverse phenomena: "postmodernisms rather than one postmodernism".[7][8][9]

Although postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend the perceived limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to different critics in various arts.[10] Further, there are outliers on even this basic stance; for instance, literary critic William Spanos conceives postmodernism, not in period terms, but in terms of a certain kind of literary imagination so that pre-modern texts such as Euripides' Orestes or Cervantes' Don Quixote count as postmodern.[11]

If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthestic [sic], epistemological, moral, or political in nature, the representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted.[12]

The term "postmodern" was first used in 1870 by the artist John Watkins Chapman, who described "a Postmodern style of painting" as a departure from French Impressionism.[13][17] Similarly, the first citation given by the Oxford English Dictionary is dated to 1916, describing Gus Mager as "one of the few 'post' modern painters whose style is convincing".[18]

Episcopal priest and cultural commentator J. M. Thompson, in an 1914 article, uses the term to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion, writing, "the raison d'tre of Post-Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of modernism by being thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition".[19] In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell, president of St. Stephen's College and also an Episcopal priest, published Postmodernism and Other Essays, which marks the first use of the term to describe an historical period following modernity.[20][21] The essay criticizes lingering socio-cultural norms, attitudes, and practices of the Enlightenment. It is also critical of a purported cultural shift away from traditional Christian beliefs.[22][23][24]

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