Postmodernism

The terms “postmodern” and “postmodernism” first of all referred to new departures in the arts, in literature, and in architecture that had their origins in the 1950s and early 1960s, gained momentum in the course of the 1960s, and became a dominant factor in the 1970s. After their heyday in the 1980s, postmodern innovations had either run their course or were absorbed by the mainstream, if not commercialized by the advertising industry. On a more intangible level, the terms referred to the new “postmodern” sensibility that had given rise to those innovations, but that also manifested itself more broadly in, for instance, the so-called counterculture of the later 1960s. This postmodern sensibility was irreverent, playful, and ironic. It rejected the distinction between high art and popular culture and demystified the status of art and the artist. Its articulation in the form of literary criticism—where the label “postmodern” first gained wide currency—prefigured the theory-driven criticism that arose in the course of the 1970s and that was heavily indebted to French poststructuralism. In the next decade, this postmodern criticism or critique, an amalgam of poststructuralist ideas and assumptions, branched out into all directions, making itself felt in historiography, ethnography, musicology, religious studies, management and organization studies, legal studies, leisure studies, and other areas that unexpectedly experienced a postmodern moment, or even a more lasting postmodern reorientation. Finally, and at its most encompassing level, the term postmodern was applied to late-20th-century Western society as a whole. The argument here was that somewhere in the postwar period modernity had given way to a postmodernity that recognizably constituted a new economic and sociocultural formation. There was not much agreement as to the exact turning point, or on the nature, of the new “postmodern condition,” but its theorists, most of whom saw it as inextricably entangled with capitalism, even if some emphasized its emancipatory pursuit of heterogeneity and difference, argued that it was here to stay. If it did, it soon was left to its own devices. We have since the turn of the century not heard much about postmodernity. Postmodern criticism has fared better and though it, too, would seem to have run out of steam in the new millennium, it has fundamentally changed our perspectives on literature, architecture, the arts, and a host of other subjects, not the least of which is the rational, self-determined subject of Enlightenment humanism.