How would we define the term "postmodernism" or "post-modernism"?

The most important part of the question is the use of sources. Give an opinion, if you like, but please call it such. If you have an academic understanding of the term, please cite sources.

Asked by ProfAnonAnon 23 months ago Similar questions: define term postmodernism post modernism Science > Social Science.

Similar questions: define term postmodernism post modernism.

Put simply as possible, it is a temporal context (since WWII), condition, process or product challanging modernism. And within my own definition, above, it's important to emphasize postmodern is also a critique, a way of seeing, a way of thinking, which essentially strips down the known, systematic framework of conventions we are all used to living with and accepting. It even involves challanging the very context we see everything in.

I remember the first time I saw the word, and read about anything postmodern was in a nice book someone gave me back in the late 70s about postmodern architecture. The book was wonderful, because it was about all these different architects who were using unconventional materials, colors, stylistic elements, etc. , and breaking out of what had been up to recent times very rigid frames of reference for buildings and architectural design. This turns out to have some relevence to the definition of what postmodern is, because it was first in architecture, and then in all the other arts, and literature, and culture, that postmodern critique actually began.

It was about breaking out of forulaec ways of creating and seeing things. We do live, nomatter what anyone wishes to believe, in a postmodern era. Therefore, when people find themselves in great confusion as to what things mean, or wondering why the same old constructs (rules, laws, understandings, conventions, etc. ) don't seem to apply to what they're trying to do, or the problems they have, they should consider the fact that this is part of POSTMODERN LIFE: challanging, even deconstructing the realities that hold our world together at the present time.

It's true that the word Postmodern began long ago in academic critiques, as a philosophical perspective, and that if you want to go back and get the full scope of how things have come to this, you have to go back much farther than post world war two philosophy and URL1 major philosophical strongholds, which I think are the most common, are Kierkegaard, Nietchze, and Foulcout. But even before I studied these philosophiers and applied their thought to my schoolwork and then, later, life, I was a big fan even back in the 70s of Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs, now considered more popular, literary perveyors of post-modernism. In fact, I think my first, most intense "postmodern moment" was when I finished the book "Buddenbrooks," by Thomas Mann, and cried my eyes out for at least a half an hour.

I was a senior undergraduate and had not yet heard, or known I'd heard, of postmodernism. I'm a former academic who has formally studied many subjects in the context of postmodernism. Even so, though I have many educated friends who have studied the same, most of us would not have dared, until maybe five or ten years ago, brought up postmodernism or discussed deconstructing this or that in everyday conversation.It always sounded snooty or like "I've been to college" talk, and really, no one had time for this.

Finally, though, I believe the concepts and precepts that postmodernism involves have come into the mainstream and are ideas we all have become familiar with. Not only that, but I think it's time we get used to everyone educating each other and sharing what we know that we think will actually be helpful in living better lives, and even surviving, since it looks like going to college is going to be something only wealthy people get to do from now on, or else people with the stomach to take on the awesome burdon of humongous debt in a credit risky world.At first, postmodernism may seem like a very dark way of seeing things to a lot of people, or like the simple act of refuting everything conventional and warm and safe. If you've not had an existential crisis at all, it probably will seem like pretty rough stuff.

It's just a matter of reexamining all that is not working now, and involves for most thoughful people giving a hard look at what doesn't work now, and why it doesn't work, and by doing this analysis (deconstructing) you will not only -- possibly -- see the core of intended well-meaning in the things that are deconstructed, but will know more about how to construct new things that DO work NOW -- and work for, hopefully, better reasons -- more reasonable reasons. :) I have some books to recommend, but I'm not going to go quoting to no end Widipedia on this. I do recommend that you read the definition of postmodernism in Wiki, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism Just a few other tips: Remember that to challange and break down conventions and build new ones is not at all, necessarily "nihilism" like a lot of conventional people will have you think.At no other time has being a creative person, in any capacity, been more of a blessing or more useful. Don't hold back on those creative gifts and talents. If you find yourself actually questioning reality, don't worry at all.

You're in good company. A majority of the world is doing the same. Of course, there are always things to learn from that which you find replacements for.

And facing a problem will bring you closer to resolution than hiding from it, or deciding not to move forward at all. A lot of what we must make anew is going to ivnolve not simply knowing, but learning together with others, or teaching. A transition from the Information Age to the Sociologic Age.

I, myself, am training and working up to being a teacher AND student in the Free University Movement, or Peer to Peer University, more specifically, through Creative Commons. P2pU. Org Sources: Study and a thougtful life lydianell's Recommendations Postmodernism For Beginners Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $8.44 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 19 reviews) This is one of the Philosophy for Beginners books I love and have gotten so much from, since my academic philosophy skills are rusty, and I'm not about to go back to reading numerous, huge old books.

Philosophy for the masses, I say. All these books, incidentally, are in COMIC BOOK FORM, and are just brilliant! This book is just as good as taking an academic course on beginning Postmodern philosophy.

Lydianell's Recommendations Nietzsche For Beginners Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $5.17 Average Customer Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (based on 16 reviews) Product Description The unorthodox life and ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche come alive in this documentary history. Here is a clear picture of the time in which this revolutionary philosopher lived and worked. We meet the luminaries of the age: Richard Wagner, Bismark, Freud and Darwin.

We learn of Nietzsche’s famous love affairs, his theories of the Superman, the Antichrist and nihilism, as well as his impact on Twentieth Century thinking. And we see how the Nazi’s annexed and deformed Nietzsche’s thought to serve their purposes. Nietzsche For Beginners is an important introduction to modern philosophy.

Plato, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhaur are all evaluated in light of their influence on Nietzsche’s work. Discover why this great thinker defiantly declared, “God is Dead. ” lydianell's Recommendations Kierkegaard For Beginners Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $8.74 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 17 reviews) Product Description Philosophically, Søren Kierkegaard was the “bridge” that led from Hegel to Existentialism.

Kierkegaard abhorred Hegel’s abstract, know-it-all idealism that tried to capture reality in a few words. Kierkegaard’s attack on social and religious complacency and his single-handed assault on traditional Western philosophy generated a crisis that produced a radically new way of philosophizing and made him the founder of the school that would later be called Existentialism. To Kierkegaard, reality was personal, subjective–it began and ended with the individual–and philosophy was not something one merely talked about, it was the way you lived.

Kierkegaard For Beginners explains, plainly and simply, the great Danish thinker’s obsession with the particularity of human existence as well as his demonstration of how the creation of an authentic new kind of individual is possible. Lydianell's Recommendations Foucault For Beginners Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $8.74 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 10 reviews) Product Description Michel Foucault’s work has profoundly affected the teaching of such diverse disciplines as literary criticism, criminology, and gender studies. Arguing that definitions of abnormal behavior are culturally constructed, Foucault explored the unfair divisions between those who meet and those who deviate from social norms.In Foucault For Beginners, the reader will discover Foucault’s deeply visual sense of scenes such as ritual public executions.

Lydianell's Recommendations Deconstruction For Beginners Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $5.17 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 3 reviews) .

Could someone define the term "solipsist". " "Is "social science" science? " "Is technology a social or natural science?" "Can you recommend good, well-written books on post-modernism in psychology?

" "Is social Darwinism a science?

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.