Postmodernism rejects universal theories and meta-narratives in favor of local and contextual explanations. It is skeptical of ideas of progress, scientific truth, and cultural unity. Postmodernism sees identity as fragmented and emphasizes subcultures, image, and surface appearance over depth and originality. Postmodern art mixes styles, rejects notions of artistic purity, and blurs distinctions between high and popular culture. Postmodern thinkers deconstruct power structures and essentialist ideas of gender, sexuality, and race.

1. Postmodernism
HTH 1002 History of Though II
Kara Heitz

2. Modernism v. Postmodernism
• Meta narratives of history, culture & national identity; faith in
“Grand Theory” (totalizing explanations in science, history,
culture)
• Meta-narrative of progress through science, technology, and
reason
• Faith in social and cultural unity; hierarchies of social-class
and ethnic/national values
• Sense of unified, centered self; individualism; unified identity
.
• Faith and personal investment in macro-politics (nation-state,
political party)
• Faith in “depth” (meaning, value, content, the signified) over
“surface” (appearance, the superficial, the signifier)
• Faith in the “real” beyond the media and representations;
authenticity of “originals”
.
• Dichotomy of high vs. low (popular) culture; imposed
consensus that high culture is normative and authoritative
.
• Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing
.
• Art as unique object and finished work, authenticated by
artist and validated by agreed upon standards
• Suspicion and rejection of meta-narratives; deconstruction of
totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent
theories
• Skepticism of progress & even science; anti-technology
reactions
• Social and cultural pluralism; unclear bases for
social/national/ethnic unity
• Sense of fragmented and decentered self; multiple,
conflicting identities
• Investment in micro-politics, identity politics, local politics
.
• Attention to the play of surfaces, images, signifiers without
concern for “Depth”
• Hyperreality, image saturation, simulacra seems more
powerful than “the real”; images and texts with no prior
“original”; no unmediated experience
• Disruption of dominance of high culture by popular culture;
mixing of high & low cultures, new valuation of popular
culture; hybrid cultures
• Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller
group identities
• Art as process, performance, production; art as recycling of
culture authenticated by audience and validated in
subcultures sharing identity with the artist

3. What is Postmodernism?
• ”PoMo” can refer to:
• A particular kind of style (art, architecture,
design, philosophy)
• A particular historical era
• Rejection of universalism
• “Incredulity toward metanarratives”
(Lyotard)
• “Truth” as socially constructed
• Plurality of voices
• Cultural and moral relativism

4. Postmodern
Art & Culture
• Mass Culture
• Breaking down of line between “high”
and “low” culture
• Pop culture as an object of study
• Postmodern Art
• Rejecting modernism
• Ex. formal purity, art for art's sake,
authenticity, universality, originality,
revolutionary tendencies
• Use of pop culture imagery,
commercialism, kitsch and camp
aesthetic
• Mixing styles from present and past
periods, Conscious ignoring of their
original use in their corresponding
artistic movement.

5. Jameson’s Critique of
Postmodern Culture
• Late Capitalism
• Nostalgia for the past
• Parody v. Pastiche
• Nostalgia films v. historical films
• Politics of nostalgia

6. Donna Haraway,
“Cyborg Manifesto” (1984)
• What is a cyborg?
• Cyborg in two ways:
• Actual changes in technologies
• Shift in how we imagine our “selves” and bodies
• Imagining ourselves as machines, computers processes over
organic discreet bodies
• How does this help push against essentialist notions of gender, sexuality,
ability, etc.?
• Deconstructing dualisms in Western culture
• Politics of affinity not identity
“I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”

7. bell hooks,
“Postmodern Blackness” (1990)
• Pomo in academia
• Theory values heterogeneity, difference,
marginalized voices
• Homogeneity in practice?
• Pomo questioning of essentialism
• Pomo & “yearning”: uniting undervalued
groups/voices
• Essentialism & the “black experience”