1. Postmodernity emerged as a cultural reaction to the failure of Modernity to realize human progress and happiness. It questions notions of truth, reason, and progress that characterized Modernity. 2. Jean-François Lyotard argued that Postmodernity results from the death of grand narratives of Modernity based on ideals of equality, liberty, and progress. Postmodernity is characterized by uncertainty and fragmentation. 3. Postmodernity can be seen as an ideological weapon of neoliberal capitalism to incorporate social imaginaries that benefit ruling classes and mitigate class conflict, silencing issues to prevent worker awareness of their true historical conditions.

1. 1
THE POSTMODERNITY AS IDEOLOGY OF NEOLIBERALISM AND
GLOBALIZATION
Fernando Alcoforado *
The failure of the Enlightenment and Modernity in the realization of human progress
and of happiness achievement for humans paved the way for the advent of Post-
Modernity that is a cultural reaction to the loss of confidence in the universal potential
of the Enlightenment project and Modernity. The Postmodernism means, therefore, a
reaction to what is modern. Some schools of thought are located its origin in the alleged
exhaustion of the modernity project by the end of the twentieth century.
David Harvey, a professor at the City University of New York who works with various
issues related to urban geography, points out in his book Condição Pós-Moderna
(Postmodern Condition), published by Edições Loyola (São Paulo, 1993) that the Post-
Modernity is born of Modernity that actually would have gestated Post-Modernity to
put technological advances, such as microelectronics, internet, robotics, that now allow
a new way of experiencing the contemporary. Harvey says that Modernity is a condition
for Post-Modernity. For Harvey, Post-Modernity would be the disenchantment of
Modernity with what did not work.
In La condition postmoderne, rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Minuit, 1979), Jean-François
Lyotard, French philosopher, featuring Postmodernism as a result of the death of "grand
narratives" totalizing of Modernity, founded on belief in progress and the
Enlightenment ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity. Lyotard protests against the
format of the "grand narrative" that dominates the modernist portrait of history. This
grand narrative, according to Lyotard, falsely indicates that much of what is useful in
history originated in the Enlightenment, which since the Enlightenment humanity
progressed cognitively quickly, as well as in terms of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Post-Modernity is also defined by many authors as the era of uncertainty, of
fragmentation, of deconstruction, the exchange of values. Regarding Post-Modernity,
Lyotard argues that what is underway is a removal and subsequent reconstruction of the
institutions, which often makes them very fluid human bonds. In terms of human
relations, the Post-modernity is characterized by the breakdown of the paradigm that
prevailed previously, for example, that marriage concerns the man-woman relationship.
One of the most visible aspects of the time we live in is the ability that each individual
has to invent new marital arrangements as gay marriage. In Postmodernism, we see the
ability to accept and even appreciate groups that were socially stigmatized, such as
homosexuals, divorced, single and childless.
While Modernity can be characterized as the time for recovery and belief in notions of
truth, reason, objectivity and determinism, unwavering faith in scientific progress and
universal emancipation, Post-Modernity may be the questioning of it all. Post-
Modernity also makes our current historical period will constitute a "patchwork quilt" a
"mosaic" of times, periods and historical situations that exist, for example, middle-age
characteristics in certain regions of the country living with the contemporary era. This is
a common feature of the Post-Modernity. However, if this is one of its features, can be
said to be in the Post-modernity is to say, that Modernity and Post-modernity coexist.
In Post-Modernity, the world constructed of durable objects was replaced by the
products available and designed for immediate obsolescence and disposal. The Post-

2. 2
Modernity can be characterized as a reaction to culture the way is historically developed
the ideals of Modernity, associated with loss of optimism and confidence in the
universal potential of Enlightenment and modern design. Appears as a rejection of
colonization attempt by science and technology to the other man's life spheres. Post-
Modernity leads to criticism of the deeper consequences, questioning the criteria
established by Modernity. In his book O mal estar da pós-modernidade (The malaise of
post-modernity), published by Jorge Zahar (Rio de janeiro, 1998), Zygmunt.Bauman,
Polish sociologist, argues that the post-modern man is one who lives easily adaptable at
all times with the different realities and can satisfactorily survive all of them.
Bauman says the Modernity of men lived in a solid time-space, durable, hard container
in which human actions could coin to be safe. Freedom was the known need, but also
the decision to act with this knowledge. The structure was in place. However for men
and women of Post-Modernity this world disappeared. As Bauman points out the world
in which man is living consists of rules that are made and remade in the course of the
events themselves. To live in this world you have to use the most of your skills. The
world has become more fragile and dangerous. Many of the relationships that underlie
the contemporary world are not lasting.
Questions relating to the Enlightenment, Modernity and Post-Modernity fall within the
field of ideology. By ideology, are built imaginary and social identification logic whose
function would be to conceal the conflict between social classes, disguising the class
rule and hide the particular presence, giving you the universal appearance. The
ideological discourse is characterized by an imaginary construction in the sense of the
unity of social images, thanks to which provides social and political subjects an area of
action that must necessarily provide consistent representations to explain the social
reality and provide consistent standards to guide practice policy.
One can understand the implicit or explicit function of ideology in an attempt of the
dominant social classes to make the particular point of view of the classes engaged in
the political domination appear for all social and political subjects as universal, not as
particular interest a particular class. Under the influence of Karl Marx, German
philosopher, the word ideology has become widely used in the humanities of our time
with the meaning of a system of ideas that produce a 'understanding of reality "to
conceal or disguise the domination of one group over the other. In this sense, the
ideology has functions such as to preserve the class domination presenting a soothing
explanation for the social differences. Your goal is to avoid open conflict between rulers
and ruled.
Post-Modernity is a powerful ideological weapon of neoliberal market capitalism and
globalization to incorporate a form of production of the social imaginary that
corresponds to the wishes of the ruling class as the most effective means of social
control and mitigate class conflict, inverting the notion of cause and effect, silencing
issues which thus prevent the worker's awareness of its historical condition, forming
false ideas about yourself, about what is or what it should be. To defeat the enemies of
true human progress and reinvent the Enlightenment, battlefields should not be
restricted to political and economic, but also the scope of ideology.
*Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems.