Broadly defined, postmodernism
refers to a specific period of time that began in the 1940s, a style of
literature, architecture, art philosophy, or the plight of Western
society in post-capitalist age. This movement encompasses a set of critical and rhetorical practices
employing concepts such as difference, repetition, and hyperreality to
break apart or deconstruct the structural elements achieved
through modernism, including temporality, presence, identity, historical
progress, epistemic certainty, and meaning achieved through unity.
The
term “postmodernism” first entered the philosophical lexicon in 1979,
with the publication of The Postmodern Condition, by
Jean-François Lyotard, in which Lyotard utilizes Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
model of language games and concepts taken from speech act theory to
account for “a transformation of the game rules” for science, art, and
literature. For Lyotard, postmodern thought can best be summed up as
“incredulity towards meta narratives.” According to Lyotard,
postmodernists eschew “grand narratives” that attempt to account for,
explain, and compartmentalize human life and history; there is no
clearly defined, collective meaning and for the postmodern world, there
is no mourning
of the loss of meaning because the outcome of one’s own experience and
condition will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than exact
and universal.
If you wish to pursue the subject further, this page is an excellent resource with many links to sub-topics, that has been nested inside a web portal giving out information on online graduate programs.
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