Postmodernism: Moving Toward Transcendence
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date published 19/11/2007
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SummaryThe conception of a utopian society has both motivated and haunted countless civilizations since the dawn of time. Sublime and intangible, the aspiration to reach a “perfect” society is arguably the heart of one of the world’s most significant movements; modernism. Proponents of modernism believe that it was [and still is] society’s best chance at reaching any semblance of a utopia. Theorists such as Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson celebrate modernism as the peak of recent thinking, and rail against society’s contemporary movement; postmodernism. These advocates of modernism believe postmodernism to be a giant leap backward; a movement bent on destroying all that modernism has created. Modernism, in the eyes of its advocates, attempted to seek out and destroy any injustices and frustrations within society by attacking them head on, and with the utmost seriousness. Postmodernism, with its deeply rooted use of irony, ambivalence, parody, and contradiction, has often been dismissed by its opponents as lacking the gravity and significance of modernism; an extremely faulty claim. Postmodernism is, in fact, the most appropriate, valid perception of humanity modern man has shaped. In Jim Powell’s book Postmodernism for Beginners, he points out that Fredric Jameson admired modernism because it “expressed its dissatisfaction with the world” (Powell 36). Jameson considered this application of modernism to be the vital first step in any conquest of utopia. Moreover, he and other advocates of modernism believed postmodernism to be a flawed, destructive movement which not only accepted the dissatisfactions of the world, but merely made jokes of them. Jameson, along with other opponents of postmodernism, is simply mistaken. Postmodernism is more powerful and productive a concept than modernism could ever have been; it does not accept the injustices and dissatisfactions of the world. Instead, it uses methods of parody, ambivalence, and irony to transcend these societal barriers. If there is any chance of reaching a utopian society, postmodernism is truly the first step.
Table of Contents
- It is important to understand that postmodernism is not an opposing force to modernism.
- Modernist advocates often find postmodernism's reliance on irony, ambivalence, and contradiction to be threatening to the cultural and historical advances made by modernism.
- One of postmodernism's most frequent critiques revolves around the embracing of kitsch and decidedly 'low-culture?.
- Critics of postmodernism are often dissatisfied with the way it views history, and moreover, the present and the future.
- A truly utopian society is, most likely, unattainable; yet remains worthy pursuit.
- Modernism viewed the past, the present, and the future in terms of all-encompassing metanarratives; everything was explainable and definable.
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