Chapter 29: Postmodernism

We began Part Four with a discussion of modernism. It is appropriate that we end, for now, with its antithesis: Postmodernism. We live in the Postmodern era. How can that be, if modern is what is today? The term Postmodern itself suggests the quizzical nature of the trend, which seeks out incongruity. To resolve this paradox, we must understand modern in a dual sense: modernity [present-day] and modernism [a philosophy]. Postmodernism as a trend not only supersedes modernism but, as we shall see, is opposed to the world order as it exists today and to the values that created it.

The Paradox of Postmodernism

What is Postmodernism and when did it begin? Critics are in little agreement on these questions, which is hardly surprising, given how recent the phenomenon is. Generally speaking, Postmodernism is marked by an abiding skepticism that rejects modernism as an ideal defining twentieth-century culture as we have known it. In challenging tradition, however, Postmodernism resolutely refuses to define a new meaning or impose an alternative order in its place. It represents a generation consciously not in search of its identity. Hence, it is not a coherent movement at all but a loose collection of tendencies that, all told, reflect a new sensibility. Each country has a somewhat different outlook and terminology;nevertheless, all may be grouped under the rubric of Postmodernism. We must therefore resort to a composite picture. Though broadly painted as a matter of necessity, it will provide us with a general idea of Postmodernism’s peculiar character. Our treatment of Postmodern art is likewise intended to be suggestive.

As the term post- suggests, our world is in a state of transition—without telling us where we will land. Postmodernism springs from postindustrial society, which is passing rapidly deep into the Information Age (the so-called Third Wave). According to this view, the political, economic, and social structures that have governed the Western world since the end of World War II are changing, undergoing attack from within, or breaking down altogether, ironically at the same time as the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. This institutional erosion has resulted in a corresponding spiritual crisis that reflects the disarray of people’s lives. Postmodernism is a product of the disillusion and alienation afflicting the middle class. At the same time, bourgeois culture has exhausted its possibilities by absorbing its old enemy, the avant-garde. Strangely enough, the avant-garde’s mission was ended by its very success. During the 1950s, the media made the avant-garde so popular that the middle class accepted it and began to hunger for ceaseless change for its own sake. By the following decade, modernism was reduced to a capitalist mode of expression by large corporations, which adopted it not just in architecture but also in painting and sculpture.

Postmodernism celebrates the death of modernism, which it regards as not only arrogant in its claim to universality but also responsible for the evils of contemporary civilization. Democracy, based on Enlightenment values, is seen in turn as a force of oppression to spread the West’s hegemony throughout the world. In common with most earlier avant-garde movements (including EXISTENTIALISM) Postmodernism is antagonistic to humanism as it has evolved since the Renaissance, which it dismisses as bourgeois. Reason, with its hierarchies of thought, is abandoned in order to liberate people from the established order. This rejection opens the way for nontraditional approaches, especially those from the Third World, emphasizing emotion, intuition, fantasy, contemplation, mysticism, and even magic. In this view, Western science is no better than any other system of thought, since it has failed to solve today’s problems. And because scientific reality does not conform to human experience, it is useless in daily life.

Truth is rejected as neither possible nor desirable on the grounds that it can be used by its creators for their own power and ends. Subjective and conflicting interpretations are all that can be offered, and these may vary freely according to the context. Since no set of values can have more validity than any other, everything becomes relative. Bereft of all traditional guidelines, the Postmodernist drifts aimlessly in a sea without meaning or reality. To the extent that the world makes any sense, it is at the local level, where the limited scale makes understanding possible in human terms.

The only escape from an existence in which nothing has intrinsic worth is inaction or hedonism on the one hand and spirituality on the other. The latter is rarely an option, however, since religions impose their own authority and self-discipline; hence, only the most extreme forms of mysticism, lacking all rational control, are acceptable. Postmodernists are thus fated to become pleasure seeking narcissists lacking any strong identity, purpose, or attachments. Avowedly cynical and amoral, they live for the moment, unburdened by any concern for larger issues, which are imponderables in the first place. Rather than vices, however, these traits are considered virtues, for they grant Postmodernists a flexible approach to life that allows them to pursue new modes of existence, free from all restraints or authority.

In the brave new world of Postmodernism, the individual is no longer anchored in time or space. Both have been rendered obsolete in life as they have in science, because they are beyond normal human comprehension and are based on assumptions that are subject to doubt. Traditional definitions of time and space, moreover, were based on hierarchies of thought that served the purposes of colonialism, and the new “hyperspace” created by global communication makes it impossible to position oneself within customary boundaries.

Just as time and space have lost all meaning, so has history. In the end, however, Postmodernism cannot escape the very laws of history it claims to deny. As a parody of modernity, it has its parallels—indeed, its origins—in the avant-garde of a hundred years ago. The same “decadence” and nihilism can be found toward the end of the nineteenth century in the Symbolist movement, with its apocalyptic vision of despair.

Postmodernism makes no attempt to provide new answers to replace the old certitudes it destroys. It instead substitutes pluralism in the name of multicultural diversity, since no one aesthetic is better than any other. Pluralism leads inevitably to eclecticism, with which it is virtually interchangeable. Not only are the two functions of each other, they become ends in themselves.

By the same token, Postmodernism does not try to make the world a better place. In its resolute antimodernism, it is socially and politically ambivalent at best, self-contradictory at worst. Its operating principle is anarchism, but to the extent that it does offer an alternative, Postmodernism espouses any new doctrine as superior to the one it seeks to displace. In the end, Postmodernism remains essentially a form of cultural activism motivated by intellectual theory, not political causes, to which it is ill-suited.

Postmodernism has all the classic earmarks of a self-appointed avant-garde, despite the fact that it vigorously disavows any such connection. The relativism and anarchism of Postmodernism are patently subversive in their intent. This nihilism reflects the prevailing skepticism of the late twentieth century, when very little is deemed to have any significance or worth.

Because it has so many meanings, Postmodernism itself is a meaningless term, posing the kind of hopeless double bind that it delights in. In fact, Postmodernism as a whole is riddled with contradictions. But if nothing is valid, then the values it often espouses—feminism, pluralism, and the like—could be fallacious as well.

Semiotics and Deconstruction

The information age is obsessed with meaning—and the lack thereof. Like the intellectual disciplines, nearly all branches of culture have come under the spell of semiotics—the study of signs, also known as semiology (though a distinction is sometimes made between the two). And with good reason, for semiotics is part of philosophy, linguistics, science, sociology, anthropology, communications, psychology, art, literature, cinema: any sphere of human endeavor that involves symbols. (There are other classes of signs that are the subject of semiotic inquiry as well.) Semiotics in turn has been attacked from within by deconstruction, which constitutes undoubtedly the most potent critique mounted to date by Postmodernism. As the term suggests, deconstruction is destructive, not constructive. It tears a text apart by using the text against itself, until the text finally “deconstructs” itself. What is important for our discussion is not the theories, interesting though they may be, but their effect on art.

Source: Janson, H. W., and Anthony F. Janson. A Basic History of Art. New York: Prentice Hall, 1997. 595-7.

Footnote: Although its roots reach back to the nineteenth century, EXISTENTIALISM is regarded as a characteristically mid-twentieth-century response to modern life. An existentialist believes that human beings are not born with an essential nature or a God-within who determines the choices people make; rather, all are painfully free to choose and each person becomes the sum of his or her choices. Surrounding this existential condition is the inevitability of death, or not-being. Having life at all is a random, absurd fact, and making decisions is all there is to life. [Back to Text]