Is there any such thing as "Post-Postmodern"?

Modern lasted at least a half century before it got old. I remember when I was a kid in the 1960s, “Modern” in its Space Age edition was still widely held to be valid as an overall tenor of the times, defining the way we would think, build, make art and technology and even philosophy and religion. It got old, of course. Where the Wasteland Ends (1971) by Theodore Roszak was the beginning of the death-knell for Modern.

Poor Postmodern, by contrast, only lasted a few years before people got tired of it. I will always remember the first George Bush administration (1989-1993) as the era when Postmodern finally became popularly successful… and simultaneously old hat. It was written up in the New York Times Magazine a lot in those days, which has got to be some kind of omen of impending oblivion, the crest of the arc and the beginning of downhill. By the time a hot new trend is big enough to get reported by the Times, the trendsetters are already tired of it. Things move that much quicker nowadays.

Do we have anything right now to replace Postmodern? (I was mostly joking when I said “Post-Postmodern” in the title, because that just sounds gross.) Or — paradigm shift — have we collectively, tacitly agreed to drop the need for an overarching paradigm under which all civilizational thought and actvity have to be subsumed? Nowadays, multiple levels of meanings can be considered at once. If this doesn’t have a name, it might be for the best.

I hate the phrase, “postmodern” Somehow, it just gets to me. How about, “modern period art”, when you refer to the most current art, architecture, whatever period, and when refering to the last one, you can talk about "the modern period of the (enter decade here).

I’ve heard the phrase “post-post-modern” before. I don’t really know what it means, or if we’re in it now, but I’ve heard it used.

That doesn’t help much when you’re talking about schools of thought and movements. Things that last longer than “right now.” And saying “the modern period of the [blank]” is unwieldy.

“Post-modern” sounds absurd on the face of it, but when you actually find out what it means it does make sense. The understanding I have is that things that are post-modern are critical- they’re self-aware. “Modern art,” on the other hand, isn’t like that. I doubt I’m explaining this well, however the term does have a specific, useful meaning that “art from [time here]” does not convey.

A bit of a side-track, but could we please name our movements, instead of just attaching “post” to the previous movement. Aren’t their more descriptive names for Post-modern, post-feminist, or post-punk? At this rate 22 century art students will be studying the post-post-post-post-post-post modern movement.

‘Postmodern’ generally is a misleading shortening of ‘post-modernism’. Modernism is a definite and identifiable thing. Post-modernism is the reaction against modernism. So, yes, there’s the possibility for ‘post-post-modernism’. But I’ve only ever heard the phrase used in a sarcastic, “we’ve gone beyond meaningful terms” way. It’s become a naff term - a bit like ‘paradigm shift’ :stuck_out_tongue:

I dunno, those labels are more useful to art critics who don’t entirely get it and are trying to explain to laypeople who completely don’t get it.

That’s the whole art world, it’s a way for the nouveau riche to buy their way into society. So terms such as these are designed to let them be able to talk about artwork they bought because it touched someone that the people at the gallery knew, not because it actually touched that person. If they pay $ 500,000 for a painting then the artist is obligated to invite them to the cool party where they will hopefully get to meet Larry Gogosian or Donald Trump. Then the artist sucks the buyer off in front of said ‘more important person’ and more important person is hopefully impressed by the vivid display that was put on for their benefit. Then the Nouveau Riche feels more powerful because they were just metaphorically fellated in front of a ‘more important person’ and many ‘less important people’. The artist then establishes a portfolio of who owns his pieces, and it becomes more about who owns their work than anything else, because they keep track of who’s collection it is in, and if they maintain this idea of value based upon ownership of their work, then the piece maintains value and can be considered an “asset” by the rich person should they ever find themselves suddenly in need of liquidity.

That’s postmodernism in a nutshell. Following trickle down economics ;p it informs us as to which car to own because “More people bought that one.”, and they get the theory explained in the Cliff’s notes version so that they can converse with ‘more important person’ on it’s philisophical impilcations. It doesn’t matter that the artist in all likelihood didn’t even paint that piece himself but rather paid some up and coming artist $ 10 an hour to do it for him, or more than likely paid about 5 different artists to do it for him using the apprenticeship system of the old masters as their justification for doing so even though they aren’t really apprenticing those artists.

I don’t think there is much hope for an idea that is defined as being “after what it’s predecessor came after.” It’s a pop culture mentality and is more or less valueless, as you can go to a coffeeshop and buy a painting that really touches you for $ 50 and it has a greater intrinsic value than the painting by the famous artist’s employees without ever knowing what modernism, postmodernism, or post-post-modernism is.

Anything that is too self-concious and ironic lacks the emotional resonance that actually expressing what you truly feel with your work has, and won’t stick around quite as long.

Erek

It’s worth noting that the OP didn’t metion art. Which I presume, by the context of your rant, means the visual arts.

And your whole post clearly shows you’ve no idea what modernism is or was. So how can you comment on reactions to it?

Starting to, in some disciplines at least.

In literature, pomo is/was all about “theory;” in broad summary, it rejected the idea that any work could even be meaningful in any real sense. Rather, they were simply “texts” or “cultural production” upon which readers and critics were pretty much free to find whatever meaning they could. The author was “dead;” i.e. she was simply a reflection of her time, not a free person capable of communicating with readers across space and time; rather readers are free to reinterpret the work. Shakespeare was writing about lesbians, whether he knew it ot not.

Recently, some big names have pretty much said that theory is played-out (Stanley Fish, for one). But they haven’t really said what they think will replace it.

But in any event it will take quite awhile for any change to become evident; the theorists didn’t really take power until the 70s, and they are firmly in control at this point, including control of whe gets named as new faculty.

I do not think this is an accurate summary of postmodernism, although so much nonsense has been written about postmodernism that it’s a difficult to pin it down.

In regard to literary/artistic interpretation, postmodernism holds that a work cannot be meaningful in any objective sense. The creation of the work is influenced by the author’s perspective, which was itself influenced by personal experience, background, time period, etc. The interpretation of the work is influenced by the reader/viewer or critic’s perspective.

Understanding of a text is always going to be based on more than the letters on the page, and the impossibility of ever getting inside the author’s mind makes it equally impossible to look at things from the author’s precise perspective. Different interpretations are an inevitability. So what do we do with these differing interpretations? Some schools of thought would hold that Shakespeare’s intent was the only thing that mattered. If we consider, say, Olivia in Twelfth Night, they’d say that she can’t possibly be a lesbian because Shakespeare doesn’t say that she is and almost certainly did not intent for her to be understood as such. On the other hand, postmodernism holds that if a 21st century person takes the character to be a lesbian then they cannot simply be dismissed with “Well, Shakespeare didn’t mean for her to be a lesbian, so you’re wrong!” Of course, it also holds that anyone who thinks that Olivia wasn’t a lesbian cannot be told that their interpretation is wrong either. They can only be reminded that not everyone is going to see the same work the same way.

This does not necessarily mean that no interpretation can be considered better than another (although some postmodernists would hold that all interpretations are equal), but rather that no interpretation is inherently flawed simply because it contradicts someone else’s interpretation. Even if that someone else is the original author! We don’t have to pick one “correct” interpretation and throw all others onto the rubbish heap. We don’t have to ignore all the old ways of thinking, as the modernists tried to do. As the OP says, “multiple levels of meanings can be considered at once”, although Johanna didn’t seem to realize that this description applied to postmodernism rather than “post-postmodernism”.

Which brings us back to the OP’s original question. I think it both overestimates the role of postmodernism in the past and underestimates its continuing role in the present. Postmodernism never wholly replaced modernism, and it’s unlikely to be wholly replaced by the “next big thing” either. As to what that next big thing might be, my guess would be yet another cycle of neo-Classicism – but that is just a guess. Meanwhile, the more useful parts of postmodernism will probably be around for a long time. The sillier parts will fade away.

I did mention art in passing. I guess I was thinking more of philosophy and literature, though architecture is where it could be seen the most plainly. Of course, what happens to the concept in architecture is going to be quite different from what literary theory makes of it, or philosophy.

Yeah, I know that was a weakness in my OP, though I didn’t find the way to express it quite right. Here’s what I was trying to get at: I felt pomo to be essentially negative, its mission being to break down privileged interpretations, saying that none was more privileged than another. To get beyond that, I envisioned a more positive attitude that would find ways to fill creativity with more life, more heart, more warmth. Not only accepting diversity but growing one’s awareness of sharing in other ways of thinking and experiencing. Instead of bloodlessly critiquing everything. I was looking for a synthesis of the pomo acceptance of multiple levels of meaning with a new affirmation of the value of life, of humans’ connections to nature and to one another. Theory is all living in the head, a more unified approach to life would include the body and the feelings too, as in the book Women’s Ways of Knowing by Belenky et al. Pomo did a pretty good job breaking down traditional male privilege in theory, but didn’t go far enough. Partly because keeping it all limited to the head is a legacy of the male-dominated Western Tradition, while a more gender-equal approach would allow feelings.

Pomo was great for criticizing inequities of power, now how about exploring ways for the newly empowered to do something good with it? In other words, don’t wait for The Man to give you your power, just go and help yourself to it. This is already going on, and maybe I should just be glad it’s going on, and not bother trying to buff it up into an overarching paradigm; that’s one legacy of pomo I would keep. How about bringing gentleness and love into the discourse? Ask whether there is any place in this world for gentle people. These are a few of the directions I hope would open up as we let go of pomo and allow it to fade into the past.

Along these lines, I suggest for example Hakim Bey’s fun, smart use of anarchism, to not only liberate yourself, but to experience your liberation more fully. Because the best way to have it is to use it.

Another example: Feminist theory can get overly dry and jargon-laden if it doesn’t reconnect with the source of its power and meaning, namely the real lives of women. I respond better to the warm-blooded, human-level feminism put into practice by Witch collectivities like Reclaiming. Warm-blooded feminism would not only accord a higher value to the practical, everyday feminist developments among working-class women in non-Western cultures, it would reach out to them and adopt their ways in building caring and supportive feminist communities. Otherwise, it remains largely a white Western theory-heavy top-heavy wank. Feminism put into practice would get away from giving so much weight to the already powerful and privileged, and work on building egalitarian communities where you can live your values instead of just talking, writing, and debating them with other well-to-do academics. Get engaged in the rest of humanity.

I think your opinions on art are identical to your opinions on academia - you have lots of scorn and like impugning people’s motives, but you don’t actually seem to know much about what you’re putting down.

Johanna: I am spinning a party with Hakim Bey speaking next week.

GorillaMan: I grew up in a postmodern era, so I was commenting not on modernity, but post-modernism, where there is a certain despair at trying to excel, and the idea of excellence is even called into question, as we saw many “accomplishments” that we question the validity of. This permeates most art and culture that we were bombarded with over the past 15 years, a cynical look at what we considered to be “progress”, and the things we left behind as a result of it. So if Modernity was about the progress, Post-Modernity is about a malaise in regards to progress in general, we still march toward progress almost automatically, but why? Or better yet, what does progress mean anyway?

Now we are getting into a phase where we ask why we are doing the things we did, just because we could. Why live if I have to take pills that make me numb in order to function in a modern society? If not me that takes these pills, why do so many of my friends and neighbors do so?

To call this awakening phase “Post-Post-Modern” is a cheapening of it in my opinion.

The reason I was referring to the art scene specifically, is all the paintings that are like scribble drawings with a little blurb about the scribble drawing. Artists stay somewhat aloof from their work, because they only half believe in it. It’s sort of a nihilistic malaise that came after modernism. That nihilism has been a source of irritation for me in myself, and I have long had a feeling of moving into a new time but being somewhat stuck in the prior, that post-modern era, and I think the new era is going to be an increase in conciousness of the world around us brought about by increased communications technology attaching us to the rest of the globe.

I don’t think it’s a reaction to Post-Modernism in the same way as Post-Modernism is to Modernity. Post-Modernism is like the closing of the chapter on Modernity and we are opening up to a new cycle, so it’s reactionary in that it’s a reaction to what came before it, but I think Modernity and Post-Modernism are one package and this is another, like Johanna said, a synthesis of sorts, and I agree it will have more to do with feeling and awakening one’s awareness within their own senses.

I was talking about the nihilism in the art community, as an example of post-modernism, where success is reduced to buying and selling commodities that have very little meaning to us. A vast number of us over the past 20 years have had any real connection the products we sell, we have been cogs in the wheels of progress, being told progress is on it’s way, be patient while we work out the kinks. So the art world has artists that don’t even paint their own work, they just mass-produce like a corporation, and even have a corporate structure, and are a reflection of that corporate structure than they are of more personal inner connection. This can be seen in the lack of connection many people have to the community around them. The not knowing your next-door neighbor syndrome. People getting excited if they run into a celebrity even if they don’t particularly like that celebrity. People are wealthy only because they know how to buy and sell stocks, with no real method to their madness other than making the most dividends come their way.

That’s what I was referring to about post-modernism. The whole Gen X bitching and moaning about how they are the first generation that’s gonna be worse off than their parents while Magazines were publishing articles about the 19 year old head of Yahoo being worth $ 100,000,000, and plenty of kids were going to work at established corporations with baggie pants and dyed hair because they knew how to turn on a computer. Then the dotcom bubble bursting and all those kids getting out of school having been promised this fancy economy when they went in have trouble when they realize they aren’t going to be making as much as the kids just a few years older than them just were.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say there is a limit to knowledge. I think that we must now go back to increase our awareness of our physical bodies. The next big advances coming along the way are advances in power systems, Genomics, Robotics, AI and Nanotechnology. Not to mention the amount of information added to the internet on any given day that is accessible at our fingertips from our living rooms. So now it’s just a matter of assimilating a lot of the sudden access to the ability to communicate the proper information more directly to the proper person/organization, and the advances that the interconnection of existing technology will bring. So as people get connected to people all around the globe the flow of ideas increases.

So while I think there is a sense of being overwhelmed by it, I see it as being slightly less cynical and reactionary than post-modernism.

YMMV

Erek

Marley23: Actually no the issues here are still with academia, but you’re right I am not getting the academic subclassifications of the art correct. So I will bow out of this. PostModernism isn’t about art, it’s about academia. So maybe I just do have a hardon for Academia.

Do as thou wilt, classify away, I will bow out.

Erek

Marley23: I don’t think I was really impugning people’s motives. I didn’t make a judgement as to whether or not this was good or bad that people act like this. Nor did I state that EVERY person does this. I was relating the behavior I was describing to post-modernism, but I realized that again my issue was with vocabulary. If you want to dispute that this sort of commodification of art occurs, be my guest, but I see art being used for status on a daily basis, and am completely uninterested in proving that I see this occur.

Erek

Well, seeing as your post was essentially an expansion on my own comments, that’s a bit odd. I was simply putting it in a dismissive tone, since IMO it’s all a load of bollocks.

I do not wish to broaden the discussion unnecessarily. Most of it so far has concentrated on postmodernism in art and in literary criticism. Perhaps we can extend the discussion to other disciplines in the humanities as well.

For example, postmodernism in history is a very different animal than in literary criticism. Though I am a few years out of the field, my last readings indicated that historians were in fact tired of the same old deconstructions and were actively looking for new theory and method. Some were experimenting with them five or ten years ago with qualified success. I will rack my tin brain to recall some specific authors and works. My own interests were rather less than methodological, so it was not something I studied a lot at the time,

You said that postmodernism holds that a text has no real meaning, the author’s intent was irrelevant, and that Shakespeare was writing about lesbians whether he knew it or not. This is not simply using a dismissive tone to describe postmodernism, it’s oversimplifying and twisting it to make it sound sillier than it really is. Postmodernism does a good enough job of making itself seem silly without outside help.

There’s a very large difference between “Shakespeare was writing about lesbians whether he knew it or not” and “I as a reader see lesbian themes in the work of Shakespeare”. The former claim is not a postmodern one. It contradicts postmodernism by suggesting that there’s some objective lesbian meaning in Shakespeare’s work that exists independently of both his intent and anyone’s reaction to the text. Postmodernism says that a reader might interpret Shakespeare’s work to be about lesbians, not that this interpretation is the “one true meaning”. Postmodernism doesn’t even necessarily say that this interpretation is just as good as any other interpretation, although some postmoderists do believe that. But recognizing that everyone has their own opinion doesn’t mean that you can’t find some interpretations more interesting or useful than others.

Postmodern has too many meanings. It’s a “genre” (if you will) of art, but it’s also a critical approach to literature, a philosophy, and a sociological phenomena. All of these really mean “reacting to modernism,” and can even be “anti-modern.”

So how to answer the question of the OP? In art and critical theory and philosophy, there has been reaction to and critique of post-modernism since those things emerged… to some extent, the criticism could just be called “modernist,” but it might as well be called “post post modernist,” especially when it is sheer exhaustion from the arguments and pretenses of post modernism. I’ve read essays on a “Post-theory” movement in literary criticism, for example, which is built on the principle that Po Mo isn’t as sweeping as it was supposed to be and ultimately isn’t all that useful to teaching or understanding literature.

I myself am a fan of the Enlightment and don’t know that Postmodernism has either fully explained what was wrong with the Englightment or offered anything in its place. We’ve reached a saturation point of irony where it isn’t ironic anymore. Hence, I advocate an age of Reenlightment.

To add to Lamia’s thoughtful remarks, many postmodern theorists believe that by interpreting against the grain, they can generate interesting insights about the underlying discourses. You can read a little more about that here .