Lets Not Pretend That Art Can Make Meaning Then Lets Just Play With Nonsense
Jing Ke
Nov. 2007
Form Title: Media and Culture Analysis
The emergence, characteristics and influences of Postmodernism 2. The revolution in science and applied science since the 1950s From Modernism to Postmodernism: The human relationship According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism; he outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices: Notwithstanding, Jameson'due south outline is not a precise portrayal, equally we know there is not definite division of time between modernism and postmodernism, and to judge objectively, postmodernism is either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. Since postmodernism is emerging from modernism, they're like in some basic propositions, e.k. they are both in opposition to fully developed modernity and disgusted with the boiler and "dehumanized" quality of life in industrial capitalism. Nonetheless, to concentrate on their differences can help us understand postmodernism more profoundly. Postmodernism: the characteristics 2. Death of history iii. Disappearance of depth and aura Posthumanism ii. Panopticism and ISAs (Ideological Land Apparatus) - Foucault's theory of Surveillance Docile bodies Biopower ISAs (Ideological state apparatuses) three. Technology, humanity and citizenship - Foucault's power-cognition relationship Cyborg 4. Gender studies: Masculinity, Sexuality 5. Postal service-feminism and the Third Wave From the Women'south Liberation Move to the 3rd Wave, feminism develops synchronously with the modify of order and credo. The Early on Feminism focus on gender inequality and the promotion of women'south right, they believe the equality betwixt genders is presented by things like they are doing the same job, or something that can prove women have the aforementioned competence as man, both physically and mentally. [1] http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12.htm
- A brief review of the semester
The emergence of Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a set of ideas appears in a wide diversity of disciplines including art, compages, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology, it emerges since the 1950s and popularized in the 1970s and 1980s. There are two main historical events catalyzed the emergence of postmodernism:
1. World War II (1939-1945)
This worldwide military conflict resulted in the deaths of over 70 million people and made numerous cities destroyed and people homeless, it is the deadliest conflict in human history and a cataclysm in human civilization. Later on WW2, the dream of a peaceful and harmonious society had complanate in the capitalist world and the reliability of human rational thought and cocky control are under suspicion, people began to reflect the society and human nature and are also less confident in their own judgment, these had caused a sense of loss, insecurity and anxiety. In one word, the traditional values and beliefs are re-examined.
On the other hand, WW2 besides greatly stimulates the development of engineering.
Science and applied science in man order have developed rapidly since 1950s, for instance[ane]:
1951-The first commercial computer was invented
1952-First beast cloning
1962-Launched the get-go satellite to carry TV broadcasts
1969-The original Internet was born in America
···
Every new invention and development has triggered off profound transformation in people's life styles and ideas, especially in developed countries. Engineering has profoundly enhanced man ability, making people stronger and smarter. At the aforementioned time, under the impact of technology, particularly the Internet and mass media, people are separated from the reality and are living a digital, virtual life. The identity is diversified and the articulate sense of "self" is disrupted.
There are mainly 2 viewpoints on the relationship between modernism and postmodernism:
one. Postmodernism is a reaction to or fifty-fifty rejection of modernism.
2. Postmodernism is the development and new generation of modernism and they are two aspects of the same thing.
Compare modernism with postmodernism:
Modernism is about the pursuit of order, unity and coherence and constantly fights confronting "disorder" which might disrupt club. Modernists believe in a binary opposition between "lodge" and "disorder" and then create a thou-narrative to protect the "guild"; they also believe the knowledge produced by science is ever the truth. However, postmodernism admit disorder and allow it coexist with society, information technology advocates pluralism rather than dualism, thus postmodernism is the critique of chiliad narratives and favors mini-narrative.
Further more, although they both tend to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history, modernism presents that fragmentation equally something tragic, something to exist mourned as a loss. They uphold the idea that works of art tin provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which have been lost in modernistic life. But postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't mourn the idea of fragmentation or incoherence, simply rather celebrates that. Like one postmodernist said, "The world is meaningless? Let'southward not pretend that art can make pregnant then, allow'due south just play with nonsense."[2]
1. Death of metanarrative (central to the concept of postmodernism)
Before Lyotard, one primal premise of modernism is that the noesis produced past science is "truth", and is eternal, it will always pb toward progress and perfection, which means all human institutions and practices can be analyzed by scientific discipline and so improved. However, Lyotard separates noesis from scientific truth and argues that science can't explicate everything in the globe and science is as aforementioned equally other narratives.
Let'southward go back to the "order" pursued past modernism, for Lyotard, "order" is maintained in modernistic societies through the means of "grand narrative" or "master narrative", which is a story a culture tells itself nearly its practices and beliefs. According to Lyotard, every belief arrangement or ideology has its grand narratives, for example, Marxism, the "grand narrative" for Marxism is the idea that commercialism will collapse and a utopian socialist world will evolve. Metanarrative is a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist. Lyotard argues that modernistic societies are depending on these m narratives.
Postmodernism is the critique of g narrative. Lyotard tells people since a message can exist reproduced past mass media for any purpose to anyone in a society, at that place is no existent value or meaning in the metanarrative in postmodern club and it's non trustworthy, so he shows incredulity towards metanarratives and claims the decease of it.
According to Jameson, postmodern world is a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, and what is left is the false of expressionless manner which he called a "pastiche" (an empty re-create). He asserts that in postmodern guild, history has stopped because nosotros can't relate authentically to our by, nosotros don't remember the existent matter any more and what nosotros have is a representation of information technology. In his signal of view, people meet things in postmodern globe from the empty image which represents no "reality". In such gild, sensations or passions are dissociated, individual and social life passes into linguistic fragmentation.
For Jameson, society lives itself through an understanding and organization of narratives by which it orders itself (Which is something similar to Lyotard'south metanarratives). In postmodern club metanarratives break down and as a result, postmodern culture becomes pastiche.
The representation of by ideals and objectives atomic number 82 to what Jameson calls contemporary nostalgia civilization. It is the collective desire for the images of a past one cannot regain in postmodern civilization. In his book Postmodernism, he wrote, "The nostalgia form of postmodern civilisation approaches the 'past' through stylistic connotation, carrying 'pastness' past the glossy qualities of the image, and '1930s-ness' or '1950s-ness' past the attributes of fashion." Nostalgia recalls traditional memories of the past past expressing them through the postmodern images. For instance, Superman Returns can exist read as a nostalgia moving-picture show for it uses the postmodern aesthetics to produce a nostalgic effect. Superman is i of the most famous and popular comic book in the United states in the 1930s and the film brings back memories of the 1930s comic reading as well every bit the prototype of a superhero who tin can save the globe and fight against injustice – which gives audiences a utopian circumstance in the dystopian realities.
In the first of the semester we learned how a significant is produced past the combination of signifier and signified:
Sign = Signifier + Signified
Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always betoken to signified, and that reality resides in signified. In postmodernism, however, there are merely signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears; together with the idea of signified that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, at that place are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signified.
According to Baudrillard, in postmodern order in that location are no originals, only copies, or what he calls "simulacra". For example, like a painting past Van Gogh, likewise the original work there are also millions of copies of it, but the original work is the one with the highest value, with something chosen "aura". Contrast that with CDs or music recordings, there is no "original", they are only copies, millions of copies, all the same, all sold for the aforementioned amount of money. The procedure of industrial reproduction caused the extinction of aureola.
Baudrillard'southward "simulacrum" can be interpreted as virtual reality, a reality created past simulation, for which there is no original. In one discussion, the original depth and aureola is disappeared in postmodern society.
1. Problems in identity nether the touch on of globalization
Globalization is one of the nearly influential trend in the postmodern time, it is the worldwide integration of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems; it brings in a growth of cantankerous-cultural contacts and the homogenization of culture which caused the confusion in identity and cultural variety.
In the showtime of the semester we learned that people define their identities through the ideologies conveyed by the media. In the era of globalization, the traditional distinctions betwixt races and ethnicity are breaking downwardly and many people have a multi-culture background. Accept the immigration for instance, which means leaving one's home to go a member of some other community. The differences in race, culture, linguistic communication, religion etc. build upward an inevitable boundary and many immigrants have an experience of marginalization.
Conflicts besides exist inside the clearing'south own communities, as in the film Eastward is East, from the son's rebellious deportment towards the father we can see the differences in self-definition and identity between the first and 2d migrant generations are emerging.
On the other hand, since the global impacts permeate in every attribute in the social club, there is a growing series of cosmopolitan values and phenomena of cultural uniformity. Equally a result, people are creating their distinction and uniqueness in the overall uniformity in order to gear up their own identities. Like the individual dresses, hairstyle, the way they speak and things they do – the personality is worshiped and developed merely what is left backside is the traditional value and ideologies. This is the inevitable trend in this postmodern time and information technology is hard to simply ascertain information technology positive or negative.
Panopticism
Panopticon is a type of prison house designed past Jeremy Bentham, to allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not. The Panopticism theory was invoked by Michel Foucault as metaphor for modern disciplinary societies. Foucault suggests that in gimmicky club we behave equally if we are under a scrutinizing gaze and therefore internalize the rules and norms of society.
Foucault's argues that subject creates "docile bodies", platonic for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial historic period - bodies which part in factories, ordered military machine regiments, and school classrooms.
It refers to the do of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the command of populations".
It is a term used by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser for how lodge reshapes the individual in its own prototype.
Within capitalist society, the homo private is generally regarded every bit a subject endowed with the belongings of being a self-conscious agent. For Althusser, however, a person'southward capacity for perceiving herself in this way is not innate. Rather, it is caused within the structure of established social practices, which impose on individuals the part of a subject. Social practices both determine the characteristics of the individual and give her an idea of the range of properties they can take, and of the limits of each social practice.
Ability/Knowledge
According to Foucault, noesis is an important power and ability is changing constantly in postmodern social club. Modernistic societies are structured on a basic human relationship of power/knowledge. Modern societies produce citizens who self-regulate their social behavior, creating more invisible political states.
Power systems develop the criteria for noesis in a given society validated through social institutions such every bit the press, medicine, education. Expertise (announcer, doctor, and teacher) is a key aspect of power relations.
This power produces a certain knowledge that produces certain kinds of citizens and subject.
A Cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a working homo-machine combination, blurring many edges, assuasive for a world that is free of gender demands and categories. Cyborg represents the breakup of the human being-machine purlieus.
Cyborg-citizen live in a completely networked globe, all information is piece of cake to go. But on the other side, technology likewise deconstructed and alienated humanity at the same time constructing cyborg citizen, and privacy seems to be nowhere plant due to pervasive surveillance.
Since the 1950s, the male pic actors were mainly body-builders.
-Tarzan films (1910-1940s)
-Italian films (aka peplum) (1950s-1960s)
-Muscle stars such equally Schwarzenegger, Stallone (1970s)
But nowadays, nosotros can run into a stronger female office in many movies. (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
Foucault believes that power plays a productive part: We live in a gild that represses sexuality through its emphasis on heterosexual monogamy, which opposes premarital sex, homosexuality, multiple partners, GLBT, etc. However, we need not succumb to power exercised over us. Nosotros have a choice to insubordinate against it. That power is everywhere and belongs to everyone. Information technology is non tied to institutions nor is it a construction.
Three stages in the history of feminism:
However, in the 1980s, later decades of women's liberation, and the idea of "knowledge is power" spread as the evolution of technology, some sociologists argue that women no longer lack equality in the social life and the oppression to women already belong to a bygone era. Accordingly, Post-feminism began to backlash against Feminism and assert that early on feminism had exaggerated and created the "victim" image for women, they advise the relationship between genders should be interpreted every bit "how to obtain harmony betwixt male and female" rather than building up a binary opposition. Likewise, they call for a render of women to the traditional domestic role.
The Third Wave Feminism begins in the early 1990s, in response to the post-feminism, they challenged the post-feminism'due south epitome as to what is, or not, good for females. As women are condign better educated and more powerful, the consciousness among women is a strong impetus of the Tertiary Wave. Have Angela McRobbie for case, she suggests a rethinking of feminism to new generation of women in postmodern world, she also advocates women live with fragmentation and re-invent themselves rather than search for the "existent me" according to paradigms. For McRobbie, the disassembled self tin exist picked upward and put together over again and the new generation of women has the freedom to be who they are and what they want to exist. Like in the film Somersault, Heidi finally find herself and understand what is the "real me" through her fragmented identity. This reflects the existent nature of the 3rd Wave: To be yourself.
Conclusion
In this semester we take a panoramic view on postmodernism. Although there is no full general concept or organized principles for information technology, this extremely complex, contradictory, ambiguous and diversified tendency of thought really inspires us to reflect many phenomena around us. It is a way to empathise and interpret the gimmicky life, to explicate social changes, to spur us rethink and rediscover our life as well as ourselves.
[two] http://world wide web.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
baileysqualkinsaid.blogspot.com
Source: http://avantgarde-jing.blogspot.com/2010/03/emergence-characteristics-and.html
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