Postmodernism

I would like to start off my blog by identifying all of the terms that were covered in the text. Postmodernity is, a term used to capture life during a period marked by radical transformation of social, economic, and political apects of modernity, marked by the flows of migration and global travel, the flow of information through the interent and new digital technologies, the dissolution of nation-states in their traditional sovereign from in the wake of the collapse of liberization, and the increased divide between rich and poor. It describes a set of social, cultural, and economic formations that have occured "post" or after the height of modernity and that have produced both a different window and different ways of being in the world than was the case of modernity. It has been referred to as a period of questioning of "metanarratives" by French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard and of the premise that unified accounts and theories could adequately capture the human condition. It has also been descibed by Fredric Jameson as a historical period that is the cultural outcome of the "logic of late capitalism".

However postmoderism has been characterized as a critique of modernist concepts such as universalism, the idea of presence, the traditional notion of the subject as unified and self-aware, and faith in progress. Postmodernism is often understood as existing in the detritus of modernity. The concept is also used to describe particular styles in art, literature, architecture, and popular culture that engage in parody, bricolage, appropriation, and ironic reflexivity, as if there is nothing truly new to say, no ultimate knowledge to reveal. In terms of its application to art and visual stlye, postmodernism is a set of trends in the art world in the late twentieth century that question, among other things, concepts of authenticity, authorship, and the idea of style progression. Postmodern works are thus highly reflexive, with a mix of styles. In popular culture and advertising, the term postmodern has been used to descibe techniques that involve reflexivity, discontinuity, and pastiche and that speak to viewers as both jaded consumers and through self-knowing metacommunication.

Reflexivity is the practice of making viewers aware of the material and technical means of production by featuring those aspects as the "content" of a cultural production. reflexivity is both a part of the tradition of medernism, with its emphasis on form and structure, and of postmodernism, with its array of intertextual refrences and ironic marking of the frame of the image and its status as a cultural product. Reflexivity prevents viewers from being completely absorbed in the illusion of an experience of a film or image, distancing viewers from that experience.

Simulacara or simulation/simulacrum are terms famously used by Fench theorist Jean Baudrillard that refer to a sign that does not clearly have a real life counterpart, refrent, or precedent. A simulacrum is not necessarily a representation of something else, and it may actually precede the thing it simulates in the real world. Baudrillard stated that to simulate a disease was to acquire its symptoms, thus making it difficult to distinguish between the simulation and the actual disease. For example, a casino or amusement park simulacrum of the city of Paris can be seen as a substitute for the actual city and can perhaps for some viewers seem to offer a more compelling experience of Paris than the city itself, which may be totally out of reach for the viewer. An example of simulacra in my own personal life would have to be when I went to Disney world as a child. I went on a ride called Around the world. You sit in a row of seats, and it takes you threw a whole set up they have of all of the different contenants, and countries, and what those particualr countires have to offer. This was soemthing that I enjoyed very much. And because I will probabaly never get a chance to go to Disney world again or anytime soon, and will never actually see these pleaces on the ride, they portrayed those countires much better than I could have imagined. The rise seemed more appealing to me at the time, more than the places that it was replcating, proabaly because I was so young.

Some of the factors that characterize postmodernism identified throughout the reading that I found were, pastiche, parody, and the remake, reflexivity, the media, irony, collage, and eclecticism.

Lastly, postmodernisn is differnet from modernity because Postmodernism means, after the modernist movement, while modern refers to something related to the present. The movement of modernism and the reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives. It is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure of works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, journalism, and design, as well as in marketing and business as well as in the interpretation of history, law, culture, and relgion. Postomodernism is the cultural and intellectual phenomanam in the 20th and 21st century. Modernity stirctly refers to the time period and worldview begining approximately in the 18th century with the Enlightenment, reaching its height in the late 19th and 2oth centuries, when broad populations of Europe and North America were increasingly concentrated in urban centers and in industrial societies of increased mechanization and automation. Modernity is a time of dramatic technological change that embraces a linear view of progress as crucial to humankind's prosperity and an optimaistic view of the future at the same time that it embodieds an anxiety about change and social upheaval. It is charachterized by an embrace of technology and progress, a sense of revolutionary change, and anxities about its upheaval.