Postmodernism and its basic assumption

Postmodernism

Post means after and the modern means up to date and now. Thus the term could be translated as beyond and the now. And the postmodernism is the name given to the range of the philosophical positions. And the aesthetic styles that have been developed since the end of the world war II since 1950.

According to the bell,

postmodernism arose concurrently with the transition of the western society. From the industrialization to the post-industrialization after the world war II In post-industrial society the knowledge and the information and the service organization remove the production of the goods and the services as the major sources of the power and the prime mover of the social life. The domination of the manufacturing is displaced by the information industries like the health care and the financial services.

According to the postmodernist perspective( Ritzer 2011), existing theories that have been unsuccessful in explaining the contemporary societies are characterized by the post-industrialization, consumerism, and the global communications. Globalization comes along with the post industrialization. Globalization is the process by which the increasingly permeable geographical boundaries lead different societies to share in the common economic political and the social arrangement (Ritzer 2010). Then the process of the globalization promotes increased interaction and the interdependence among the societies around the world. The term postmodernism obviously draws its meaning from its departure from the post-modernism. Though the dates are somewhat the arbitrary and the controversial, modernism refers to the great changes beginning to the late nineteen century and ending the world war II. Modernism is the European enlightenment characterized by the belief that the human is the autonomous being, that legitimate the world views which can be formed through the reason and the objective truth that is knowable. Changing the assumption the postmodernism assumes that the individuals are not the autonomous that reason is the unreliable reason to interpret the world and we cannot discover the ultimate truth.(Mccallum 1996).

Postmodernism theory said that the human doesn't exist independently and think autonomously within the community to which they belong.Everything is culturally relative that is there is no absolute truth. Even reason is unreliable because our culture influences our interpretation of the truth. The postmodernism concept is in the stark contest to the modernism approach where the individuals using the independent reasons discover the absolute truth.(baert and Dasiliva 2010).

Post Modernism is a word used to describe the major changes underlying the ways the people think especially the way the people view the reality and the truth. Postmodernism requires the understanding of the modernism that precedes it but before we live in the modern era we considered the postmodern era, the world was considered the pre-modern. It helps to consider the main differences between the three eras

1.Pre-modern

2.Modern

3.Postmodern

Premodern and modern

The pre-modern era was the one in which religion was the source of the truth and the reality. During this era, the god existences and the exposure were widely accepted in the culture. In this modern era, the science becomes the predominate source of the truth and the reality. During this period the morality and the truth were subjectively devalued. To the subjective realm.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism, relativism and the individualism are essentially applied to all the spheres of the knowledge and the truth.In the post-modern world, the truth and the reality are relatively individually shaped by the personal history, social class, gender, culture and the religion. These factors, according to the postmodernism thinking combined to shape the narratives and the meaning of our lives as culturally set in the localized social constructions without any universal applications.

Postmodernism concern for the plurality, diversity and the tolerance has not lead to the most stable society and the secure society.

Instead, the postmodernism era misguided mood for the another, postmodernism was fueled by the shift from the human optimism for the modernity based on the scientific certainty and the technological progress to a pessimistic mood of the skepticism and the uncertainty.

Key assumption of the postmodernism

Postmodernism is the general and the wide emerging term which is applied to the literature , philosophy, art architecture , fiction, and the culture. It is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of the scientific and the observed or the objective effort to explain the reality. For this reason, the postmodernism is the highly skeptical of the explanation which claim to be valid for all the group culture traditions or the races of persons and instead it focuses on the relative truth of the each person .In the postmodernism understanding and the interpretation is everything,reality only comes being through our interpretation of what the worlds mean to us individually. It relies on the concrete experiences over the abstract principles,knowing the outcomes of the one's experiences which will necessarily be fallible and relative rather than certain and universal. The key assumptions of the Postmodernism are as follow ;

1.There is no underlying reality which is objective

2.Everything is subjective regarding the individuals perceptions and the views and the values of the individual

3.There is no absolute reference point to judge between the true and the false

4.The universe is the open system and the natural laws are not fixed. In the word the realities and the truth are not the realities.

5.There is no knowledge apart from the human languages. Human beings construct the meaning through the languages

Fredrick Jameson and the Postmodernism

Fredrik Jameson born in the Ohio USA is the today's most influential and the most important cultural theorists .Postmodernism in the Jameson views ought to be understood as the cultural dominant rather than the single style. Jameson used the cultural dominant to ensure that the historical period is not understood as the enormous single bounded entity but as the presence of the co-existence of the variety of the alternative competing features.

According to the Fredrick Jameson, Postmodernism as an extension of the modernism. In his view, life ,capitalism still dominate life,Jameson makes the claim that while there has been the significant change in culture, there are still the expression of the same sort of the economic structure discussed by the Karl Marx. Also the theory of the Karl Marx helps to explain the postmodernism.

According to the Jameson , the clear image of the postmodernism in the society consist of the four elements ,first the postmodern society is characterized by the superficial and the lack of depth. Its cultural product are satisfied by the surface image and do not explore the depth underlying meaning .Second the postmodernism is characterized by the waning of the emotion and the effect. According to the Jameson the postmodern world and the people in that world have been fragmented and the effect that remains free floating and the impersonal. There is the unusual excitement associated with these modern feeling. Jameson used the intensities to represent these feelings. Third there is the loss of the historicity. We cannot know the past all we can is to have the access to the past and all we can do is produce the text about another topic. This has led to the inability to distinguish between the past , future and the present. The fourth is the new technology associated with the post-modern societies. Instead of the modern technology like the automobile assembly line, we have the dominance of the reproductive technologies, especially like the modern media television.

References

Bhandari, Laxman P. Fundamentals of Sociology. Kathmandu: Buddha, 1915.

Tishler, Henry L. Introduction to Sociology. 10^th Ed. Cengage Advantage Books:USA

The Social Development Notes. The World Bank.

Tang, Shipping. 2011. A General Theory of Institutional Change. Rutledge Studies in the Modern World Economy.