week 2: blogging task

Image by Miriam Luehrs http://discoursebylalilu.wordpress.com/

The way the human world is imagined of now and in the past, as well as suggesting possible ways and strategies for thinking about it are formed in the term ‘postmodernism’. Postmodernism in itself cannot be completely understood without some sense of modernism. 

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ehh1b6kNWA

As a way of thinking about the world, postmodernism grounds itself against the credulous praise of science as the ultimate analytical agenda, and ‘grand-narratives’ which seek to define and prophesy human futures through choice to a limited set of ideas. An example would be to argue for why the West possessed the superior form of civilisation is that modernisation theory contained the grand narrative of ‘progress’. As well as to argue for why the rest of the world must follow the Western model of development. Postmodernist thought suggests that these ways of thinking provided an explanation for different forms of oppression, including those linked to colonialism and gender hierarchy.

The critique of what is referred to as the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, from where the modernists drew much of their inspiration, was meant to suggest a more critical and less celebratory attitude towards science, the nation-state, and the idea of progress itself. An example of this is that many pointed to the hypocrisy at the heart of the modernist project: at the same time that Europe was ‘achieving’ modernity and material welfare for itself, and propagating ideas ‘equality’, it was also engaged in the task of exploiting large sections of the world’s population through colonial practices. Where, critics of modernity asked, then, lay the ‘rationality’ and ‘clarity’ of the modern age?
Postmodernist theorists argue that the unquestioning belief in the tenets of modernity led to such ideas as ‘the civilising mission’ that justified colonialism; the marginalisation of ways of thinking which may have been more beneficial for a larger proportion of humanity but which were denounced as ‘un-scientific’ (such as ‘traditional’ medical systems); and an uncritical attitude towards the nation-state as the ideal community of existence. The theorists of post-modernity (such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson) see themselves as acting politically, rather than subscribing to the belief that they are engaged in the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. They regard their work as situated in a universe of human interaction and thought which is always politically constituted.



Referencs:

Luehrs, M, 'Postmodernism', retrieved 28 August 2013, <http://discoursebylalilu.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/postmodernism-miriam13.jpg>

MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism, retrieved 28 August 2013, <http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/r.htm>

Robertson, R 1993, ‘Mapping the global condition: globalization as the central concept’, in M Featherstone (ed.), Global culture. nationalism, globalization and modernity, Sage, London.

Somerset, J 2011, 'What is Modernism/Postmodernism?', retrieved 28 August 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ehh1b6kNWA>