Postmodernism


 * __Postmodernism__**

• **Postmodernism** is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.

• Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

• __**Important Authors & Works** See:__ Amy Tan ShermanAlexie Sylvia Plath Toni Morrison William Faulkner (Names found at [|Wikipedia's List of Postmodern Authors])

• **__Common Themes and Techniques__**

(For more info, see [|Common Theme's and Techniques in Postmodern Literature])
 * Irony, playfulness, black humor
 * Pastiche
 * Metafiction
 * Technoculture and hyperreality
 * Paranoia
 * Maximalism

• __**Reason for Decline or Change**__ There is a great deal of disagreement over whether or not recent technological and cultural changes represent a new historical period, or merely an extension of the modern one. Complicating matters further, others have argued that even the postmodern era has already ended, with some commentators asserting culture has entered a post-postmodern period. In his essay "The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond", Alan Kirby has argued that we now inhabit an entirely new cultural landscape, which he calls "pseudo-modernism". (Found at [|Wikipedia])