Postmodernity / Postmodernism

What is postmodernity?

• The era that follows on from modernity- theory often attributed to ideas of Michael Foucault- poststructuralism

• Postmodernity emerged in the late 1970s- thought to have accelerated after the collapse of communism in the late 1980s

• Globalisation and increased access to knowledge have challenged old metanarratives of society

Features of postmodernity:

• Increased diversity and choice- greater tolerance of ‘others’ and individual choices over lifestyles:

  • Family, culture and identity, education

• Increased hybridity- merging of cultures and development of new ones:

  • Subcultural groups in education

• Influence of globalisation:

  • Crime, education, family, culture and identity, beliefs and media

Lyotard:

• People have developed ‘incredulity towards metanarrative’- they no longer blindly believe that there is one truth

• People try to develop their own perspective on events- ‘technical language games’

• Solutions to problems are small-scale rather than all-encompassing

Baudrillard:

• Death of social and rise of individualism

• Signs and symbols in society come to have meanings of their own that we cannot distinguish from reality- hyperreality

• We see images that are often an illusion of reality- these are called simulacrum -most evident in media -for example media personalities

The role of media:

• Media saturation in society helps to create hyperreality and simulacra by bombarding people with images until we no longer believe what is real

• Examples of hyperreality - Instagram celebrities, social media influencers

• Society becomes fragmented and unstable- reactions against these narratives -no fixed values

Postmodernity and narrative:

• People no longer believe in a single truth and question the role of ‘experts’

• Recent evidence- global climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic

• Society broken down into smaller individual narratives and multiple identities- leads to uncertainty and confusion

• Structural identities such as class, gender and ethnicity become less certain

Evidence of postmodernism:

• Diversity of family and personal lives

• Greater fluidity in relationships, identity and appearance

• Emergence of hybrid cultures

• Impacts of globalisation- education, family, crime, beliefs

• Increased media-saturation

Evaluations of postmodernism:

• Ignores power and inequality and ignores ruling-class control of institutions such as media and education

• Do people absorb media images and assume this is reality? Do people question what they see?

• Structures in society still exist- class, gender and ethnicity are still relevant concepts in contemporary society