Postmodernism - Definitional Issues

Definitional Issues

The term "Postmodernism" is often used to refer to different, sometimes contradictory concepts. Conventional definitions include:

• Compact Oxford English Dictionary: "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."
• Merriam-Webster: Either "of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one", or "of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)", or, finally "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language".
• American Heritage Dictionary: "Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: 'It is so architecturally interesting ... with its postmodern wooden booths and sculptural clock.'"

While the term "Postmodern" and its derivatives are freely used, with some uses apparently contradicting others, those outside the academic milieu have described it as merely a buzzword that means nothing. Dick Hebdige, in his text "Hiding in the Light", writes:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.

British historian Perry Anderson's history of the term and its understanding, "The Origins of Postmodernity", states that the contradictions are only apparent, and that "postmodernism" as a category and a phenomenon is important in the analysis of contemporary culture.

In addition to the possible terms given, Kaya Yilmaz presents the idea that when studying this theory one must remember that there is not one definition, hence the multiple provided. The term itself does not allow it to own one specific definition, rather it contains specific attributes and characteristics that can be agreed upon. Yamaz also acknowledges the very important idea that this idea of postmodernism can and does alter depending on the location on the globe. There are three reasons behind the lack of concrete definition. One being that the disposition itself, is that the theory is “anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist”. The idea of postmodernism in its entirety is not to be clearly defined or predictable. The second reason is that it is a theory that is contrasting and does not have a specific way of presenting or explaining itself. Finally, the theory is not even clearly defined by its inventors and researchers. Those scholars who first founded this ideal intentionally did not give it a clear, concrete diagnosis.