Defining Postmodernism
A definition of postmodernism I find useful comes from Jean-Françoise Lyotard: "I define postmodernism as incredulity toward metanarratives" (The Postmodern Condition xxiv). Lyotard argues that no one set of rules, no one story, no one condition accurately explains knowledge and communication. "Universal and eternal truths," as David Harvey notes, "if they exist at all, cannot be specified. Condemning meta-narratives . . . as 'totalizing,' [postmodernists] insist upon the plurality of 'power-discourse' formations (Foucault), or of 'language games' (Lyotard)" ("Postmodernism" 45). Essentially, these theorists point to the fact that we should be aware of instances of privileging one set of ideas over another.Lyotard also suggests postmodernism is continually redefined: "The emphasis can be placed on the powerlessness of the faculty of presentation, on the nostalgia for presence felt by the human subject, on the obscure and futile will which inhabits him in spite of everything." What at one moment challenges our ideas, our sense of how things are, becomes, at the next moment, that which we seek to challenge. (The Postmodern Condition 79).
Postmodern and Web Theory
The Implications of Postmodernism
An Introduction?
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