Concept of Post modernism

Postmodernism are an intellectual movement that became popular in the 1980s, and the ideas associated with it can be seen as a response to the social change occurring with the shift from modernity to post modernity. For Jean Baudrillard (1929- 2007), the post- modern age is a world where people respond to media images rather than to real persons or places. It is a thought that does not believe in finite, unchanging, specific and certain principles for all.

Key Assumptions

  • It assumes that there is no underlying objective reality.
  • It assumes that everything is subjective and relative to individual views, perceptions and values which varies from person to person.
  • It assumes that there is no absolute preference point to judge between right and wrong.
  • It assumes that universe is an open system.
  • It assumes that there is no knowledge apart from language.

Postmodernism of Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard 

Fredric Jameson

He is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of post modernity and capitalism.

Jameson’s best known book is “ Postmodernism, or, The cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)”. Jameson attempts to characterize the nature of cultural production in the second half of the 20th.

A substantial part of Jameson’s “postmodernism” is the dedicated to differential analysis of works of art and architecture from what Jameson terms “high modernism” and postmodern work.

Postmodernism according to Jameson is a cultural form which has developed in the wake of socio-economical order of present day capitalism.

Jean Baudrillard (1929- 2007)

He was a French sociologist and philosopher. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post- structuralism.

He has become the exemplar of postmodernism, beginning his analysis with Marxism and modernity, and developing what he considered a more radical approach- a society of simulations, implosions and hyper reality.

For Jean Baudrillard (1929- 2007), the post- modern age is a world where people respond to media images rather than to real persons or places.

Criticism:

  • Reality and truth are inconsistent.
  • All knowledge is subjective because all knowledge is gained through interpretation.
  • Lack of definite truth.