Postmodern Theory

From Premodernism to Postmodernism

Scholars situate premodernity in the epochs prior to the mid-17th century. A premodernist associated knowledge production with ecclesiastical and governmental institutions of authority. Divine intervention by God or a higher being paved the path for belief, attitude, and value formation. The church and state worked together to shape premodern exchanges. Gutenberg's printing press shook up the definition of authority in the production, distribution, and consumption of knowledge. [Page 772]Modernity began in the mid-17th and lasted until the mid-20th centuries. As a historical period, it witnessed the rise of reason over superstition. Henry Ford's early car manufacturing introduced Fordist terminology into modernism and its industrialization, urbanization, and transmission of new technologies. Whether one tried to fix a mechanical or a relational problem, modernists believed a universal Truth existed out there, awaiting discovery by researchers and implementation by rulers.

Mass culture accompanied the growth of cities and technologies. The term intervenes between modernism and postmodernism because it signifies social change. Critics believed the culture industries discouraged active thought and encouraged passive acceptance of goods and services, burdening bonds of solidarity and communal living. Fashion and record labels qualify as culture industries from Armani to Arista.

Communication scholars have suggested an alternative frame for mass culture's great divide between modernism and postmodernism: Instead of a discontinuous break or a radical rupture, modernism and postmodernism might mutually constitute one another. Consider prior separation of high from low art by elite modernists and their subsequent integration in the postmodern era, evinced in Andy Warhol's pop art. A discussion of whether to label modernism and postmodernism as mutually constitutive remains open.

As postmodernism came of age in the 1960s, activists argued for the abolition of racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. World War II memories simmered in the background as the Cold War came to the forefront. Imperial systems of colonial rule slowly dissolved as indigenous populations spread around the world. Industrial economies declined in the transition to a post-Fordist service model of a new information society. This epoch of late capitalism referred to transnational consumer economies based in global and local trade flows.

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