Postmodernism

POSTMODERNISM IS THE HISTORIC opposition to what is considered modern. In the discussion about postmodernity and postmodernism, reference is made to a rupture or critique of the political project of modernity (liberal democracy), its culture and science (Enlightenment), or its economic system (capitalism). In each of these terms, issues such as autonomy, freedom, and legitimization are at stake.

Postmodernism was initially found in the aesthetic debates on literature and architecture in the United States, France, and Italy. However, it was also applied to the fields of philosophy, sociology, economics, and politics. The idea of postmodernity was used by Arnold Toynbee in his book A Study of History to denote the last phase of Western culture, beginning around 1875. It then appeared in Latin America during the 1920s, identifying alternative groups of revolutionary artists and intellectuals. In the Anglo-American context, the term was used after 1940, first in literature and then in other areas, when Leslie Fiedler observed in the 1960s that a “futurist revolt” was its major tendency. This perspective became established in 1971, when Brian O'Doherty published his article “What Is Postmodernism?”

By 1977, it was used commonly and defined by Gerhard Hoffmann, Alfred Hornung, and Ruediger Kunow in the article “‘Postmodern' and ‘Contemporary' as Criteria for the Analysis of 20th Century Literature.”

The postmodern social, economic, and political analyses run parallel to this development. The term was [Page 352]taken in the 1950s by Irving Howe in his Mass Society and Postmodern Fiction, and by Harry Levin in “What Was Modernism?” Amitai Etzioni discussed its sociological implications in his 1968 book, The Active Society, while the concept continued to be applied in Latin America, by Enrique Dussel in Mexico and Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru. They discussed the socioeconomic meaning of this concept, seeing Latin America as “the underside of modernity.” In Brazil, José Guilherme Merquior used it to describe a cultural movement after modernism.

In philosophy, the idea of modernity and its opposition by postmodernism is related to a debate between Jürgen Habermas in Germany and Jean-François Lyotard in France. Habermas defends the Project of the Enlightenment, affirming that it provided the basis for the development of Western societies, political liberalism, and human rights, as well as the ideal of reason (Ideal der Vernunft) proposed by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. However, many of these assumptions were criticized in the 20th century, first by Martin Heidegger in his criticism of technique, later by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their dismantling of a capitalistic “Dialectics of the Enlightenment” (“Dialektik der Aufklärung.”) Based on this criticism, Jean-Francois Lyotard published the book La condition postmoderne in 1979 and launched a radical attack on the project of modernity. For him, Western societies had reached a postmodern condition under the capitalist system, which generated an incredulity in relation to any meta-narratives, such as those defended by Jurgen Habermas.

In its political application, the concept must be understood as an attempt to interpret the contemporary world beyond an almost obsolete characterization as modern. Postmodern politics is seen as an antidote to an oppressive modern society, giving room to the manifestation of several fragmented initiatives that were forgotten in mainline politics. Examples are the ecological movement, proposals for alternative communication, including cyber-activism, the struggle for human rights, feminist and minority movements, victims of the AIDS epidemics, and groups excluded from economic globalization. Postmodernism also denotes the crisis of the university and its relation to scientific knowledge, coming to characterize a series of new studies.

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