Talk:Postmodernism

structural issues

Hey all,

I'm looking at doing some edits to the top of this article (i.e., above Manifestations section) with stronger sourcing to academic works by actual subject-matter experts. There are also, however, some structural issues I wanted to check in on before beginning.

Is there a reason for treating Origin and History separately? I haven't yet worked through the material in detail, but I would default to combining these into one section, probably entitled Etymology, to precede Definition (or perhaps, as with the work I've been doing on Irony, something more along the lines of The Challenge of Definition).

The Theories and Derivatives section is confusing to me. Structuralism and post-structuralism are precursors to postmodernism that were after-the-fact co-opted under that umbrella term. This should be clear in the article. Post-postmodernism seems like it ought to belong to a Legacy section that does not exist (and so maybe should just be its own section after Manifestations until it does?).

I don't love that the header Manifestations suggests there is some one thing called postmodernism that has been theoretically articulated and appears under various guises in different media. My objection is not that this is contrary to postmodern theory, but just that it is a dubious claim that should not be presented as fact without strong sourcing. Lastly, shouldn't Philosophy, to the extent that it has not already been covered incidentally by Etymology and Definition, fall under this header (whatever the best term may be), rather than as its own section above what are currently presented as "manifestations"?

Any input appreciated!

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I have not abandoned this. The structure now makes sense to me except for the question of where to put the precursor movements of (post-)structuralism and deconstruction. The next thing on my agenda, which is arguably the main thing, is the section currently titled Definition. I might incorporate them there—although this would probably require condensing them a bit, which I haven't worked through, but don't love.

Right now, the Definition section is sourced primarily to Britannica, which is not a good source on philosophical topics, and to notes from an old PBS series with no authorship attribution. A few look good, but lack page numbers. I haven't checked all of them, but Bryant, Ian; Johnston, Rennie; Usher, Robin (2004), at least, does not support the claim for which it is cited. My plan is to start fresh, but incorporate as much of what is there as is verifiably and due. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:06, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I finally got a draft into good enough shape to post to the mainspace. There is obviously a great deal that could (and should!) be added, but I think that it is nevertheless an improvement over the previous version—particularly with respect to sourcing.

I plan to give it a few days in case anyone has serious objections. Then I will rewrite the lead to summarize the current version of the article.

In the future, I also hope also to flesh out the philosophical part of the article as much as is appropriate when there is a child article, postmodern philosophy. I might also fiddle with the later parts of the article, but I have no plans to rewrite that material.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Items for further improvement:

• "In various arts" should have a section devoted to film.
• The "In theory" section should be rewritten to focus on the influence of Derrida in the 1970s and Foucault in the 1980s. Probably coverage of Lyotard should be expanded beyond what is included in "Usage/Later developments". Baudrillard needs to be covered, and (per multiple sources) Richard Rorty. Barthes and Lacan would also be justified by the literature, but appear secondary. Anything more than this is probably best left to the postmodern philosophy child article.
• "In theory" should also have a subsection on postmodern theology.
• The "In society" section should have a subsection on the deployment of the term in non-academic political/cultural/popular discourse. It's remarkable that such a messy academic term should attain such currency outside of the academy. Suggestions for sourcing on this would be most welcome. I'm not even sure where best to look.
• Per overview sources, "Criticisms" should give a paragraph each to both Jürgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson. More detailed discussion is best reserved for criticism of postmodernism.

I'm not going to do all of this, but I welcome comments on the above or, as always, other suggestions. Even just establishing a good TOC enables and encourages productive edits.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 20:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

still to do

Since I take the structural issues discussed above to be mostly resolved, I'm starting a new thread. Mostly what I'm interested in here is other improvements to the article could be made without too much research in a way that might encourage and facilitate contributions from those with more subject-matter expertise. Here's my current list:

• "In various arts" needs a section lead to provide even just a superficial explanation of why all these different things are grouped together as specifically postmodern.
  • It also needs a film section and a dance section. Even if these are very short, they can Wikilink out to their respective pages.
  • There are some mostly unsourced lists that need to be trimmed back or removed.
• "In theory" needs to be rewritten in view of the "Theoretical development" section above. It might go back to "In philosophy" since the article can now dispense with most of the material on poststructuralism already covered. There are a few other names that show up in the literature that should be at least mentioned: D&G, Rorty, Habermas (again), Jameson (again), and Baudrillard (again) and possibly a few others who appear in some surveys (but are completely ignored in others). But since the article has a child page and some of this has been partially covered above, I expect it to be shorter when I am finished.
  • Follow up: I have just done some of this in a limited way, mostly to create space for other editors with greater interest to contribute. I will try to also add a section on Jameson (maybe together with Harvey) if I can find an appropriately concise high-quality source to work from. Deleuze and Baudrillard, however, are going to have to wait for someone else—I've read only enough of their work to know that I do not care to read more. Redundancies in this section with earlier sections of the article remain an issue. I'll try to do something about this, but please step up if you have an elegant solution. Cheers, Patrick (talk) 17:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
• The "Criticisms" section is at least 80% criticisms of a specifically philosophical position (that, incidentally, very few people actually hold). I will probably move much of this to postmodern philosophy and see if there is anything at criticism of postmodernism that ought to be restored here to help keep this an appropriately general article.
• I removed the the rather useless sidebar from its place at the top of the article. Trying to put it at the bottom, however, I learned that to do this requires it be reproduced according to a different template. If I can cut-and-paste my way through most of that, I'll do it. Otherwise, it's on someone else.
• I'm pretty sure that postmodern theology is enough of a thing to merit inclusion somewhere.
• The article lead needs to be rewritten to properly summarize the article for a general audience. Once that is done, I believe the maintenance banner can be safely removed.

Is there anything obvious I am missing?

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 22:45, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I addressed "Criticisms" as per above. Probably even the remaining material should be integrated into sections above where applicable. It's difficult to meaningfully criticize such diverse phenomena in a general way. (And the problems with using "postmodern" as a general term are already highlighted near the top of the article.) Patrick (talk) 19:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

new article lead

I've drafted a new lead for the article. It's an imperfect summary of a far from perfect article. Please share ideas for improvement!

Keep in mind that the lead is just a plain-language overview of the content of the article. Anything that is conspicuously missing or wrong in the lead needs to be added to the body of the article with supporting sources before changing anything non-egregiously wrong at the top. For the same reason, per WP:CITELEAD, the body of the article is the source of the lead; individual citations are not recommended except to prevent interventions by editors not aware of this policy. (Probably that will prove to be the case here, but I suggest we wait and respond just to issues that actually emerge.)

Here's the draft that, absent objections, I will soon publish to the article:

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break with modernism. What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrowly defined contexts.

The term began to acquire its current range of meanings in literary criticism and architectural theory during the 1950s–1960s. Building upon poststructural theory, postmodern thought defined itself by the rejection of any single, foundational historical narrative. This called into question the legitimacy of the Enlightenment account of progress and rationality.

In opposition to modernism's alleged self-seriousness, postmodernism is characterized by its playful use of irony and pastiche, among other features. Critics claim that it supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle.

In the 1990s, "postmodernism" came to denote a general – and, in general, celebratory – response to cultural pluralism. Proponents align themselves with feminism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism. Critics, however, allege that its premises lead to a nihilistic form of relativism. In this sense, it has become a term of abuse in popular culture.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 00:47, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello Patrick Welsh, it seems some key points have been taken out of the lead.

• rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
• Critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.

These appear to be important points. Do you know why they were taken out? Hogo-2020 (talk) 10:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Hogo-2020,

Thanks for checking in on the talk page! I will try to respond more promptly to future posts.

My primary issue with the material you've added is that it does not (or at least does not obviously) apply to most of postmodernism, just to some of the philosophy characterized as postmodern. This means that it is not part of the definition of the topic of the article.

I wrote most (all?) of the section you've retitled "Definition", and its point (emphasized in the previous title) is to establish that the term does not have a single definition, and it is not a unitary phenomenon. I did a fair amount of research for the editing I contributed to this article, and I do not believe any of the essays, monographs, or tertiary sources that I consulted failed to open with an explicit acknowledgement of this fact, the truth of which I believe is further substantiated by the rest of the article.

An unfortunate consequence of this that it is very difficult to make highly general or universal claims about postmodernism as such. There is a lot, however, that can be said about specific scholarly debates about the meaning of the term or the characteristics of postmodernism in specific arts, many of which have their own child pages. (Lots of work to be done here!)

You'll correct me if I am wrong, but your interest seems most focus on postmodern philosophy. This is great because this section of the article, and its child page, are extremely underdeveloped. Since diverse and incompatible philosophies have been called "postmodern" (though rarely by their proponents), my view is that it is best to focus upon the specific figures who are best represented in the high-quality tertiary literature (i.e., the sort of handbooks/companions/whatever edited by established scholars and published by university presses).

Nevertheless, generalizations are of course permissible, especially when sourced to high-quality secondary sources. An article that consists too much of such generalizations, however, does not serve readers if they are not then substantiated with some specifics.

If your interest is in criticisms of postmodernism, I'd be happy to provide some suggestions that could be presented as subsections of "In theory". Most conspicuously, the article needs an account of Habermas's arguments, which have probably been the most influential in the discipline of philosophy.

(Oh and, FYI, Britannica is not considered a consistently reliable source. Per WP:BRITANNICA, its articles generally need to be assessed on an individual basis. Since this one was not written by a subject-matter expert it probably flunks as a RS. Fortunately, we have lots of sources that are highly reliable, and so those can simply be used instead.)

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey again,

I've read the Sim essay from the collection you cited. I am going to cite it in the "In philosophy" section—although probably with attribution, given that it reads to me as an individual "take" that is unusually uncritical.

I am not, however, trying to suppress criticism. The most obvious non-Britannica claim that you've added, however, comes from a volume on educational theory that I am unable to obtain in order to verify. Could you perhaps email me enough of the text for me to do so? It is so categorically critical that I question its reliability—even though Routledge is generally a great press.

Also, there was another citation to a different volume on education that I removed because it was quoted out of context in a way that misrepresented the views of the author. Two academic collections on postmodern pedagogy or educational policy, however, suggest that this might deserve treatment in the article. If you're familiar with the literature, that would be a most welcome contribution. There would be no need in this context to go into any great detail.

With respect to the title I gave the section "The problem of definition" that you retitled "Definition", do you have any suggestions for something that captures a multiplicity of definitions, only some of which are in even potential conflict with one another? Because one of the earliest and most stable definitions is in the field of architecture, but this is hardly in conflict with definitions in literature, some of which are, however, in conflict with one another. And, it's hard to know where to begin with postmodern philosophy since almost none of the major scholars lumped together under this umbrella accept the label. Lyotard versus Habermas has now been mentioned twice, and Jameson, who needs more coverage, could be set off of others as well, but there is, for instance, no Derrida versus Foucault on the nature of the postmodern: they were each just doing their separate things and, to the best of my knowledge, made little effort to respond to the American academics who lumped them together first as poststructuralists and then as postmodernists.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:49, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

References

In search of clarity

The article is hugely better now than when I came to it around five years ago, looking for a super-basic explanation of postmodernism, which it failed to deliver. Still, even now, it doesn't quite nail it for me. When I have to click the modernism link, I feel like I'm in a house of mirrors, and it's downhill from there.

Here's an explanation of postmodernism from Reddit that was really clear. Maybe it could be helpful here, for some ideas. Tsavage (talk) 21:48, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Tsavage,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! The problem with providing a super-basic explanation is that — to the best of my knowledge, per scholarly consensus — there isn't any consensus: "postmodernism" means different things in different contexts/fields, and, even within specific contexts, there is sometimes no consensus about its meaning.

If, however, the invocation of the also polysemous term "modernism" generates perhaps unnecessary confusion, that might be possible to remedy. Could you elaborate or suggest, in even a very general way, what kind of additions might help to make the article more broadly accessible by clarifying this concept?

Also, with respect to film, if you could get some general (i.e., not just interpretations of individual films) references from the participants on that Reddit thread, I might be able to incorporate them into a subsection of "In various arts", in which film is conspicuously absent.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

The current intro has gotten as far as, "What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality." That's pretty easy to understand. Can these "previous ways of representing reality" be described more precisely, that statement can't be open-ended? Tsavage (talk) 01:06, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

In The Order of Things, Foucault links the crisis in representation to Kant's "Copernican Revolution", which he claims presents us with the challenge of representing the act of representation. But this alleged crisis, on his account, inaugurates the Modern Epistémè. ("Postmodernism" was not yet a philosophical term.) So to lean into this, which I'm not sure is supported by RS, would require reformulating postmodernism as an intensification of modernism, which some scholars say that it is, but others reject.

I'll review Bertens, which is the source of that language, to see if he provides a better answer. Because I do agree that the article ought to provide something more specific if it is at all possible; if it is not, then that statement should probably be removed from the lead. Patrick (talk) 21:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Re modernism: If it's possible, if it can be supported, extending the reference to modernism by summarizing what it is could work! For example, something like: "... claim to mark a break from modernism's belief that there is a proper way to do things."

Maybe developing "Although postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend the perceived limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to different critics in various arts" a bit further would help with the intro. What are (some of) the perceived limits of modernism? Tsavage (talk) 01:22, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Skimming the modernism article and mulling it over, one way to make the distinction might be to say that, whereas modernism is marked by a sense of loss and alienation, postmodernism responds to the same situation with acceptance and often even joy.

Right now this is SYNTH, but it could probably be sourced to discussion of the loss/rejection of meta-narratives, which is a central concept in postmodernism that is currently only indirectly mentioned in the last paragraph of the lead. Postmodernism asserts as an empirical fact that meta-narratives have lost their authority—to which it adds that, not only do we not need them, we are actually better off without them.

I'm personally much more of a continuity guy than a rupture guy, so this is tough for me, but I fully agree that further specification would be helpful. Maybe we could illustrate this with a simple example presented as no more than one "for instance"?

I'll review the sources and see what I can turn up. In the meanwhile, further thoughts are most welcome!

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:51, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Doing a bit of online reading and skimming and came across this overview. The article was for me way easier to understand than, say, the postmodernism article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which has too many words and terms I need to look up practically every sentence). This explanation worked particularly well:

For instance, Isaac Reed (2010) conceptualizes the postmodern challenge to the objectivity of social research as skepticism over the anthropologist’s ability to integrate the context of investigation and the context of explanation. Reed defines the context of investigation as the social and intellectual context of the investigator – essentially her social identity, beliefs and memories. The context of explanation, on the other hand, refers to the reality that she wishes to investigate, and in particular the social actions she wishes to explain and the surrounding social environment, or context, that she explains them with.

There's also (the article's emphasis):

The term “postmodernism” is somewhat controversial since many doubt whether it can ever be dignified by conceptual coherence. For instance, it is difficult to reconcile postmodernist approaches in fields like art and music to certain postmodern trends in philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. However, it is in some sense unified by a commitment to a set of cultural projects privileging heterogeneity, fragmentation, and difference, as well as a relatively widespread mood in literary theory, philosophy, and the social sciences that question the possibility of impartiality, objectivity, or authoritative knowledge (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 9-11).

That was fairly effective in connecting the content with framing from my everyday experience. I don't think of things in terms of "heterogeneity, fragmentation and difference", so I'm interpreting that as something like favoring uniqueness and diversity (rather than one set "right" way)... Tsavage (talk) 00:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)