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)

Hello @Patrick Welsh, and thanks for your responses.

I think that a number of important points well-supported by the literature are being overlooked.

• rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power.

Are there issues with Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a source?

Concerning "Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits", published by Routledge, you can view some of its content through Internet archive. Here are some excepts from the book:

• "Postmodernism challenges and displaces this abstract, transcendental subject, arguing instead that subjects cannot be separated from their subjectivity, history and socio-cultural location. In the postmodern, there are no Archimedean points, the subject is, instead, decentred, enmeshed in the 'text' of the world, constituted in intersubjectivity, discourse and language. Equally, the separation of subject and object, objectivity and subjectivity, is itself a position maintainable only so long as the knower is posited as abstract and decontextualised and the object known posited as the 'other' unable to reflect back on and affect the knower. " (page 205)

• "Postmodersnism highlights the need for science to be much more varied and self-reflexive about its limitations. Science assumes a knowing subject, a known object, and an unambiguous knowledge. The postmodernist argument is that none of these can any longer be taken for granted, all are subject to incredulity." (page 206)

• "Postmodernism argues that all knowledge of the real is textual, i.e., always already signified, interpreted or 'written' and, 'reread'. Hence, there is neither an originary point of knowledge nor a final interpretation. Hence, there is neither an originary point of knowledge nor a final interpretation." (page 207)

Other points from the lead that were removed:

• 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.

Regarding the section title you changed from "The problem of definition" to "An indefinable term," is this your personal perspective, or is there a scholarly consensus supporting this? (If the latter, please provide sources.) I had suggested simply "Definition" because, while definitions may differ, the term can still be defined in various ways. There's no need for us to editorialize the title to emphasize this point, especially if the scholarly consensus doesn't convey this outright.

I agree that it’s nearly impossible to make universal statements about postmodernism, but I feel that some significant points are being overlooked, particularly in the lead. Hogo-2020 (talk) 08:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey again!

My concern is that the lead adhere to the guidelines outlined in WP:LEAD, in particular, that it be maximally accessible to a general audience and that it includes only material covered in the body of the article—and does so in proportion to the weight it is given in the literature (which should already be reflected in the article itself). Technical language such as opposition to the abstract, transcendental subject or the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization is obscure to pretty much everyone without a post-secondary education in the humanities.

More basically, arguments for changes to the lead cannot be based upon previous versions from the article history, but only on the body of the current article as supported by secondary sources. If, as you contend, there is a problem with the current lead, that probably means that there is a problem with the body that needs to be addressed first. In my assessment, most of what is currently there is well-supported, but some significant material is not covered at all (on which see my posts above). Your suggestions or direct contributions on this front would be most welcome, as would consequent modifications to the lead (although there summarized at more of a fifth-grade level).

As to the heading for the first section of the article, I'm opposed to "Definition" because there is no single definition. This is already supported by seven independent sources in just that section, which, if anything, is already overkill. (If you suspect I am cherry-picking sources, just take the top five search results of any academic database on postmodernism in general: at least four of them will say something along such lines in the first three paragraphs.) I do not, however, particularly love "The problem of definition" or "An undefinable term". So it would be great to collectively brainstorm to find something better.

My current plan for the article is to use the treatment of Derrida and Lyotard from the Sim article to rewrite the relevant sections of "In philosophy" and then to revise the first section (whatever we decide to call it), and then the lead—with an eye towards clarifying, as much as I am able, the points raised by Tsavage.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Patrick, one possible solution would be to properly address this content in the body of the article. We could also revise the language to make it more reader-friendly. Besides that, these seem to be significant points in the literature. If you're fine with this approach, I'll include the points mentioned above in the body, and later reintroduce them to the lead. Hogo-2020 (talk) 06:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Of course I'm happy for you to help build out the body. Sorry if I seemed overly possessive. My main concern is just that criticisms — of which there are many with, in my assessment, considerable merits – be tied to the positions people actually hold.

It seems to happen less often than it used to, but sometimes postmodernism is invoked in a culture-war contexts as a sort of catch-all for the alleged perniciousness of higher education, as if Derrida were responsible for the decline in church attendance or some crazy thing like that. (Or, if that's true, then it should definitely be included—only I think it is not, and the sourcing would have to be very good.) Patrick (talk) 13:48, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

re: "An indefinable term" -- perhaps simply "Definitions", plural, would work well, with a first sentence that immediately points out that there's no single overarching definition, though there are competing ones, as well as definitions specific to the many fields to which postmodernism is applied. Since there are...definitions. Tsavage (talk) 03:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

re: "An indefinable term", Renaming the title to something like "Definitions" would definitely improve it. Hogo-2020 (talk) 06:58, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm good with this. Thanks for making the change. Patrick (talk) 13:37, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Definitions

In discussing a "definitions" section as a way to develop the article intro, here's some text that's hopefully helpful, based on my understanding so far. I'm presenting it as an example of what seems to me like reasonable general audience readability that doesn't oversimplify - I'm not certain that it doesn't overreach or misrepresent.

Beginning roughly in the 1950s, postmodernist perspectives and practices emerged organically across a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, the arts, anthropology, psychology, urban planning, digital technology, and many others. The concept of postmodernism defies a single, unified definition due to its diverse origins and applications. Instead, it's more accurate to speak of multiple postmodernist movements that share certain common characteristics, rather than one overarching concept.

Broadly speaking, postmodernism rejects the idea of universal objective views of reality, single correct explanations, and "right" ways to do things. Art, music, architecture don't have to fit into certain genres and styles, they're free to mix and match. In literature and film, stories need not follow set structures like beginning-middle-end. There is no separation between high art and low art. It is impossible for scientists to separate their personal interpretations from their research findings. Philosophers should reject grand narratives and universal theories and focus on smaller ideas. There is no right way to do, see, explain or judge, the exploration of multiple perspectives is always required.

In a historical context, postmodernism is also not easily described. It is generally viewed as following on from the modernism movement. It is variously viewed as a break from or a development, or even culmination, of modernist perspective. [have to explain moderism in more detail here]

ADDED: Perhaps for this section, relying on paraphrase and summary, and placing longer source quotes in the citations for improved context, rather than using brief in-text quotes, would provide a fuller context while keeping things concise, readable, and verifiable. The use of explanatory footnotes could also be useful for this slippery topic, for example, to at times briefly include several viewpoints summarized in the article, rather than try to fit them directly into the text.

Tsavage (talk) 18:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm on board with this. Please feel free to start editing that section as you've suggested, and if there's anything that needs to be reworked we can do it here. Hogo-2020 (talk) 06:55, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@Patrick Welsh What do you think? I wrote that as an example to consider. Tsavage (talk) 18:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. I'm losing track of all these threads. This reads well, but I think there are a few problems. The main issue is the middle paragraph. I do not believe it is true that before postmodernism there was a widely held correct way of doing philosophy or science or of making art. Western philosophy has had staunch defenders of the particular since at least Aristotle. The novel was, on most accounts, a product of the modern age, and its various genres were themselves historical innovations, just as an example. Or, with respect to modernism specifically, Cubism in painting and Imagism in poetry embrace a multiplicity of perspectives and aesthetic fragmentation.

Smaller points: mixing high and low culture, or even attempting artistically or theoretically to undermine the distinction, depends upon acknowledging the distinction has some kind of reality. (Yes, I know: this is why a lot of people hate postmodernism.) Similarly, in science, even if a researcher cannot identify all of the preconceptions they bring to their research, they can still acknowledge this and make a meaningful effort to identify at least some potential issues. Otherwise, there just is no science, and that's a claim that I think would be rejected even by postmodernists whose positions would seem to commit them to such a view. So we should be cautious about how we treat it.

With respect to defining modernism, my best idea right now would be to flag near the top that "modernism" also means different things in different contexts. In philosophy it is associated by postmodernists with Enlightenment optimism about our ability to progressively advance both scientifically and socially by use of reason. In the arts, it is best to consider its meaning with respect to the various art forms individually. Modernism in literature, for instance, has few obvious similarities to modernism in architecture. [We would then have to try to say something about this in each of the arts when treated individually lower down in the article.] Patrick (talk) 20:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and hey, if you're continuing to work on a rewrite of this and want to consult with a source you can't access, please just email me. There's a good chance I can provide you with the relevant section.

Also, I do feel strongly that the article needs the first paragraph with all the sources on the disagreement about the meaning (or even basic coherence) of the term. If it works better as a footnote, however, that's fine. It should just be documented that there is a scholarly consensus against there being any one authoritative definition—and this not as some kind of postmodern epistemological stance, but just as an empirical fact about the way the term is used, even by supposed subject-matter experts. Patrick (talk) 00:56, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Terminology

A section, maybe a subsection under Definitions, that includes the most frequently encountered terms, could be an effective way to frame the rest of the article. A shortlist, not an extensive glossary: deconstruction, pastiche, metanarrative, pluralism, simulacrum, relativism, hyperreality, etc. Maybe 10 terms, with a sentence of description each (most or all will have their own articles to link to).

The following terms and concepts are often encountered in discussions of various postmodern movements.

Tsavage (talk) 04:17, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I think this is against best practices, which prefer definitions be integrated into the body in encyclopedic prose. If it's helpful, though, I have no problem breaking guidelines in the interest of making the article more helpful and accessible to readers. We would want to be very clear about inclusion criteria, however, otherwise well-meaning editors are likely to add just more and more stuff, diminishing its utility. Patrick (talk) 13:53, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree, sections that essentially appear as lists can break the flow of an article, and are targets for drive-by additions and undue expansion of existing items. While the article is being actively edited, waiting until the rest of the article supports the intro and seems roughly settled to assess the need for this seems like a good idea to me. Also, there may be a way to make it not a list, if the shortlist of terms can be meaningfully grouped into paragraphs.

For future consideration, here's a list of terms I've gathered and run into in my fairly superficial, overview-article reading that stand out for me as puzzling:

• deconstruction
• pastiche
• metanarrative
• hyperreality
• simulacrum
• intertextuality
• relativism
• pluralism

And possibly:

• irony
• fragmentation

Tsavage (talk) 17:59, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Many of these are strongly associated with particular figures and are probably best addressed in that way:

• deconstruction — Derrida. This is partially covered already. I'm going to add something about the "metaphysics of presence" in his section. His ideas have also been influential enough to appear near the top of the article in plainer language. I suppose we could mention différance, but I don't think we want to pursue this too far in such a general article.
• pastiche — I think Jameson brought this into the conversation. It could also be mentioned in a section-lead for "In arts", among, I'm sure other options.
• metanarrative — This is trademark Lyotard, but it has been influential enough to belong in the lead and the "Definitions" section
• hyperreality — This is Baudrillard. I'm not sure it's a popular enough term to merit discussion apart from the presentation of his ideas. That said, I don't particularly oppose giving it more coverage if someone else thinks it's important.
• simulacrum — Also Baudrillard. This one I see a lot more though. It's mentioned once, but more could be made of it.
• intertextuality — I'm not sure we need to say anything more than that it means including lots of references to other "texts" (in the structuralist sense according to which basically everything is a text—so that probably actually does need to be explained...).
• relativism — I'm pretty sure this is only being used in its dictionary sense, and in most cases, I believe, it is applied to postmodern philosophers by their critics. For if everything is relative to everything else in some kind of hand-wavy way, and that's all you have to say, then it does appear that truth goes out the window—perhaps even intelligibility itself. (This is a common theme of Habermas's criticisms and part of what he means with his accusation of "performative contradiction", assuming what one claims to reject.)
• pluralism — No special sense to my knowledge. It's just making space for differences, whether in art or society.

And possibly:

• irony — The major theorist here is Paul de Man, who was an icky man and an abstruse speaker and writer. Irony in its more familiar rhetorical forms, however, is also an important concept. I'm not sure what sort of further specification would be helpful, but we should certainly retain it near the top.
• fragmentation — I've never really thought about this as a technical term, even though I use it myself. I suppose its something like unreconciled pluralism, a felt loss of unity and cohesion. Or, put differently, social alienation generated by the loss of a stable metanarrative.

I would add:

• difference — Delueze, whose work I don't really know, is probably the biggest figure here, but we could also lean on Derrida. Butler's name didn't crop up much in the tertiary sources I looked at, but it does appear sometimes, and I'm betting it appears a lot more in what's being written closer to today. Their work on gender could be mentioned somewhere at least as an example.

There are a lot of resources in the Wikipedia library that will have entries on most of these terms. Some are already in the bibliography. These could be used to clarify overly technical secondary sources. My inclination is still to try to incorporate terms into the discussion. People who want more than a brief definition can always wikilink out the child articles.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:24, 18 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)

We cannot use this as a source because it was written by grad students and has not been peer-reviewed. We could follow its citations, however, to fill in any gaps in the coverage of our article. Some are primary, but there are also a lot of secondary sources not currently represented here. Patrick (talk) 21:27, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

To the restatement in your own words, that seems fair to me. I think the postmodernist would prefer to say something like "acknowledging and celebrating" diversity (as a basic fact), rather than subjectively preferring it, but I'm nitpicking here. Richard J. Bernstein has a book, A New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, similar to Habermas's, in which he likewise engages directly with figures the postmodern tradition, similarly at odds with his own Enlightenment orientation. He finds Heidegger irredeemable, but otherwise was impressed to find such a deep ethical concern for those excluded from official discourse, even in philosophers like Derrida, who are too often dismissed as just engaged in pointless wordplay. Patrick (talk) 22:07, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Readability

These two New York Times articles could be helpful in the area of readability: The Promiscuous Cool of Postmodernism (1986) and Modern and Postmodern, the Bickering Twins (2000). They are both readable because they don't resort to subject-specific terminology as shorthand, which is where readers can get frustrated and lost. They maintain accessibility (maybe with the help of a dictionary here and there) to allow the reader to gain understanding from context. (Both articles, by their authors, would qualify as RS as well.) IMO. Tsavage (talk) 03:29, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for finding these! I like the Denis Donoghue (academic) piece in particular. I thought it would read as dated, but it seems still pretty on the mark to me—and sometimes funny to boot!

The other one would also be an acceptable source, although Wikipedia should not engage in the sort of open-ended rhetorical questions with which it concludes. Patrick (talk) 21:48, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

new subsections for "In philosophy"

Contrary to what I said above (and to my usual practice of avoiding writing about stuff when I don't know the primary literature), I decided to put together short sections on Deleuze and Baudrillard. They are based on just those parts of the SEP "Postmodernism" article that I felt confident I could summarize. My idea is just that it is much more likely for someone knowledgeable to fix an inadequate treatment than it is for someone to add a new section from scratch.

Somewhere I have a very short treatment of Jameson that I will also add as soon as I can find it. That would round out the cast of postmodernists consistently included in high-quality tertiary sources. Everything should be decided on an individual basis, of course, but additional figures probably belong in the "Postmodern philosophy" article instead. Similarly, although there is always room for improvement of the material here, longer treatments probably belong on that or one of the other child pages instead.

The headers are also now a bit out of control. I will probably try to reorganize, maybe confine the French poststructuralists to a single section, critics to another, and Rorty, I suppose, to stand on his own. In the meanwhile, though, I just want to get the material up for the review of other editors.

I still also plan to rework the material on Derrida and Lyotard in this section.

All this leaves the article as a whole more philosophy-heavy than I would like, but I think the problem is more the inadequacy of its treatment of postmodernity in the arts and in society than it is about including these philosophers.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 23:44, 18 September 2024 (UTC)