sipra mukherjee west bengal state university - INDIA

 Modernism:

century (the fundamental elements of practice in the forms of art were rejected: form, melody, perspective, representation, traditional realism rejected. Emphasis on MAKE IT NEW)

From early 20th

1910 1930

 Postmodernism:

from the 1980s Cuddon: characterized by an eclectic approach, (a liking for) aleatory writing, (and for ) parody and pastiche. Very similar to Modernism in its inclinations but a redefinition.

A term current

 While

the Modernist writing was marked by nostalgia for the continuity which was lost, the postmodernist writing finds the fragmentation exhilarating, liberating, symptomatic of escape from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief. (Barry) .

Modernism marked by extreme asceticism, seen in their minimalism, rigorously sparse expressions. Postmodernism rejects the distinction between high and popular culture, and welcomes what would be called vulgarity, gaudiness, bad taste.

 Disappearance

of real Foreground inter-textual elements, (parody, allusion) Irony (regarding the metanarrative) Challenge hierarchy of high and low culture.

answering the question: what is postmodernism

(Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 71-82. )

Lyotard

alert to difference, diversity, beliefs and desires, the incompatibility of our aspirations,
Believing in one grand narrative becomes therefore an impossibility postmodernity - characterized by an abundance of micronarratives.

theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or universal values.

Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.

 The

postmodern condition is the fundamentally different outlook on knowledge that has arisen after the Enlightenment, and particularly since World War II in Western post-industrial, information-based society.

In the Report, Lyotard makes a variety of claims and recommendations about how knowledge, particularly computerized knowledge, in the postmodern condition must be legitimated and made accessible in a just society.

the crisis of metanarratives

John Stephens defines metanaratives as "a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience."

Science is a narrative. It is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy

Lyotard uses the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth.

the

Enlightenment narrative is a metanarrative implying a unanimity between rational minds

 in

the Enlightenment narrative, the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end -- universal peace.

postmodernism

interrupts, challenges, questions metanarratives

Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide, . To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. -rudyard kipling

THE WHITE MANS

BURDEN

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

e.g.1: As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. - Wilfred Owen

Translation of Genesis 1:1-3

King James Version (1611):

In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

The word on the street (The Street Bible) (2003):

First off, nothing. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God starts it all up and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function just darkness ... total. And floating above it all, Gods Holy Spirit, ready to play. Day one: Then Gods voice booms out, Lights! and, from nowhere, light floods the skies and night is swept off the scene.

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives -Lyotard

 This

incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom--is to die. - Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. -Eliot, The Wasteland, 1922

The major question that interests Lyotard is how knowledge gets legitimated in cybernetic society, and the nature of the legitimation itself.

He maintains that whatever principle society uses to legitimate knowledge must also be the principle that it uses to legitimate decision-making in society, and consequently government, laws, education, and many other basic elements of society.

Legitimation in the Enlightenment was tied to what Lyotard calls metanarratives, or grand narratives.
Meta-narratives roughly equate to the everyday notion of what principles a society is founded on. They form the basis of the social bond.

Meta-narratives are total philosophies of history, which make ethical and political prescriptions for society, and generally regulate decisionmaking and the adjudication of what is considered truth.

The meta-narratives of the Enlightenment were about grand quests. The progressive liberation of humanity through science is a meta-narrative. The quest for a universally valid philosophy for humanity is an example of a meta-narrative.

weapons of destruction legitimized by discourse of science = progress

The problem is that when metanarratives are concretely formulated and implemented, they seem to go disastrously awry. Marxism/Nationalism are classic cases of meta-narratives based on principles of equality, liberty, emancipation and egalitarianism which, when implemented, becomes domineering and repressive.

earlier discourses of childhood innocence and purity destroyed by proliferation of media 1

earlier discourses of joyful romances and weddings destroyed by proliferation of media 2

earlier discourses of human mercy destroyed by proliferation of media 1

Lyotard claims that we have now lost the ability to believe in meta-narratives, that the legitimating function that grand quests once played in society has lost all credibility. The question then becomes, what now forms the basis of legitimation in society if there is no overarching meta-narrative?

 For

Lyotard, the answer lies in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which analyzes the way sub-groups in society regulate their behavior through rules of linguistic conduct. If we have rejected grand narratives, then what we have fallen back on are little narratives.

Little narratives are Wittgenstein's "language games", limited contexts in which there are clear, if not clearly defined, rules for understanding and behavior. We no longer give credence to total philosophical contexts like Marxism which ostensibly would prescribe behavior in all aspects of life, rather, we have lots of smaller contexts which we act within.

We are employees, we are students. Each role legitimates knowledge and courses of action in their limited contexts. By fragmenting life into a thousand localized roles, each with their particular contexts for judging actions and knowledge, we avoid the need for meta-narratives. This is the nature of the modern social bond. Our effectiveness is judged in the context of how well we perform in each of these many limited roles. (performativity)

alert to difference, diversity, beliefs and desires, the incompatibility of our aspirations,

Believing in one grand narrative becomes therefore an impossibility postmodernity - characterized by an abundance of micronarratives.

My argument is that the modern project [of realising universality] has not been abandoned or forgotten but destroyed, liquidated. -Lyotard, 1984

alert to difference, diversity, beliefs and desires, the incompatibility of our aspirations,

Believing in one grand narrative becomes therefore an impossibility postmodernity - characterized by an abundance of micronarratives.