Boy, aren't we glad modernism is over!

(Ok, so I'm kidding.... at least we got something to talk abt!) 

Hi do you know if you would class Hirst "shark" as postmoderm art?

It is conceptual but can it be included under the postmoderm umbrella? I am actually asking if there is still such a thing as postmoderism in art circles or is it over?

I'm not quite sure what you're refering to.... got a link?

I think postmodernism is still around.... depending on who you ask 

oh -- it's very much still alive.

The link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst

You can view the shark item I'm talking about in the side window

I have read a couple of things about and it says that conceptual art - which in some circles be considered postmodern.

 What actually is Postmodern art?

Anything not modern

Ok, ok, the serious answer is that I know the answer, but I'll have to look it up cos I'm unsure

Ha Ha I saw this lecture recently at the Melb existentialist group http://home.vicnet.net.au/~exist/pdf/2001_December.pdf

He suggested away out of the postmodern conundrum - sort of a back step

Isn't the best philosophy to adopt Science.

This bar far the most useful in this realitity

Sorry for spelling mistakes I am a bit dyslexic - hey you should see if you put in a spelling checker

Hey another thing where id tangler based? I would love to talk with some person to person  got an enviro project that tangler would be perfect for.

Cheers

Paper Crown

Tangler is based in Sydney Paper Crown.

Dun worry abt spelling mistakes. If you use Firefox, it has a spell checker and you'll need to right click and select  'Spell check this field'

@Paper Crown,  I don't think we should backstep into science.  Though I would say that some thinkers today want to do that.  And in a lot of ways, anglo-american philosophy has done that.  But, for the most part, there really is no way to backstep out.  It is something that we've realized and it's something that we will have to deal with in a lot of ways.  Complexity is indigestible, the solution is to not simplify understandings of it's complexity so that it becomes more digestible, but possibly to calculate ends to which we can assume we are reaching towards, or make assumptions, or eliptically deconstruct, or some of the other fascinating ways that philosophy and critical theory have come up with to deal with the problem of "postmodern complexity" (at least that's the way i see it, though this is also a definite drawback).

 not quite sure if that made any sense...

whats going to come after post-modernism thats what I would like to know? post-futurism? is society going to revert back to more conservative fashions/trends and beliefs? I think postmodernism is interesting

Can anyone define post-modernist thought?

@clovar, the reason that it is called post-"modernism" is because there was a huge wave of intellectual thought in the 20th (and late 19th) century that was built around this idea of modernity.  Modernity is a difficult concept to understand completely.  It has to do with a sense of moving into a refined and powerful industrial world as well as a focus on individuation and individuating corporate forces.  I personally come from a certain perspective that wants to say that modernity is just a modern master morality.  A seemingly refined version that gilds the scary details, or outsources them.

This was what you could call a post-enlightenment era and a lot of the thought that was spreading really had a lot to do with that.  But on top of that there was a very new field that was opening up which brought an immense amount of new material to the discussion of modernity: Marxism. Many think of Marxism as economics, but in reality Marx was trying to perceive a world synthetically including not only social concerns but economic ones.  He wanted to show how they interplayed (calling them economic practices, social practices, ideological practices, and politico-legal practices).

So the modernity debate was hot and intense.  In fact a lot of it began to be discussed by intellectuals as a result of revolutionary forces acting up all around the world including an anarchist takeover of Paris (discussion of this should be restrained to another thread ).  So the Marxists and the Anarchists as well as other thinkers at the time were really watching ideology and modernity interplay with movements, tactics, and personal philosophies the world-over.

Now that a lengthy diatribe on the historical origins of the modernity debate are done (i guess )...maybe I can move into amedeox's question, which happens to follow quite properly.

Post-modernism originated I would suppose in the mid-20th century with early existentialists and late strains of phenomenology and hermeneutics.  Some of the more common influences for these thinkers are Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.  Their philosophy is very abstract and probably pretty difficult to explain right here.

But...

 Deconstruction is an attempt to emancipate ourselves from words and language and understand them as tools of power games.  Jacques Derrida started this movement and he wants to emphasize that communication is a manipulative tool and our thought-process is a destructive and violent thing that does not create.  I am probably exaggerating it a bit too much so take what I say a little lightly, because It would be extremely difficult otherwise to summarize.  I have provided some links for you to read into a bit more.

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism are movements that want to emphasize the structures that interplay in our lives involving speech conditions and merits and what is allowed to be said and what isn't.  Extrapolating, Michel Foucault talks about the sense that power and knowledge are inseparable and embedded in our understandings of communication, interaction and discourse.

so those are some general trends there is a lot more that I am missing as well as probably getting incorrect.  But anyways, hope that made sense






 

According to my understandin, the idea of <b>a perpetual conflict of forces and counterforces</b> is at the innermost core of postmodernist thought, as expressed in Michel Foucault's Nietzsche-flavoured power theory and the death of the unified ego. I may think of myself as the ultimate cause of all thoughts and actions done by my "true self", but this "true self" is a tool of interpretation only, a name given to a complex diversity of different forces. There's a constant struggle for power between those forces that bypass our outdated notions of the interaction between rational egos.