Postmodernism Katie Norris Postmodernism does not have a set definition.

There are many different interpretations of it by different people. Many theorists have described what they think postmodernism is.

One overview of postmodernism is defined as the term which describes the postmodernist movement in the arts, and is thought to be a set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements. Postmodernism is generally known as the era that follows modernism. The term postmodern was used around the 1870s. It was then used in 1921 and 1925 to describe new forms of art and music. It mainly gained popularity during the twentieth century post structural thought. Postmodernism is an overarching term for sceptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. Postmodernism has been known to be the way in which things have changed or altered tradition. Michael Jackson and Madonna are known as a form of postmodernism as they created/ recreated different identities for themselves. They changed into artists that were different from those within the current time, which therefore makes them be considered as postmodern. Writers on postmodernism (including Lyotard, Baudrillard and Jameson) state that economic changes produced particular structures of feeling or a cultural logic. Claims were made that, mainly due to television (MTV being a major player) we now live in a three minute culture (which is also now known the be a person attention span) or that we are part of an over visual society, being a society of the spectacledue to the nature of television and the internet. Below are some theorists quotes on postmodernism; Jacques Derrida proposed that: ' a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text' .Derrida is a structuralist and therefore this principle goes against postmodernist thinking. Frederic Jameson rejects postmodernism: 'There no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from school books and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and our own everyday life' After looking at various definitions of postmodernism, I have begun to form my own version of the word postmodernism. I believe that postmodernism was used after modernism to describe any drastic changes from the modern era to postmodern. I have thought of this from the use of the music artists such as Madonna. She was different from other artists from the modern era and seemed to evolved as did a new era. I also think that postmodernism challenges many traditional values in terms of things such as gender, social class, and social constructs, and deconstructs our beliefs of them. One being men and women being a binary opposite. I agree with most that it is hard to tell whether we are still in the postmodern era or whether we have now moved on. I

think that some things still come under being postmodern whilst others do not. I think that in terms of architecture postmodernism no longer exists. However I do think that it remains within media and TV.