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Post Modernity

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OK, I have heard this term so many times, but I'm still very unclear as to what it means. I've asked a few lecturers/tutors to clarify it for me, but their explanations generally left me more confused than before. So can anyone here highlight to me the essential components of post modernity?

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OK, I have heard this term so many times, but I'm still very unclear as to what it means. I've asked a few lecturers/tutors to clarify it for me, but their explanations generally left me more confused than before. So can anyone here highlight to me the essential components of post modernity?

Well, it's pretty simple. "Modern" stuff refers to stuff happening now. "Post" means "after", so it means, it's about the future. Actually, it's just a buzzword. It's more modern than modern, so if we only knew what was "modern", then anything after that would be "post-modern". Well, "modern" thought is from somwhere in the first quarter of the 20th century, so stuff from the 70's and onwards is post-modern. The main demon of postmodernism is Derrida; postmodernism is a form of nihilism. This web page is a rich resource for someone wanting to understand postmodernism. If you don't understand the nature of postmodernism after reading this, click the refresh button and read it again. Ad many times as you'd like.

The basic idea is, words don't mean anything, and everything is arbitrary. Add "hegemony", "paradigm", "contextualize", "level of text", "discourse" plus various anti-capitalist phrases and you have your own essay generator.

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Adding on to David Odden,

Basically we all humans are caught in a giant web-the web of life. Thus we are each connected to one another. This is used to bash capitalism even more. It is also used to push environmentalism-and then you get into such wacky things as Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism.

Also, because we are all connected, there is no 'truth'. Everything is relative to the position you are in and the social fabrics you associate with.

Power is the goal of everybody, and is fluid (Focoult-but I don't think I spelt that correctly). Thus power is finite and must be fought over to be controlled-harmony is an equilibrium in the fluidity of power.

The society is dominated by male patriarchy. Thus we should spell women like womyn,-human like humyn-say congressperson-etc. to denote the Gender equality of all human beings.

etc., etc., etc. It is craziness to the extreme-and that is just the BASIC stuff!

Anyway, Modern is considered the "enlightenment" view of Reason, order, Science, etc. Thus post-modern is the view that 'corrects' the 'faults' in the 'Modern' view.

If you want to see a sum of it-watch "Fight Club".

Edited by Capitalism Forever
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This web page is a rich resource for someone wanting to understand postmodernism. If you don't understand the nature of postmodernism after reading this, click the refresh button and read it again. Ad many times as you'd like.

The basic idea is, words don't mean anything, and everything is arbitrary. Add "hegemony", "paradigm", "contextualize", "level of text", "discourse" plus various anti-capitalist phrases and you have your own essay generator.

So THAT'S how Chris Sciabarra writes his stuff!

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The basic idea is, words don't mean anything, and everything is arbitrary. Add "hegemony", "paradigm", "contextualize", "level of text", "discourse" plus various anti-capitalist phrases and you have your own essay generator.

There is actually a site that will do this for you:

http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern

This is also interesting (from the bottom of the above page):

If you enjoy this, you might also enjoy reading about the Social Text Affair, where NYU Physics Professor Alan Sokal's brilliant(ly meaningless) hoax article was accepted by a cultural criticism publication.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

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Oh wow lol! That website with the random post modernism text generation is almost identical to my "Multicultural Film" class (Gives a Y credit required for graduation here at FSU) articles that we have to read every week.

Marcus Lange

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