(POST-) POST-MODERNISM
back-peddling while gravity moves us forward
We continue to operate in a post-modern paradigm, but we are still transitioning in some ways from a modern
to post-modern way of thinking. As the avant-garde continues to utilize techniques of shock effect and parody to
undermine established hierarchies, the ability of the public and the non-specialists digesting these products and
images will concurrently dissipate, driving us into the age after post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, an age of
which we are now seeing symptoms.
REBELLION + FRAGMENTATION
The unified Modernist rebellion against established cultural norms was a globalized effort, one that
had slightly varied manifestations in the United States and in Europe. It was a reaction that stemmed from the
same impulse, as a reaction to the same establishment. Frederic Jameson describes the effects of Modernismas "explosive" in his essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society (Jameson 112)." This Modernism in some ways succeeded in fragmenting the social norm (Jameson 111), causing factions of society to abandon these norms and
invent other methods of thought or subscribe to those proposed by the Modernists.
This very fragmentation ironically disallowed the Avant-garde from perpetuating its own existence. As the
attitudes, impulses, and active forces of Modernism and the avant-garde broke down cultural norms, Modernism as
a movement was simultaneously only partially digested. It was being reduced and commodified by the very culture
and institutions against which it rebelled. The Avant-Garde as an idea became a desirable state of being, thereby
losing its explosive power.
The loss of faith in the avant-garde culture coincided with the post-modern attempts to communicate to the
populous on an individual level. This was a shift from individually-generated ideas to individually-digested ideas.
While Modernism communicated a global message through an individual architectural language, Postmodernism
utilizes a variety of architectural ideas to communicate distinct concepts.
DEATH OF INDIVIDUALISM
Jameson describes individualism as reliant on social norms (Jameson 114). Because Modernism was
successful in breaking down a large part of the cultural norm, individualism as an idea was threatened. Differing
threads of post-modernism continue to fragment society into a collection of styles. As Jameson states, "..the artists
of the present day will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds- they've already been invented; only a
limited number of combinations are possible." While every combination has not been invented, the realization of
the limit to uniqueness and invention predicates the full realization of the post-modern period. For this reason, we
are living in a continual shift between Modern and Post-Modern paradigms.
Once a subversive force is marketed to the public, capitalism has begun to take advantage of the myth of
the individual. Just as Postmodern architecture re-appropriates historical elements from the landscape of the city,
personal identity in a post-modern age is similarly curated. While identity in the modernist period was believed to
be unique, self-generating and autonomous, identity in the post-modern period is about re-appropriating external,
pre-generated elements to communicate to a larger public. Through one's association with specific music, fashion,
and symbols, one is able to construct an identity composed of pre-fabricated elements. Modernism was about the
expression of the individual, while post-modernism is about the curation of this individual.
Anthony Vidler describes in his essay "The Third Typology," the availability of the city as an object of
continuous form and history, standing ready to be decomposed into fragments, stating "The nature of the city itself
(is) emptied of specific social content from any particular time and allowed to speak simply of its own formal
condition (Vidler 2)." Vidler also describes the transition from a city with a clear distinction between public and
private to the essentially public nature of all architecture (Vidler 4). This calls to mind the the question of privacy
and publicity and the convergence of the two in the digital realm. In contemporary society, while we spend ample
time isolated spatially from the rest of society, we connect ourselves to that same society with ample public digital
communication.
The format of these modes of communication is also indicative of the way post-modernism works in
a reductive way, transforming reality into images in the way Jameson describes (Jameson 125). Our identity is
represented on our blogs, our Facebook pages, our tumblr accounts as a collection of short statements, photos,
icons and images that disassociate event from meaning, sign from signifier, and as a result, allow society to
interpret our identities through the imagined associations of these objects with one another. The forums we operate
within all require us to participate through standardized templates, that, while providing some adaptability, still
subversively control the way communicate our "unique" identities and interact with other users. These singlepage
representations of one's identity operate similarly to certain works of Postmodern architecture which function
diagrammatically depending upon the relationships between their elemental parts.
PASTICHE + SCHIZOPHRENIA
If post-modernism includes the re-appropriation of elements as signifiers that rely on their previous use and
meaning, pastiche is the re-appropriation of these elements decoupled from their former meanings. This decoupling
leads to a condition of schizophrenia. Jameson writes, "the disappearance of a sense of history, the way in which
our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to… live in a perpetual change that obliterates
traditions of the kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or another to preserve." (Jameson 125)
Society is undergoing rapid transformation in smaller instances, rather than specific events of massive change.
The question of the position of contemporary culture hinges upon our relationship with this curation and
re appropriation. It hinges upon our collective memory. As design relies increasingly on the reinvention of older
styles, the public simultaneously co-opts these styles without an understanding of where they originated. This leads
to the watering-down of the public understanding of history and the simultaneous emergence of the schizophrenia
against which Jameson warns.
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