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Postmodernism and its effects on society
19th century postmodernism
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Postmodernism
The 20th Century, in many ways, can be remembered as a time of scientific and technological revolution. The innovations and rapid growth in many areas of technology have cast doubt upon words such as ignorance and impossibility. This revolution also instigated new and/or radical ideas in the world of academia. The growth of post-modernism and its adherers in historical circles have caused quite a stir in dealing with the validity of many historical documents. Critical analysis of the subject of modernism and post-modernism can be simplified in one statement: What is our understanding of certainty?
The modern critical analysis form is an ideal philosophy of industrialism, an ideology that adopts the correspondence theory. Facts are unbiased descriptions of past events that assist one in gaining knowledge. Since facts have consequences, modernists believe facts are not debatable. The core of modern critical analysis relies on facts to move towards a higher level of understanding ("Truth"). The push for facts to achieve a higher level of knowledge teache...
Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller's construction, and is never unbiased.
Sokal starts off by establishing his postmodernist credentials. He ridicules scientists for continuing to cling to the post-teachings of authority over the Western intellectual outlook. There is a way that human beings can obtain reliable knowledge of these properties. He states that this belief has already been thoroughly undermined by the theories of gener...
The debate regarding whether or not history could be objective has been discussed and interpreted by many historians. The ways we think about history has allowed for the divergence of various perspectives in the world we live in today. In sum, the question discussed in this paper pertains to the extent of which history can be objective. This question has left room for several interpretations in the field of historiography and challenged our experienced in the era of modernity. This paper’s argument went for the subjective side of the argument with evidence for my argumentation from John Gaddis, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernity and Modernity, Living in Modernity, and Heidegger’s Hermeneutics.
Although he is not primarily a philosopher of science, Alasdair MacIntyre has drawn on post-Kuhnian methodological reflection in his formulation of an historicist theory of knowledge (1984a: 271) or what his more recent work terms tradition-constituted inquiry (1988: 354). In many respects, MacIntyres traditions are similar to the research programs described in the work of Imre Lakatos (1977). Both thinkers propose a shift in focus from atomic propositions to some type of holism by making an entire theory, or series of theories, the proper object of evaluation. Each argues that the issues investigated by participants in research traditions are not timeless questions, but are crucially shaped by their own problematics. Without devaluing consistency and logical rigor, each supposes that incoherence of a certain sort is the motor of intellectual progress.
The film Pulp Fiction was an immediate box office success when it was released in 1994 and it was also well received by the critics, and celebrated for the way it appeared to capture exactly a certain pre-millennial angst and dislocation in Western capitalist societies. The term post-modernist, often used to refer to art and architecture, was applied to this film. The pulp fiction refers to popular novels which are bought in large numbers by less well educated people and enjoyed for their entertainment value. The implication is that the film concerns topics of interest to this low culture, but as this essay will show, in fact, the title is ironic and the film is a very intellectual presentation of issues at the heart of contemporary western culture and philosophy.
The Realist movement, which evolved from the stark sacrifices made during industrialization, sought to show the harsh conditions of workers, basing their philosophies on the new “positivist” ideas pushed by Auguste Comte and other French philosophers. “All real knowledge rests on facts,” said Comte,...
The success of the film Amelie, also known in France as Le Fabuleux desin d'Amélie Poulain directed by Jean Pierre-Jeunet, can be attributed to both the vision of the director and brilliant writing of the screenplay. This is a film which takes place around the year 1997 a day after the incident of Princess Diana's death is televised all around the world. We are then guided through the life of Amelie Poulin (Audrey Tautou) who is trying to find meaning in her life by doing good deeds for others around her. Amelie is a film which was made in the modern society of France, but one of the elements that makes this a postmodern film is its tendency to look back at past times, be retrospective of modernism in our society and build an image of it. Postmodernism is to be understood as a movement beyond modernism which is nonetheless able to make use of modernism techniques and conventions as one set of stylistic choices amongst others. By analyzing Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 ward-winning film Amelie, we will identify the presence of many underlying motifs in both the narrative and the characterization of the film when using influential theorists such as Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts on postmodernism.
Iggers, G. G. (1997). Historiography in the twentieth century: from scientific objectivity to the postmodern challenge. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Modernism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression." While this explanation does relate what modernism means, the intricacies of the term go much deeper. Modernism began around 1890 and waned around 1922. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "In or about December, 1910, human character changed." (Hurt and Wilkie 1443). D.H. Lawrence wrote a similar statement about 1915: "It was 1915 the old world ended." (Hurt and Wilkie 1444). The importance of the exact dates of the Modernist period are not so relevant as the fact that new ideas were implemented in the era. Ideas that had never before been approached in the world of literature suddenly began emerging in the works of many great authors. Two of the pioneer Modernist writers were Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. The tendencies to question the incontestable beliefs embedded in all thinking and to focus on the inner self dominated. Old viewpoints were tossed aside to make way for the discovery of modern man's personal spirituality. Two works that are considered important forbears in the Modern period are T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, expresses his journey throughout the Vietnam War via a series of short stories. The novel uses storytelling to express the emotional toll the men encountered, as well as elucidate their intense experiences faced during the war. The literary theory, postmodernism, looks at these war experiences and questions their subjectivity, objectivity, and truth in a literary setting. It allows the reader to look through a lens that deepens the meaning of a work by looking past what is written and discovering the various truths. O’Brien used the storytelling process to illustrate the bleeding frame of truth. Through his unique writing style, he articulates the central idea of postmodernism to demonstrate the
Birdman is full postmodernism, every aspect of the movie contributes to this from the filming technique to the message (AND THAT ENDING!!!). A major aspect of Birdman is transcending reality, i think that his need to become a famous hero manifested into him becoming a “hero”, I’m unsure whether the flying and telekinesis etc. is “real” or not (infact i'm pretty sure its not because there is a scene with a taxi that undermines his ability to fly) but this doesn't really matter, what does is that he is able to escape from the reality that he feels disconnected from. This man, Riggan, who appears to struggle with dissociation and doesn't feel a connection with his current reality has many events where he temporarily disconnects from his reality a good example of this
Knowledge is rarely considered permanent, because it is constantly changing and adapting as time passes and new discoveries are made. This title roughly translates into the question: to what extent is knowledge provisional? In other words, to what extent does knowledge exist for the present, possibly to be changed in the future? At first glance, one’s mind would immediately stray to the natural sciences, and how theories are constantly being challenged, disproven, and discarded. Because of this, one might be under the impression that knowledge is always provisional because there is always room for improvement; however, there are some cases in which this is not true. There are plenty of ideas and theories that have withstood the test of time, but on the other end of the spectrum there are many that have not. This essay will evaluate the extent to which knowledge is provisional in the areas of the human sciences and history.
Knowledge is gained through a myriad of personal experiences through a variety of ways that shapes a person’s understanding. The knowledge we obtain is the culmination of our experiences as we learn what our brain interprets from our senses. Knowledge is the transmission of information that shapes a person’s understanding on a particular topic using a way of knowing. The language used by others to formulate our own ideas and thoughts produce knowledge. The knowledge obtained can either be objective and subjective. The two areas of knowledge, history and arts, are both typically at fault for being inaccurate or bias. The role of history is to study, interpret and analyse the events of the past and relay these findings through language. Language communicates thoughts and ideas through a verbal or written broadcast, thus allowing knowledge to be conveyed. The arts are a broad area of knowledge that communicate knowledge through the manipulation of our sense perceptions that allow us to experience sensations through any of our five senses. The inaccuracies and biases of these areas of knowledge and ways of knowing is due to the pre-set beliefs and values that affect how an artist or a historian chooses to express a particular message to others. Each historian belongs to a school of historiography that holds the belief that an event was due to a specific set of factors and the language used supports this claim. Similarly, artists utilize our sense perceptions to convey a message through a painting. Arts are a broad area of knowledge to i...
Postmodernism assumes an ontology of fragmented being. Where modernism asserts the primacy of the subject in revealing universal truth, postmodernism challenges the authority of the subject and, thus, universal truth based on it. Modernism and postmodernism, however, draw upon distinctly different epistemological modes: critical and dogmatic.
Parker, Robert Dale. Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 . Print.