1.2. From Modernism to Postmodernism

According to Jencks, the word ‘post-modern’ appeared in the 1870s (10), but the contemporary ‘postmodern’ meaning emerged from the post-war period, which started from the late 1960s in France and then swept the United Kingdom, Germany and America in the early 1970s (Christopher Butler 6)[1]. It is obvious that there is something different between modernism and postmodernism as the latter was called ‘post’ in theory. Then what is it, and what is the relation between them? For instance, as David Harvey once asked, does postmodernism display an extreme rupture with modernism, or just resist some sort of ‘high culture’ still from inside the modernism? Is it an art style or a ‘periodising concept’? (Condition 302)[2] Again, is it a ‘radical break’ with or an extension of modernism? To answer such confusing questions, clarifying the meaning of ‘post’ becomes a significant point, and this issue will be addressed at the beginning of the second chapter. Since there are various explanations of the prefix ‘post-’, three critical points are briefly introduced in this section in order to understand why it has been called ‘post’modern.

Firstly, post may simply mean ‘late’, which points to the time ‘after’ modernism. In this sense, postmodernism is perhaps the extension of modernism, or ‘late modernism’. However, there are still two branches. As discussed above, Habermas insists that postmodernism comes from modernism but it is still inside the modern system. The problem of postmodernism is, therefore, the problem of the ‘unfinished’ modernism to some degree. Nevertheless, Jean-Francois Lyotard seems not agree with this theory; he once derisively said that what Habermas meant to safeguard was a kind of political ideal or artistic criticism. Lyotard argues that postmodernism is not only partly from modernism but is, in fact, a part of it, and the significant feature or responsibility of postmodernism is to consider a ‘war on totality’ in order to become a sort of ‘modern’, which to some degree may also mean war on modernism itself. It seems that, on this point, Habermas and Lyotard differ on the surface but have no visible difference in essence even though they have been involved in a visible argument on it.

Second, Jencks argues that Ihab Hassan, Jean-Francois Lyotard and David Harvey all agree that postmodernism is an age of pluralism, that it ends the unitary cognition and even brings on the ‘war on totality’. Jencks argues that, since postmodernism still has the ‘modern’ suffix, therefore it still has the responsibility to carry on the cosmopolitan movement, as modernism has already done. Hence it will be ‘always hybrid, mixed, ambiguous’, and Jencks named this characteristic ‘doubly-coded’ (11).

This means postmodernism is not only a continuation of modernism, but also one part of it. Notwithstanding, Fredric Jameson has an opposite view. He argues that postmodernism is something absolutely dissimilar to modernism, which he calls a ‘radical break’, and that the ‘post-’ does not mean ‘late’, but ‘different’. In his opinion, modernism is a typical historical period, and postmodernism is a set of artistic resistance to it. He makes an analogy between literary styles and the code system and remarks that realism is the ‘decoding’ period, modernism is the ‘recoding’ period, while postmodernism is a recursive period with ‘schizophrenia’[3]. He remarkably distinguishes modernism and postmodernism in culture, ideology, video, architecture, sentences, space, economics, film and so on. His theory is discussed in more details in Chapter 2; in a word, he concludes that the transform from modernism to postmodernism is the track from ‘montage’ to ‘collage’, from ‘time’ to ‘space’, and from the ‘style’ to ‘fragments’. Furthermore, Jameson profoundly links postmodernism with social superstructures including politics, economy and ideology, which implies postmodernism is displaying ‘the cultural logic of late capitalism’. This idea has definitely influenced the entire framework of postmodernism in theory.

All these diverse standpoints of postmodernist thought will be discussed at greater length later. Therefore, the question remains as to what on earth postmodernism is. This proposition seems more confusing after introducing these complex controversies. The Chinese scholar Ning Sheng[4] once said: ‘ Many people asked me (this question), and I often asked myself as well: Indeed, what is postmodernism? Is it possible to give an absolute correct definition to ‘postmodernism’, so that we can finish the long-term controversy? I cannot do it.’[5](xi) In fact, no one could do it. Postmodernism is still a ‘happening’ condition, an ‘unfinished’ project in current time, and claims itself to be a multiplicitous matter; therefore it is impossible to provide a correct definition, or even draw the boundary distinguishing it from others at the present. Probably postmodernism is here because it has been here, which is happening, unfinished and unpredictable, so that people can keep on going, fulfilling and exploring.