culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

POSTMODERN CULTURE AS A SUM OF CULTURAL MODELS
STELUŢA STAN, MICHAELA PRAISLER
“Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Postmodernism is best understood if we accept that it has marked, for more than
half of a century now, the meeting place of numerous and diverse intellectual
debates, directed from different backgrounds, around the relations between art
and the social context, political action and the dominant social order, cultural
practices and the reformation of society in all aspects, the downfall of the
traditional philosophical foundation and the possibility of critical distance from
and efficient criticism of the actual state of things in a consumerist society under
the domination of the image and the artistic practice. In brief, the main subject is
the future of a Western tradition (and, by an increasingly visible contamination,
of other areas too) that at present seems more heterogenous than ever and still
insufficiently tolerant to pluralism. Finally, we can say that the main and
uncontestable merrit of postmodernism is that it brings to front-stage the
multitude of voices, questions and conflicts, shaking what once used to be
considered (although it never trully was) the (boring) unanimity of the great
tradition of a West that had found its glory in it.
Many voices still consider postmodernity, as an epoch, a hypothetical
concept, whereas others claim it is already outdated; in our opinion,
postmodernism, as a style, is closer linked to modernism and its proposals than
we could believe at a hasty look. When confronted with the tons of
postmodernist texts written in the postmodern world, one cannot fail to notice
that there is no such thing as a consensus, a single theory of postmodernism, let
alone a single and coherent set of positions; what exists is a variety of theories,
often labelled together as ‘postmodern’ and an often conflicting plurality of
positions.
If we choose to look at modernity as an epoch of contrasts, opposing
tendencies and an all encompassing, totalising spirit, it is very difficult to say
what can counter that, the more so as some authors tend to see in the very
criticism of modern representations about reason, power or authority an intrinsic
process of modernity, with tendencies to move ‘beyond’ the modernity inscribed
in its very internal logic of development. This is exactly why we believe that the
idea of a postmodern epoch is not entirely defineable, not even from a temporal
point of view, although postmodernity can also be seen as a periodising concept.
On the other hand, the perception of some present tendencies can become a
meaningful instrument in defining postmodern time, as a certain treatment of
modern themes, a certain perspective, is not, by itself, placeable in the modern
cultural configuration, thus becoming the ground for a new, postmodern attitude.
Philosophically, the idea of postmodernity emerges as a reconsideration
of modern thought; sociologically, postmodernity is the period in which our
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