Knowra Postmodernism Postmodernism A broad cultural movement that questions modernism’s faith in coherent systems, originality, and universal progress. It is marked by pluralism, self-reference, and skepticism toward stable meanings.
Modernism : A cultural movement that sought new forms and often trusted artistic autonomy, formal coherence, and progress. Postmodernism defines itself partly through resistance to modernism’s ideals of coherence and progress.
Jean-François Lyotard : A French philosopher whose work examined knowledge, language, and the legitimacy of grand narratives. His account of incredulity toward metanarratives became a widely cited definition of the postmodern condition.
Postmodern architecture : An architectural movement that mixes historical references, ornament, and popular imagery against modernist restraint. Architecture supplied some of postmodernism’s clearest public examples and earliest labels.
Structuralism : An approach that explains cultural meaning through underlying systems of relations and signs. Postmodern thinkers often challenge structuralism’s confidence that such systems can be mapped coherently.
Death of the author : A theory that treats a text’s meaning as not governed solely by its author’s intentions. It shifts interpretation away from authorial authority toward language and readers’ interpretive practices.
Metanarrative : An overarching story that claims to explain history, knowledge, or social change through a universal framework. Postmodernism questions whether any single framework can legitimate knowledge for everyone.
Fredric Jameson : An American literary critic and Marxist theorist known for analyzing postmodernism and late capitalism. He gave postmodernism a historical and economic account centered on late capitalism.
Historiographic metafiction : Fiction that reflects on its own construction while reworking recognizable people and events from history. It makes postmodern doubts about historical truth visible within the form of a novel.
Enlightenment : An intellectual movement that emphasized reason, inquiry, and the possibility of human progress. Postmodern criticism targets universal rational progress as a central inheritance of Enlightenment thought.
Cultural relativism : The view that beliefs and practices should be understood within their cultural contexts rather than by a single universal standard. Postmodern challenges to universal standards are often linked to arguments about cultural relativism.
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