Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 June 2005 07:00:09
Nicko has posted a moving poem on his blogg.
It made me stop in my tracks & think about where this simplified view of post-modernism (?) is coming from. Post-modernity is not an easy concept to fully grasp, partly because of the number of different aspects & theorists involved & the fact that as a theory it is still developing, in some ways.
As such quite often we have grabbed the handy quote and reduced it into a soundbite. The quote is Lyotards about, "There no longer being any meta-theory, meta-ideology or meta-narrative" (think I've got it right without a reference to hand). The soundbite we reduce it to is there is no longer any truth, everything is relative. People can understand that & so when people are struggling (or you're in a 5 minute conversation and somebody wants a quick explanation) it's what it's reduced to.
This, however, has reduced a rich and varied theory into a simplified form, which I am starting to believe is a bit dangerous.
Post-modernity has many different shades, which are trying to explain the world we find ourselves in now. Personally I don't know if we are in post-modernity or late-modernity, but things are changing (due to technology and culture), institutions are changing shape and if we are to help people understand this explanations need to be constructed and understood (& argued about). They don't need to be reduced down to one soundbite, which is starting to be taken as "the explanation", by the those who view post-modernity with suspicion.