DOMINIC STRINATI
"Postmodernism tries to come to terms with and understand a media-saturated society. The mass media, for example, were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality. Now that reality is only definable in terms of surface reflection of the mirror" (1992)

It is hard to distinguish between reality and media, the mirror was once our reality but now the mirror makes our reality.

"Media images encourage superficiality rather than substance, cynicism rather than belief, the thirst for constant change rather than security of stable traditions, the desires of the moment rather than the truths of history" (1992)

Media simulates reality? We do what we see, postmodernism is a collection of new thoughts.

"Postmodernism is sceptical of any absolute, universal and all-embracing claim to knowledge and argues that theories or doctrines which make such claims are increasingly open to criticism, contestation and doubt" (1992)

Challenge everything.

Counter argument:

Gramsci suggested that there is a dialectic between the process of production and the activities of consumption.
'that the dominant culture produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture.'

What is postmodernism?

JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD
Lyotard opened the discussion for postmodernism in social theory with his groundbreaking publication ‘La Condition Postmoderne’ (The Condition Postmodern). His works stress the decline of meta-narratives or grand-narratives. Meta-Narratives are sets of ideas governing what is right and wrong. For example, religion defines how to live a good life. By doing so, people who do not appeal to the characteristics of good man as defined by religion will be considered unfaithful, as bad people. Lyotard argues that this way of legitimating declines in a postmodern society. What is considered good can no longer be clearly separated from what is considered bad.

In a postmodern society, where more information and knowledge are easily accessed by society, a new form of evolution emerged. Meta-narratives suggested society to be homogenized (to blend). It means that all members of society should appeal to values, beliefs and norms as governed by meta-narratives if they wanted to be considered a good member of society. But, a postmodern society is characterized differently. Heterogeneity (Cultural, social, biological, or other differences within a group.) is more emphasized because people see things differently. They no longer see things from one point of view; instead they now see things within multiple points of view. Thus, a postmodern society is marked with the blurred concept of right and wrong. To see thing from only one side is so naïve. A postmodern society will recognize the plurality over homogeneity (similarities within a group).

The postmodern condition: A report on Knowledge:

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Another French philosopher, and may be called as the most important posmodernist thinker is Jean Baudrillard. Inspired by Roland Barthes, Baudrillard develops an enhanced theory of signs.


Signs as argued by Barthes serve as the medium in which myth is preserved. Signs then function as the source of legitimation. It is in align with Lyotard’s idea that suggests meta-narratives loose their function as the source of legitimation. Postmodern society then, as called by Baudrillard, lives in ‘sign culture’. This leads to what he terms as ‘simulacrum’.

(‘Simulacrum’ is a copy of an image without original.)

It is now difficult to distinct what is reality and imaginary.
Jean Baudrillard. Image and Represenattion. 2004

WILLIAM MERRIN

argues that 'the media do not reflect and repreent reality but instaed produce it, employing this simulation to justify their own continuing existence'.

link to his blog:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/09127640658084479636