The term postmodernism has become fashionable. Concepts of postmodernism

2. Definition of postmodernism.

POSTMODERNISM is a concept used by modern philosophical reflection to designate a type of philosophizing characteristic of today’s culture, content-axiologically distancing itself not only from classical, but also from non-classical traditions and constituting itself as post-modern, i.e. post-non-classical philosophy. Leading representatives: R. Barthes, Bataille, Blanchot, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Jameson, Guattari, Klossowski, Kristeva, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, etc. The term “Postmodernism” was first used in R. Ranwitz’s book “Crisis” European culture"(1917); in 1934 it was used by F. de Oniz to designate avant-garde poetic experiments of the early 20th century, radically rejecting literary tradition; from 1939 to 1947, in the works of Toynbee, the content of the concept "Postmodernism" was constituted as denoting modern (starting from the First World War) war) an era radically different from the previous era of modernity; in the late 1960s - 1970s, this concept was used to capture innovative trends in such areas as architecture and art (primarily its verbal forms), and was applied to such spheres of objectivity, as economic-technological and socio-historical; since 1979 (after Lyotard’s work “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge”), it has been affirmed in the status of a philosophical category that captures the mental specifics of the modern era as a whole (K. Butler, V. Welsh, T.D. "an, D. Davis, C. Jenks, A. Le Vaux, D. Lodge, J. Mad-zaro, A. B. Oliva, W. Spenos, W. Steiner, A. Wild, D. Fokkema, D. Forward, I. Hassan, etc.). Currently, the history of transformation of the content of the concept “Postmodernism” is becoming special subject postmodern philosophical reflection (H. Bertens, M.A. Rose, etc.). Despite the programmatic distancing of postmodernism from the presumptions of classical and non-classical philosophical traditions, nevertheless, the postmodern program of modern philosophy genetically largely goes back to the non-classical type of philosophizing (starting with Nietzsche), and in particular to post-structuralism, structural psychoanalysis, neo-Marxism, phenomenology, philosophy Heidegger, the traditions of “post-scientific thinking” and “poetic thinking”, as well as the traditions of semiotics and structural linguistics and, in their later versions, to the philosophy of dialogue and the theory of language games. Despite the fact that the dominant tendency is to date the emergence and conceptual design of postmodernism to the mid-1950s, there is also a position according to which this process is pushed back to the end of the 1930s (K. Butler, I. Hassan); According to Eco, in relation to the discretion of the “beginning” of postmodernism, there is a tendency to attribute it “to an increasingly distant past” - and if Eco’s ironically modeled attempts to “declare Homer himself a postmodernist” were not taken seriously, then the interpretation in a postmodernist key of the apriorism of I. Kant as anticipating the idea of ​​signification is not alien to postmodernist retrospective (V. Moran). In modern philosophical literature There are quite lively discussions about the relationship between such aspects of the content of this concept as the philosophical and sociological aspects (Z. Bauman, R. Williams, K. Kumar, S. Lash, D. Lyon, J. Urry, F. Fecher, A. Heller) , cultural studies (S. Best, D. Kellner, E. Jellner, M. Poster, B. S. Turner, B. Smart), literary, architectural and artistic (C. Jencks, I. Hassan), etc. (with In this case, one should keep in mind the convention of such a division of the named thinkers into departments, the rigidity of boundaries between which they themselves resolutely reject). These discussions, in turn, lead to the problem of explication - along with the content of the concept of “Postmodern philosophy” - and the content of such concepts as “postmodern sociology”, “postmodern cultural studies”, “postmodern linguistics”, etc. Recently, however, a tendency towards an extremely broad understanding of the term “Postmodernism” and the recognition that it “should be used not as a historical-literary or theoretical-architectural, but as a world-historical concept” (G. Küng) has begun to dominate. At the same time, by now the point of view has been established, according to which “postmodernism is an era not so much in the development of social reality as of consciousness” (Z. Bauman). Modern culture reflexively conceptualizes itself as “postmodern,” i.e. post-modernity, as a processuality that unfolds “after time” - in a situation of “perfection” and “completeness” of history. Similarly, modern philosophy constitutes itself not only as post-modern (actually, post-modernism), but also as post-philosophy, which implies a rejection of the traditional problem fields for philosophy, the conceptual-categorical apparatus and classical semantic-axiological priorities. Thus, the philosophy of postmodernism refuses to differentiate philosophical knowledge into ontology, epistemology, etc., fixing the impossibility of constituting in current situation metaphysics as such and reflectively interpreting the modern style of thinking as “post-metaphysical”. The latter realizes itself outside the traditional functional-semantic oppositions that acted in the culture of the classical and non-classical types as the fundamental gestalt axes of mental space: sharply criticizing the very idea of ​​binary oppositions as such, postmodernism thinks of itself outside the dichotomous oppositions of subject and object, male and female, internal and external, center and periphery. In general, if the modern cultural state can be captured through the concept of “postmodernism,” then the state of the mentality that is aware of it can be captured through the concept of “Postmodernism.” In this regard, researchers persistently emphasize the reflexive nature of postmodernism as a cultural phenomenon: “postmodernism as such is nothing more than modernity for itself” (Z. Bauman). Thus, “postmodernity... is understood as a state of radical plurality, and postmodernism as its concept” (W. Welsh). Of course, we may not be talking about a single concept that semantically exhausts in its content the entire problematic field of modern postmodern philosophy: postmodernism as a philosophical phenomenon, in principle, cannot be considered as a monolithic one, characterized not only by attributive, but also by programmatic plurality, objectified in a wide range of diverse (both according to the criterion of the modeled objectivity, and from the point of view of the methodology used) projects, among which the most significant are textual, nomadological, schizoanalytic, narratological, genealogical, simulation, communication, etc. Moreover, postmodernism does not seek to “constitute itself” as an actual unified philosophical strategy, unified in its foundations, methods and goals and would claim originality, nor establish itself as a philosophical tradition, programmatically postulating the impossibility of modern conditions implementation of such a philosophical and metaphysical project. The semantic and categorical diversity of postmodern philosophy is largely due to postmodernism’s radical rejection of the very idea of ​​the possibility of constituting in the sphere of modern philosophizing a conceptual-methodological matrix that could lay claim to paradigmatic status, its programmatic focus on idiography and the original plurality of the problem field, which also reveals constant intentions for its expansion (philosophy of writing and text, variable dynamic models of sociality and subjectivity, conceptual models of historical events, power, discourse and language, analytical models of consciousness and the unconscious, physicality of sexuality, etc.) One should also not discount this the fact that postmodernism is an actual phenomenon that does not yet belong to the philosophical tradition in the past perfect mode - both its content and terminological tools are in the process of their formation and cannot, therefore, be characterized by established unification. Hence the characteristic characteristic of postmodern philosophy is the intention to reflexively define the phenomenon of postmodernism as a whole by pointing out its particular (both in the sense of non-universality of distribution and in the sense of locality of objectivity) of its characteristics. So, for example, according to Lyotard, postmodernism can be defined as “distrust of metanarratives,” Jameson sees an attributive characteristic of postmodernism in an orientation towards specific parody, etc. At the same time, despite the above, in relation to postmodernism as a phenomenon of philosophical tradition, it can be argued that, initially arising as a kind of special situation in the development of philosophical thinking, consisting in a purely negative distancing from the existing strategies for constructing philosophical knowledge, by now postmodernism can be assessed as constituted in the space of philosophical reflection as a phenomenon that has an indisputable paradigmatic status, because the postmodern program of philosophizing satisfies all the criteria requirements for the research paradigm, namely: 1) develops its own model of seeing reality, based on the presumptions of its attributive chaos and original semiotic ( first of all - linguistic) articulation ("postmodern sensitivity" as an attitude towards the perception of reality as chaotically fragmented and semiotized, up to the postulation of a sign-articulated way of existence as the only possible one; 2) forms specific ideals and norms for describing and explaining the world, reflexively comprehended in postmodern narratology and consisting of fundamental and programmatic pluralism, and ideals and norms for the organization of knowledge, which are expressed in programmatic cognitive relativism (turn from the strategy of alterity to the strategy of mutuality (reciprocity) ), based on the concept of "the decline of great narratives". In the paradigmatic evolution of postmodernism, two stages can be distinguished: 1) the postmodern classic of deconstructivism described above, characterized by the extreme radicalism of distancing from the presumptions of both classical and non-classical philosophy, and 2) taking shape in present time a paradigmatic modification of postmodernism, which is the result of a certain turn towards the revision of initial presumptions (partly related to the communication turn in the development of philosophical issues) and can be interpreted as a kind of after-postmodernism. Philosophical postmodernism not only has a paradigmatic status, but also performs functions inherent in philosophy in modern culture. First of all, in the philosophy of postmodernism, the conceptual means necessary for an adequate description of nonequilibrium self-organizing systems drawn into the sphere of knowledge of modern culture are polished (as in the philosophical language the conceptual and logical means necessary for the description of dynamic and then developing systems were once polished). Subjecting this process to a meta-theoretical understanding, Foucault writes that a new style of thinking and, in fact, a new culture are currently being formed. According to him, the new fundamental experience of humanity “cannot be made to speak the thousand-year-old language of dialectics.” The new, nonlinear way of seeing the world that is taking shape in modern culture also needs a new language for its expression, but this moment“new experience,” according to Foucault, “has yet to find a language that will be for it what dialectics was for contradiction.” Just as, modeling in a predictive mode the dynamics of a self-developing system, the philosophy of the 19th century. appealed to abstract spheres of objectivity, which in their cognitive status are an ideal (theoretical) construct (for example, a monad in Leibniz’s monadology) - in the same way, modeling new type dynamics (nonlinear self-organizational processes in chaotic astructural environments) and developing a conceptual apparatus for describing such dynamics, the philosophy of postmodernism also operates with ideal objects (such as “nomadic distribution of singularities”, “rhizomorphic environments”, etc. - the greatest measure of concreteness in this context has such postmodern concepts as “writing” and “text”, since in relation to the textual version of postmodern philosophy the possibility of using the terminological thesaurus of post-Saussurean linguistics, which makes the situation more transparent). According to the fact that the sought terminology is in the process of its formation, the philosophy of postmodernism demonstrates a whole range of parallel conceptual series intended to describe an object that goes beyond the previous research tradition: textual series, nomadological, schizoanalytic, etc. In addition, due to not being fully developed categorical apparatus of philosophical analytics of nonlinear processes, postmodernism is characterized by the use of mythological images (such as the “Tantric egg” in the concept of “body without organs”) and a tendency towards metaphors. However, the absence of a unified terminology does not serve as an argument for postmodern reflection in favor of the impossibility of stating the paradigmatic unity of postmodernism in its philosophical projection (S. Suleimen). In the problematic field of postmodernism, a special place is occupied by the problem of its relationship with such cultural phenomena like classic and modernism. Programmatically distancing itself from the classical presumptions of philosophizing, postmodernism, at the same time, constitutes a special (and, perhaps, the only possible) way of presenting the content of a cultural tradition in the spiritual space of modernity, understood as “postmodernity”). In the general context of the postmodernist rediscovery of time, which stated the total fall of any existing state of culture under the “power of the past,” as well as in the particular textual context of the postmodernist concept of intertextuality, according to which the product of creativity can be interpreted not as an original work, but as a construction of quotations, we can say that postmodernism sets a new horizon for the representation of ideas and texts of the classical tradition in modern culture. In this regard, postmodernism is, in fact, a way of being classics in the modern era. Such an interpretation of the Classic - Postmodern problem, while by no means being generally accepted or dominant, nevertheless finds itself in postmodern reflection: from consideration by Charles Jencks architectural postmodernism as “new classicism” to the strategy of “returning lost meanings” proposed by M. Gottdiener in the context of the modern postmodern program of “resurrection of the subject”. With regard to the problem Modern - Postmodern, among the models for its solution proposed by modern postmodern reflection, extreme options are clearly constituted: from the vision of postmodernism as a product of evolution and the deepening of the presumptions of modernism (A. Giddens, H. Lethen, S. Suleimen) to its interpretation as a rejection of unrealized intentions of modernity (Habermas); from the dominant tendency of opposing postmodernism to modernism (R. Kunoff, G. Küng, A. Hornung, G. Hoffman, etc. (in fact, according to G. Küng, “postmodernity is a “search concept” structuring the problem, intended to analyze what distinguishes our era from the era of modernism") to the understanding of postmodernism as a product of the "reinterpretation" of modernism (A.B. Seligman). Postmodern reflection also takes shape in the interpretation of postmodernism as a phenomenon that is a manifestation of any radical change in cultural paradigms (D. Lodge, Eco) ; in this regard, postmodernism is seen as a kind of stage in the evolution of culture: “every era has its own postmodernism” (Eco). A distinctive feature of classical postmodern texts is their meta-character: the works of leading postmodern authors (i.e. those who can would be classified among the “classics” of postmodernism, if not for postmodernism’s decisive rejection of the very idea of ​​a research tradition as such) are distinguished by such a feature as an intention for reflection, namely, for the explication and meta-theoretical analysis of their own paradigmatic foundations. In this regard, such authors as R. Barthes, Blanchot, Baudrillard, G. Vattimo, P. Virilio, V. Welsh, Deleuze, Jameson, Guattari, Kristeva, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault and others, simultaneously act as classics , and theorists of postmodernism, identifying the sociocultural foundations and consequences of the postmodern vision of the world. It is also necessary to note the presence in the modern meta-tradition of understanding the phenomenon of postmodernism of a clearly defined critical branch (Habermas, A. Kallinikos, etc.). In general, however, the status of postmodernism in modern culture can be regarded not only as defined and significant, but also as largely determining the development trends of modern philosophy as such. The phenomenon of postmodernism is currently the focus of philosophical interest, as evidenced not only by the large array of fundamental analytical works devoted to this phenomenon, and the steady increase in their publication from 1995 to 2000 (author's studies of such theorists as J. Ward, K. Lemert, W. Smart, 3. Sardar, D. Harvey, M. Gottdiener, B. McHal, J. O'Neill, M. Sarup, K. Lankshear, P. McLaren, A. A. Giroux, M. Petere and others; generalizing works edited by K. Gelder, S. Foruton, S. Sim; integral collections "Postmodernism. ICA Documents", etc.), but also the emerging tradition of popularizing postmodernism (for example, the release in 1997 of "A Primer to Postmodernity" by G. Natoli; in 1998 - "Postmodernism for Beginning" by C. Appinganesi and C. Gerratt). The problematic-conceptual search for the philosophy of postmodernism realizes itself in line with the main directions of development of modern culture, focusing on the study of the most current problems, focusing the attention of not only humanitarian, but also natural science knowledge: among them can be named such problems as the problem of nonlinearity, rethinking the phenomenon of determinism in modern culture, a fundamentally new interpretation of the phenomenon of temporality, etc.

Philosophical style Derrida seeks to bring together the play of language and the play of thought. Thus, the opposition between literature and philosophy, between logical reasoning and artistic imagination is largely erased. Such a synthetic style is a distinctive feature of the authors of postmodernism, people who not only play, but also people who deconstruct.

Game principles in writing begin with the basics - with the author's name and signature. A signature is an idiom, an indivisible “piece” of language that embodies a minimal playful movement “back and forth” - the stroke of a signature, as a rule, includes an element of strikethrough, which illustrates Derrida’s favorite idea about the dual (hiding/revealing) nature of writing. Writing writes and erases, memory remembers and forgets, and in this double movement the play of differences takes place. In the collection "Writing and Difference" there are two essays, each of which ends with the name of the imaginary rebbe Derissa and Rida (Derissa and Rida): the astute reader can only construct from them the half-erased name of Derrida.

Word games, beyond names, penetrate Derrida's key terms.

Language acts as a model that generates thought, setting the first combinations and codes in the game. Continuous puns in deconstructive texts, on the one hand, introduce an element of fun and entertainment, reminding one of the playful nature of thinking and language, and on the other hand, they teach one to think not in separate units, but in bundles of relationships, and to keep whole groups of meanings in mind.

Language is used by Derrida as a means of intensifying “ordinary” meanings in order to break into a new - multidimensional space of postmodern culture.

Due to such richness of texts and complicated language, many critics even reproach him for his excessive attentiveness to the word, mania for constant clarifications, reservations, which leads to a kind of stylistic “tick” - Derrida often “pushes away” any term, concluding it in quotation marks, in his works at every step there are parentheses, introductory phrases, italicized phrases. Sometimes the text deliberately retains the features of a draft and an outline - crossed out words, comments in the margins, unfinished sentences. Such an active use of all means of expressiveness in written language clearly demonstrates Derrida’s desire to see in writing a symbolic model of thinking.

However, one must learn not only to play, but also to change the game in time, or even abandon it completely, and mock the game. Standard library-university education directs the reader to search for a single meaning or coding system in the text, and at the moment when it seems that it is about to be found, Derrida makes another turn that opens up new possibilities. Hesitations, doubts, “completion” of meanings, unexpected associations are the effect planned by the author. This reveals an important feature of the cultural consciousness of postmodernism: a text, be it philosophical or literary, is created in advance with the expectation of final critical activity and includes it as a potential context. Without it, the text is “open”, incomplete, and the very movement of thought, the very process of play, turns out to be self-sufficient.

Derrida's Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles is an excellent example of the play of style in philosophy. The text is constructed from two columns, between the two columns there are sporadic overlaps of meaning and associative connections, the machine for producing new metaphors and ideas is working. The movement of the reader's gaze according to such an intelligent “design” is itself a metaphor for the game. Let us remember that the shuttle movement “back and forth” (in in this case between columns of text) - the minimum projection of the game, its code and model. Both I. Huizinga and X. Gadamer wrote about this - we quote the latter: “Movement, which is play, is devoid of an ultimate goal; it is renewed in endless repetitions. It is clear that the concept of movement back and forth is so central to the essential definition of the game that it makes no difference who or what performs the movement."

Often in his discussions of play, Derrida refers to Nietzsche, who glorifies the joy of pure thinking, the Dionysian ecstasy in the realm of wisdom. Following Nietzsche, deconstructionists practically erase the boundary between thinking and a joke, between an interesting idea and a successful pun. Intellectual play levels the hierarchy of different levels of consciousness: pure contemplation, critical activity, the genre of presentation, and language turn out to be closed on each other in the single element of playing signs.

The understanding of play as an endless combination of cultural values ​​and signs can in principle be derived from Huizinga’s works. The model of culture proposed by Derrida meets many of the characteristics of play, called by Huizinga: free spirit, self-worth, theatricality, repetition, bet on chance, risk, chance and mystery of the result, and, finally, an element of fun, fun, wit. Yet the classical concept of play differs significantly from the philosophy of play in postmodernism. The rationale for these differences was contained in Derrida's 1966 keynote speech at a conference at Jens Honkins University, and the paper "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities" (the title of the 1966 talk) is considered a classic of its kind and deserves careful and analytical consideration.

First of all, Derrida reformulates the key concept of “structure”, referring to the dramatic changes in its interpretation: “... in the history of the concept of “structure” something happened that could be called an “event”. . .What kind of event is this? Its external form appears as a kind of rupture and doubling." This revolution - the result of the critical thinking of Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger - in the most general terms can be called the "decentering" of structure.

The traditional interpretation of structure, prior to the designated “event,” necessarily presupposed the presence of a “center” or “fixed beginning.” Ensuring the clarity of the system, the center of the structure allows the play of its elements only within the general form. The structure distinguishes the center and the game as antagonistic principles: the center holds back the game, the game blurs the center.

Seven years before Derrida's article appeared, a similar distinction was introduced by Gadamer in his famous work Truth and Method. Gadamer, in particular, wrote: “The game as such, including the unpredictability of improvisation, is fundamentally repeatable, and to this extent constant. It has the character of a “work”, an “ergon”, and not just an “energy”. In this sense I call it "structure". So, play is a structure, a fixed pattern, distinguished through repetition. “But structure is also a game, since, contrary to its ideal unity, it acquires its full meaning only in process.” It is characteristic that it is in play that Derrida sees the qualitative potential of structure, its “structurality.”

As for the center, on the one hand, it is not subject to play - the fluid recombinations of elements, meanings, terms. On the other hand, the center, being the unknowable unique focus, governs the structure; itself is deprived of structural characteristics due to its uncertainty, inaccessibility to playing, encoding, naming elements. Hence the well-known paradox in classical philosophy: “The center of a structure is simultaneously located both inside and outside” (can be compared with the scholastic definition of God: a ball or circle, the center of which is everywhere, and the circumference is in infinity). Thus, traditional ideas about structure are inherently contradictory, since “the concept of centered structure is the concept of grounded play, built on a certain underlying fixity and reassuring certainty, which is itself derived from play.”

Each time another system tries to curb the freedom of play, to reduce the pulsating structure to a rigid form of archeology/teleology. And when once again it turned out that the proposed grid of categories did not capture the mysterious center, did not describe the beginning and end, origins and “eschatology,” the dynamics of the game and recoding came into play.

And then comes an “event” that marks the crisis of this process: people begin to understand that the center is not the essence, the object of naming and comprehension, but only a function that gives rise to a continuous search for names, new metaphors, descriptive systems. The center is the trigger of the game. The center stopped thinking in terms of presence - “decentration” took place. “It is at this moment that language takes over the universal problem field; that moment when, in the absence of a center or beginning, everything becomes discourse - provided that we understand by this word a system in which the central, original or transcendental signified is never fully present outside some system of differences. The absence of a transcendental signified expands the field and possibilities of the play of meanings to infinity.”

Thus, if earlier scientists dealt with “atomic” units of meaning in each humanitarian field, then after the “break” researchers reached the level of “molecular” interactions. Unwinding the chain of signs, the interpreter could first come to the final signified - the “last” meaning: this is God, Truth, the Meaning of Life, etc. Modern interpreters are deprived of such happy opportunity. For them, the process of signification is potentially endless, because there are no longer tangible boundaries between play and non-play. There are no limits to the playing space. A stark contrast to traditional "centered" games! After all, “the limitation of the field of play,” as Huizinga rightly emphasizes, “opposes the world of the game, as a closed world, to the world of the goal, and without transition or mediation.” In the realm of play, the whole world becomes a giant signifier - you can write, following Roland Barthes, works on the semiotics of fashion, hairstyles, and the symbols of the city, but with one small amendment: these works must be connected, closed on each other in an infinite system, so that it turns out, as if the books were talking to each other in the library, and the reader was just listening to this spontaneous conversation. Then the utopian Derrida-Gadamer model will operate: language everywhere, text everywhere, signs everywhere interpreting each other ad infinitum (to infinity).

The novelty of this comprehensive game is not quantitative: the playing field expands infinitely not due to an increase in size, that is, a proliferation of recodings and sign substitutions, but due to the loss of a center that sets and at the same time restrains the course of permutations.

We can confidently talk about an antithetical beginning for the game. Its name is “philosophical totalitarianism”, i.e. the desire to come up with a total exhaustive formula that reduces the uniqueness of phenomena to the simplest explanatory structures. Without going into details of the controversy: Derrida ultimately demonstrates that Lévi-Strauss’s total structuralism is based on premises that are redundant from the point of view of reduction - on secretly implied “scientific” myths in the spirit of Rousseauism about the lost primordial direct unity of nature and man. “... The movement of play, which occurs due to lack, the absence of a center and beginning, is a movement of complementarity.” This term by Derrida has two meanings: to supplement - to add to what is available and to fill, to make up for what is missing, what is missing.

“A game is a split of presence... Every game is a game of absence and presence, but if we strive to think of it in some radical sense, then we should think of it before the alternative of presence and absence; being itself must be thought of as presence or absence, based on the possibility of play, and not vice versa.” Presence, which previously constituted the unconditional center of the structure, is now perceived only as an element in a moving chain of differences - Derrida, as we see, is not content with changing oppositions (presence - absence), but reaches a more essential level, critical for modern thinking, thanks to the concept of play as the basis differences.

Summarizing all the listed antinomies and conceptual breakdowns, Derrida draws at the end of the essay a picture of two cultural traditions of interpreting the concepts of “sign”, “structure”, “game”, “interpretation”. The first seeks to decipher and dreams of finding the truth, the fullness of presence, a reliable foundation, origins and putting an end to the game. The second tradition no longer seeks lost origins, but affirms the game and world of infallible signs, devoid of truth and origins, open to active interpretation.

The forced proximity, immersion in the common material of both traditions gives rise to a unique situation in the culture of the 20th century. The gaming tradition, striving to decenter classical categories and establish a world of cheerful signs, nevertheless operates with an established language and philosophical tools. “...Going beyond the boundaries of philosophy does not consist in turning over the last page of philosophy (which most often turns out to be simply bad philosophizing), but in continuing to read philosophers in a certain certain way.”

The methodological difficulties described have several consequences that determine the style of postmodern thinking. This is a “sentence” to tradition, a forced repetition of the known, appropriation, expression of oneself through the destruction of another, intertextuality. The tension of the context reflects the specificity creative moment in postmodernism: a new thought can only be perceived at the intersection of already known ideas, in the process of orientation in cultural space. Links, quotes, terms are not a fashionable “gentleman’s set”, but an essential component of both creativity and perception. The author’s individuality is expressed rather in words, in shades: no one will confuse, say, Heidegger’s “house of being” with Derrida’s “differences” and “traces.” Such words become symbolic representatives of concepts, and it is not surprising that most modern philosophers are obsessed with language, with wordplay. Individuality is revealed in difference, in the break of language: in parodies, in spars, in illusions, in cunning combinations, in repetitions. Language appears as a repository of “deferred”, “removed” meanings, and therefore it is very important for a philosopher to “listen” to language. But the main property of postmodernism is that it is not reducible to a fixed dominant. Ego is necessarily a game, polystylistics, active complementarity of various philosophical and artistic systems. The dynamic contact of styles gives rise to a common intertextual space in which a “pure” experience of isolated meaning or aesthetic impulse is impossible.

The game can only be understood by playing. Yes, and metaphysics, if it wants to turn into the metaphysics of the game, must, first of all, become the game of metaphysics. The game is the rule of philosophy - such is the conviction modern postmodernism.

From the point of view of classical, traditional mentality, postmodernism is a terrible time that destroys the individual and deprives society of its inner core, and a person’s stability. But for a man of his own world modern society appears as the only possible reality in which one can not only live, but also be happy. This is helped by a special understanding of the game as open to the direction of movement, free from goal-setting transformation. Games of change processes, games of development options. Not a rigid focus due to goal setting, but free play. However, chaos and anarchy are absent from the game. The outcome of the game is unpredictable, but the course of the game itself is orderly. Economic, social relations can also be explained by the gaming methodology. Some new mutually accepted conditions and rules of the game are more effective in many relationships between economic entities. For example, what we call “corruption” is actually a new reality of economic relations, in a certain sense ordered and understandable to those who are immersed in it. The myth of the total immorality of government officials was generated by a traditionalist consciousness, powerless to explain the new reality.

So, finishing this essay, I came to the conclusion that the enduring interest in the game and its universal character is that it is an aesthetic phenomenon, and the world, organized according to the rules of the game, is a world of bewitching illusion. Not perceived as beautiful by all participants, but for the Observer (visually or mentally) it appears as the greatest spectacle.

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Eclecticism feeds hypertrophied excess artistic means and techniques of postmodern art, aesthetic “freestyle”. c. 135-137. 1.4 Philosophical principles and differences in the aesthetics of postmodernism Postmodern principles of the philosophy of marginalism, openness, descriptiveness, non-evaluation lead to the destabilization of the classical system of aesthetic values ​​of postmodernism, ...

Avant-garde postmodernism completely erases the boundaries between various previously independent spheres of culture and levels of consciousness - between “scientific” and “everyday” consciousness, “high art” and kitsch. Postmodernism finally consolidates the transition from a work to a design, from art as “the activity of creating works” to “an activity regarding this activity.” Creative process...

Postmodernism is “dangerous” cultural phenomenon”, which “dismantled the modern world to the state of a cemetery, where there is nothing living, but every thing or idea emits the smell of decay” (A.I. Solzhenitsyn).

We can consider this characteristic of postmodernism a personal opinion. What do art critics say about this?
Some of them partially agree with this opinion, in particular, Jean Bricmont, Alain Sokal. In his book “Intellectual Tricks. Criticism of modern postmodern philosophy” they say that postmodernism has no real theoretical foundations, but is sophistry and intellectual tricks. The purpose of their book is to show that “the king has no clothes.”

About the term

The meaning of the term is easy to understand: the Latin post means “after”, i.e. these are phenomena in culture after modernism. Time period – second half of the 20th century. The term “postmodernism” indicates both the opposition to modernity and its continuity.

The essence of postmodernism

If modernism made a sharp break with the classical traditions of artistic creativity, then postmodernism is more of a mentality, an intellectual style. This is hyperreflection, destruction, in which there is a minimum of aesthetic and constructive. Postmodernism does not seek or affirm any truths. Sometimes postmodernism is also seen as a reaction to the commercialization of culture and opposition to official culture.

Postmodernism in art

"Puppy". Sculpture by D. Koons, Bilbao (Spain)

Jeff Koons(b. 1955) – American artist. Known for his penchant for kitsch, especially in sculpture. His works are among the most expensive works of contemporary artists.

In 1992, Koons was invited to create a sculpture for an exhibition in Germany. “Puppy” is a 13-meter sculpture of a terrier, decorated with flowers. In 1997, it was acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. "The Puppy" has become one of the attractions of Bilbao.
The only indisputable value of postmodernism is the principle of “everything is permitted.” The rest is conditional and optional. Modern computer technologies contribute to the art of modernism in that it gradually loses touch with true reality and increasingly moves into the sphere of virtual reality.

Signs of postmodern art

Using ready-made forms

The origin of these ready-made forms is not of fundamental importance: from utilitarian household items thrown in the trash or bought in a store, to masterpieces of world art. Remakes are common. Addition or partial rewriting of classical works, their arbitrary reinterpretation, as we saw in the scandalous production of R. Wagner’s opera “Tannhäuser”. Postmodernism turns to the ready-made, the past, which has already taken place in order to compensate for the lack of its own content. Postmodernity contrasts itself non-traditional art avant-garde, demonstrating its traditionalism. In simpler terms, we can say that postmodernism adapts cultural traditions to new life circumstances, new technologies and new stereotypes of perception. This art has lost touch with reality, ceased to be genuine, creating copies of copies, becoming a perverted form of genuine art.

Marginality

It manifests itself in the fact that the borrowed material is slightly changed or taken out of context and placed in a new or unusual area.

For example, the American sculptor Louise Bourgeois(1911-2010) used chairs and door panels as creative objects. She has a series of heads and fabric figures depicting various stages of pain and despair. The sculpture Femme Maison (1983) features a seated female figure with a head resembling a building. Using a spider as a sculpture object is not a sign of a fear of spiders for her, but shows a wrapping and patient mother.

Louise Bourgeois "Mother". Bronze, 9 m. Installed at National Gallery Canada
Postmodern music uses classical works to create electronic remakes (re-recorded versions of previously published compositions).

Irony

Postmodernity ironizes the world around us or itself, thus justifying its original secondary nature. This is the similarity of postmodernism with mass culture and kitsch (manifestations of mass culture, characterized by mass production and status significance. Synonymous with “cliché” in the argument).

Kitsch in design

A game

An example of a postmodern game can be the works of W. Eco or D. Fowles.
Umberto Eco(b. 1932) - Italian scientist-philosopher, writer, literary critic, a prominent representative of postmodernism in literature. In his novel Foucault's Pendulum (1988), he makes a parodic analysis of modern intellectual consciousness, a warning about the danger of mental negligence, which gives rise to monsters. From it, U. Eco believes, it is one step away from fascist ideology. In one of his interviews, Eco said: “Many people think that I wrote a science fiction novel. They are deeply mistaken; the novel is absolutely realistic.”
According to Ilya Kolyazhny, characteristic features Russian literary postmodernism is “a mocking attitude towards one’s past”, “the desire to go to the extreme, to the last limit in one’s home-grown cynicism and self-deprecation.” According to him, “the meaning of their (i.e., postmodernists’) creativity usually comes down to “funny” and “banter,” and they use profanity and frank descriptions of psychopathologies as literary devices, “special effects.” However, books by Russian postmodernists became bestsellers. For example, works by V. Sorokin, B. Akunin, V. Pelevin. In modern Russian literature the most prominent representatives postmodernism - poets Lev Rubinstein, Dmitry Prigov, Vsevolod Nekrasov.
The novel “School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov is a story about the events taking place in a holiday village in the vicinity of a Central Russian city in a special school for mentally retarded children. The story is told from the point of view of one of the school students - a boy suffering from split personality disorder. His lack in the eyes of parents, teachers and neighbors results in the ability to perceive the world in a special way: more fully, more detailed, as if looking at the seamy side of things and events, inaccessible to the eyes of normal people.
Russian-speaking women writers, representatives of postmodern women's prose - T. Tolstaya, N. Gabrielyan, M. Golovanievskaya, L. Ulitskaya, V. Tokareva, V. Narbikova and others.

Synthetic

Postmodernism is characterized by the use various signs, techniques, styles that create a new author's form. Novelty in postmodernity is a fusion of the old, already in use, but used in a new context. Thus, postmodern culture is sometimes called second hand culture. By expression American writer John Barth, postmodernism is an artistic practice that sucks the juices from the culture of the past, a literature of exhaustion.
It is generally accepted that there is nothing new in postmodernity; it is a culture without its own content and therefore uses any previous developments. And, having lost touch with reality, modern Art doomed to endless self-repetition and eclecticism. But is everything really so gloomy in postmodernism?
Probably not. It can be looked at as a universal creative platform that opens up the possibility of creating new styles and trends, an original rethinking of classical values... But the most important thing is that postmodernism finds a common language with any culture; it does not have the nihilism of the avant-garde.

Robert Rauschenberg, "Bicycles", Berlin, Germany, 1998

) is a term denoting structurally similar phenomena in world social life and culture of the second half of the 20th century: it is used both to characterize the post-non-classical type of philosophizing and to describe a set of styles in artistic arts. Postmodernity is a state of modern culture that includes a unique philosophical position, pre-postmodern art, as well as mass culture of this era.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the classical type of thinking of the modern era changes to non-classical, and at the end of the century - to post-non-classical. To fix the mental specifics of a new era, which was radically different from the previous one, it is required new term. Current state science, culture and society as a whole in the 70s of the 20th century was characterized by J.-F. Lyotard as “the postmodern condition.” The birth of postmodernity took place in the 60-70s. twentieth century, it is connected and logically follows from the processes of the modern era as a reaction to the crisis of its ideas, as well as to the so-called “death” of superfoundations: God (Nietzsche), the author (Barthes), man (humanitarianism).

The term appears during the First World War in the work of R. Panwitz “The Crisis of European Culture” (1917). In 1934, in his book Anthology of Spanish and Latin American Poetry, literary critic F. de Onis uses it to indicate a reaction to modernism. In 1947, Arnold Toynbee in his book “Comprehension of History” gives postmodernism a cultural meaning: postmodernism symbolizes the end of Western dominance in religion and culture.

The declared “beginning” of postmodernism is considered to be Leslie Fiedler’s 1969 article, “Cross the Border, Fill the Ditch,” pointedly published in Playboy magazine. American theologian Harvey Cox, in his works of the early 70s devoted to the problems of religion in Latin America, widely uses the concept of “postmodern theology.” However, the term “postmodernism” gained popularity thanks to Charles Jencks. In the book “The Language of Postmodern Architecture,” he noted that although the word itself was used in American literary criticism 60-70s to designate ultra-modernist literary experiments, the author gave it a fundamentally different meaning.

Postmodernism meant a departure from the extremism and nihilism of the neo-avant-garde, a partial return to tradition, and an emphasis on the communicative role of architecture. Justifying his anti-rationalism, anti-functionalism and anti-constructivism in his approach to architecture, Charles Jencks insisted on the primacy of the creation of an aestheticized artifact. Subsequently, the content of this concept is expanded from an initially narrow definition of new trends in American architecture and a new movement in French philosophy (Lacan, Jacques, Althusser, Louis, J. Derrida, J.-F. Lyotard, Foucault, Michel) to a definition that covers the emerging in the 60-70s there were processes in all areas of culture, including the feminist and anti-racist movements.

Basic interpretations of the concept

Currently, there are a number of concepts of postmodernism as a cultural phenomenon, which are sometimes mutually exclusive:

Jurgen Habermas, Daniel Bell and Zygmunt Bauman interpret postmodernism as the result of the politics and ideology of neoconservatism, which is characterized by aesthetic eclecticism, fetishization of consumer goods and other distinctive features post-industrial society.

In the interpretation of Umberto Eco, postmodernism in a broad sense is a mechanism for replacing one cultural era with another, which each time replaces avant-gardeism (modernism) (“Postmodernism is a response to modernism: since the past cannot be destroyed, because its destruction leads to muteness, it must

Postmodernism is a common cultural denominator of the second half of the 20th century, a unique period based on a specific paradigmatic attitude towards the perception of the world as chaos - “postmodern sensitivity” (Hassan, 1980; Welsch, 1988, J.-F. Lyotard).

Postmodernism is an independent movement in art ( art style), meaning a radical break with the paradigm of modernism (G. Hoffman, R. Kunov).

According to H. Leten and S. Suleimen, postmodernism as an integral artistic phenomenon does not exist. One can talk about it as a revaluation of the postulates of modernism, but the postmodernist reaction itself is considered by them as a myth.

Postmodernism is the era that replaced the European Modern Age, one of characteristic features who had faith in progress and the omnipotence of reason. The breakdown of the value system of the New Age (modernity) occurred during the First World War. As a result of this, the Eurocentric picture of the world gave way to global polycentrism (H. Küng), the modernist faith in reason gave way to interpretive thinking (R. Tarnas (en)).

The difference between postmodernism and modernism

Emerging as the antithesis of modernism, open to understanding only by a few, postmodernism, putting everything in a playful form, levels the distance between the mass and elite consumers, reducing the elite to the masses (glamour). Modernism is an extremist denial of the world of Modernity (with its positivism and scientism), and postmodernism is a non-extremist denial of the same Modernity.

Postmodern art abandoned attempts to create a universal canon with a strict hierarchy of aesthetic values ​​and norms. The only indisputable value is considered to be the unrestricted freedom of self-expression of the artist, based on the principle “everything is permitted.” All other aesthetic values ​​are relative and conditional, not necessary to create work of art, which makes possible the potential universality of postmodern art, its ability to include the entire palette of life phenomena, but also often leads to nihilism, self-will and absurdity, adjusting the criteria of art to creative imagination artist, blurring the boundaries between art and other spheres of life.

Baudrillard sees the existence of modern art within the framework of the opposition of reason and the elements of the unconscious, order and chaos. He argues that the mind has finally lost control over the irrational forces that have come to dominate modern culture and society. According to Baudrillard, modern computer technology has transformed art from the sphere of symbols and images, which have an inextricable connection with true reality, into an independent sphere, virtual reality, alienated from true reality, but no less spectacular in the eyes of consumers than true reality and built on endless self-copying.

Currently, we can already talk about postmodernism as an established art style with its own typological characteristics.

The use of ready-made forms is a fundamental feature of such art. Their origin is not of fundamental importance: from utilitarian household items thrown in the trash or bought in a store, to masterpieces of world art (it doesn’t matter whether it’s Paleolithic or late avant-garde). The situation of artistic borrowing up to the simulation of borrowing, remake, reinterpretation, patchwork and replication, adding one’s own to classical works, which was added to these characteristic features by the “new sentimentality” in the late 80s and 90s - this is the content of the art of the postmodern era.

Postmodernism turns to the ready-made, the past, which has already taken place in order to compensate for the lack of its own content. Postmodernism demonstrates its extreme traditionalism and contrasts itself with the unconventional art of the avant-garde. “The artist of our days is not a producer, but an appropriator... since the time of Duchamp we know that contemporary artist does not produce, but selects, combines, transfers and places in a new place... Cultural innovation is carried out today as an adaptation of cultural tradition to new life circumstances, new technologies of presentation and distribution, or new stereotypes of perception” (B. Groys).

The postmodern era refutes the postulates that seemed unshakable until recently that “...tradition has exhausted itself and that art must look for another form” (Ortega y Gasset) - by demonstrating eclecticism in modern art of any form of tradition, orthodoxy and avant-garde. “Quotation, simulation, re-appropriation - all these are not just terms of modern art, but its essence,” (J. Baudrillard).

Baudrillard's concept is based on the assertion of the irreversible depravity of all Western culture (Baudrillard, 1990). Baudrillard puts forward an apocalyptic view of modern art, according to which it, having become a derivative of modern technology, has irretrievably lost touch with reality, has become a structure independent of reality, has ceased to be authentic, copying its own works and creating copies of copies, copies without originals, becoming a perverted form true art.

The death of modern art for Baudrillard occurs not as the end of art in general, but as the death of the creative essence of art, its inability to create something new and original, while art as an endless self-repetition of forms continues to exist.

In postmodernism, the borrowed material is slightly modified, and more often it is extracted from the natural environment or context, and placed in a new or unusual area. This is his deep marginality. Any household or art form, first of all, there is “...for him only a source of building materials” (V. Brainin-Passek).

Spectacular works by Mersad Berber with the inclusion of copied fragments of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, electronic music, which is a continuous stream of ready-made musical fragments connected by “DJ summaries”, compositions by Louise Bourgeois from chairs and door panels, Lenin and Mickey Mouse in a work of social art - all this typical manifestations of everyday reality of postmodern art.

POSTMODERNISM

POSTMODERNISM

(French postmodernisme) - a broad cultural movement, into whose orbit in the last two decades of the 20th century. fall, aesthetics, science. The postmodern mindset bears the stamp of disappointment in the ideals and values ​​of the Renaissance and Enlightenment with their belief in creativity, the creativity of the mind, and the limitlessness of human possibilities. What is common to various national variants of P. can be considered its identification with the era of “tired”, “entropic” culture, marked by eschatological moods, aesthetic mutations, diffusion of great styles, and eclectic mixing artistic languages. The avant-garde focus on novelty is opposed here by the desire to include the entire world in contemporary art. artistic culture by quoting it ironically. Reflection on the modernist concept of the world as chaos results in the experience of playful exploration of this chaos, turning it into a habitat modern man culture. Longing for history, expressed incl. and in an aesthetic relation to it, shifts the center of interest from the topic “aesthetics and” to the problem of “aesthetics and”. The past, as it were, shines through in postmodernist works through layered stereotypes about it, which can be understood by analyzing and interpreting art as its own value.
The philosophical and aesthetic basis of P. are the ideas of French. poststructuralists and post-Freudians about deconstruction (J. Derrida), the language of the unconscious (J. Lacan), schizoanalysis (J. Deleuze, F.), as well as irony, etc. U. Eco, Amer. neopragmatist R. Rorty. In the USA, there was a flourishing of P.'s artistic practice, which then had an impact on european art. In "power" postmodern culture Post-non-classical science and the surrounding area were included.
The term "P." arose during the First World War in the work of R. Panwitz “The Crisis of European Culture” (1914). In 1934 in his book. “Anthology of Spanish and Latin American Poetry,” literary critic F. de Onis uses this to indicate a reaction to, but it does not take root in aesthetics. In 1947 A. Toynbee in the book. “Comprehension of history” gives it a cultural meaning: P. symbolizes the end of Western history. domination in religion and culture. Amer. theologian X. Cox in his works early. 1970s, dedicated to the problems of religion in Lat. America, widely uses the concept “postmodernist”. Leading zap. political scientists (J. Habermas, Z. Bauman, D. Bell) interpret it as the cultural result of neoconservatism, post-industrial society, the external deep transformations of society, expressed in total conformism, the ideas of the “end of history” (F. Fukuyama), aesthetic eclecticism. In political culture, P. means various forms of post-Utopian political. In philosophy - the triumph of post-metaphysics, post-rationalism, post-empiricism. In ethics - posthumanism of the post-Puritan world, moral personality. Representatives of the exact sciences interpret P. as post-nonclassical scientific thinking. Psychologists see it as a symptom of the panic state of society and the eschatological melancholy of the individual. Art critics view P. as a new artistic style, differing from the neo-avant-garde by a return to beauty as reality, narrative, plot, melody, and harmony.
Popularity of the term "P." found thanks to C. Jenks. In the book. “The Language of Postmodern Architecture” (1977) he notes that although this itself was used in Amer. literary criticism of the 1960s and 1970s. to denote ultra-modernist literary experiments, it can also be given a fundamentally different meaning: P. means a departure from the extremism and nihilism of the neo-avant-garde, a partial return to tradition, and an emphasis on the communicative role of architecture.
The specificity of postmodern aesthetics adopts a non-classical interpretation of classical traditions. Distancing himself from classical aesthetics, P. does not enter into relations with it, but strives to draw it into his orbit in the new theoretical basis. P.'s aesthetics put forward fundamental provisions that indicate its significant difference from classical Western European aesthetics. This applies primarily to the approval of a pluralistic aesthetic paradigm, leading to the loosening and internal transformation of the categorical system and conceptual apparatus of classical aesthetics.
Going beyond the framework of the classical logos, postmodern aesthetics is fundamentally anti-systematic, adogmatic, alien to the rigidity and isolation of conceptual structures. Its symbols are a labyrinth, a rhizome. The theory of deconstruction rejects the classical epistemological paradigm of representing the fullness of meaning, the “metaphysics of presence” in art, transferring to the problem of discontinuity, the absence of primary meaning, the transcendental signified. The concept of non-self-identity of a text, which presupposes its destruction and reconstruction, disassembly and reassembly at the same time, outlines a way out of linguocentrism into physicality, taking on various aesthetic perspectives - desires (Deleuze, Guattari), libidinal pulsations (Lacan, J.F. Lyotard), temptation (J. ), disgust (Y. Kristeva).
This shift led to a modification of the basic aesthetic categories. A New Look on how the fusion of the sensual, conceptual and moral is determined both by its intellectualization, resulting from an orientation towards the beauty of assonance and asymmetry, disharmonious of the second order as an aesthetic norm of postmodernity, and by a neo-hedonistic dominant associated with the ideas of textual pleasure, corporeality, new figurativeness in art. Attention to the ugly results in its gradual “taming” through aestheticization, leading to its erosion distinctive features. The sublime is replaced by the amazing, the paradoxical. The central thing in the aesthetics of P. is its ironic hypostasis: irony becomes the meaning-forming principle of mosaic postmodernist art.
Dr. A feature of postmodern aesthetics is the ontological interpretation of art, which differs from the classical one in its openness and focus on the unknowable and indefinite. Non-classical destroys the system of symbolic opposites, distancing itself from binary oppositions: real - imaginary, original - secondary, old -, natural - artificial, external -, superficial - deep, male - female, individual - collective, part -, East - West, presence - absence, - .
The subject as the center of the system of ideas and the source of creativity dissipates, its place is taken by unconscious linguistic structures, anonymous flows. The ecumenical-impersonal art is affirmed as a single endless text created by a collective creator. Consciousness feeds the hypertrophied redundancy of artistic means and techniques of postmodern art, “freestyle”.
Postmodern principles of philosophy. marginalism, openness, descriptiveness, and non-evaluation lead to the destabilization of the classical system of aesthetic values. P. refuses didactic and prophetic assessments of art. The axiological shift towards greater tolerance is largely caused by a new attitude towards popular culture, as well as to those aesthetic phenomena that were previously considered peripheral. Attention to the problems of everyday aesthetics and consumer aesthetics, issues of aestheticization of life and the environment transformed the criteria for aesthetic assessments of a number of cultural and art phenomena (kitsch, camp, etc.). The antitheses of the high - mass art, scientific - are not perceived by P. aesthetics as relevant.
Postmodernist experiments also stimulated the blurring of the lines between traditional types and genres of art and the development of synesthesia trends. The improvement and availability of technical means of reproduction, the development of computer technology and computer science have called into question the originality of creativity, the “purity” of art as an individual act of creation, and led to its “designization.” The revision of classical ideas about creation and destruction, order and chaos, serious and playful in art testified to a conscious reorientation from the classical understanding of artistic creativity to the construction of artifacts using the appliqué method. The problems of simulacrum, metalanguage, intertextuality, and context - artistic, cultural, historical, scientific, religious - came to the fore. The simulacrum took the place in P. aesthetics that belonged to the artistic image in classical aesthetics, and marked a break with representation and referentiality as the foundations of classical Western European art.
The most essential philosophy. P.'s difference is the transition from the position of classical anthropocentric humanism to the platform of modern universal humanism, whose ecological embraces all living things - nature, the Universe. Combined with the rejection of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism, the transfer of interest to issues specific to the aesthetics of the countries of the East, Polynesia and Oceania, partly Africa and Latvia. America, this approach testifies to the fruitfulness of anti-hierarchical ideas of cultural relativism, affirming diversity, originality and the equivalence of all facets creative potential humanity. The theme of religious, cultural, environmental ecumenism is associated with a non-classical formulation of the problems of humanism, morality, and freedom. Signs of the formation of a new philosophy. anthropology is correlated with the search for a way out of the crisis of values ​​and legitimacy.
The most famous researchers of P. are Baudrillard (France), G. Vattimo (Italy), W. Welsh, H. Küng, D. Kamper, B. Groys (Germany), D. Barth, W. James, C. Jencks, Rorty , A. Haysen, I. Hassan (USA), A. Crocker, D. Cook (Canada), V.V. Bychkov, I.P. Ilyin, V. Kuritsyn, V.A. Podoroga, M.K. Ryklin, M. Epstein, A. Yakimovich, B. Yampolsky (Russia), M. Rose (Australia), M. Schultz (Chile). P.'s principal critics include F. Jamison, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Habermas.

Philosophy: encyclopedic Dictionary. - M.: Gardariki. Edited by A.A. Ivina. 2004 .

POSTMODERNISM

POSTMODERNISM - trends that appeared in the cultural practice and self-awareness of the West during two last decades. It's about about the revision of the fundamental preconditions of European cultural life, associated with progress as an ideal and scheme of history, reason, which organizes everything knowable around itself, liberal values ​​as a standard of socio-political arrangement, and the economic task of a steady increase in material wealth. This reversal of the usual - “modernist” - ideas (hence the term “postmodernism”) covers a variety of areas cultural activities, and if in . 1960s postmodernism is associated primarily with architectural experiments based on a new image of space and style (“classics” of postmodern architecture are considered to be Charles Jencks and R. Venturi), but over time this term becomes more widely used, spreading to all areas of public life. In philosophy, this term is rooted by J.-F. Lyotard, who proposed to talk about the “postmodern state”, which is characterized by the absence of rigid hierarchies, asymmetrical oppositional pairs (high - low, real - imaginary, subject - object, whole - part, internal - external, surface - depth, East - West, male - female, etc.). Postmodernism eschews “totalizing models” and is associated with a change in the cognitive paradigm, a revision of the position of the subject as the center and source of a system of ideas. The place of the subject is occupied by various impersonal structures, be it flows of desire and intensity (J. Deleuze and F. Guattari), transgression and eroticism (F), temptation in its hyperreal dimension (J. Baudrillard), pulsations associated with libido (J. Lacan ), singularity (P. Virilio, J.-L. Nancy), (R. Rorty) or (Y. Kristeva). As a result, the characteristic of the “modern” or enlightenment picture of the world is replaced by a multitude of ontologies, built in accordance with a multitude of “objects”. J. Derrida’s “deconstructive” “metaphysics of presence” played a significant role in the development of these ideas. An attempt to comprehend the absence of a source, and not the identity as starting point thinking itself leads Derrida and his like-minded people to rethink the status of the event: it ceases to correlate with the universal truth of being. M. Foucault's analysis of subjectivity as a historical construct, as a unique function of power relations, cognitive practices and the institutions that reinforce them, had a decisive influence on “subjectless” philosophy. The ideas about the “death of the author” (M. Foucault, R. Barthes, M. Blanchot), expressing the historical exhaustion of both the phenomenon of authorship and the tradition of hermeneutic (“semantic”) interpretation of texts based on it, are also connected with this. Many concepts borrowed from the philosophy of postmodernism were transferred to literary criticism and “art criticism,” losing the original one and turning into a new “language of power.” Postmodernism has had a great influence on various types of art, which is associated with a change in the status of a work of art in ours (the inevitable secondary nature of the material and artistic gesture, a consciously implemented strategy of quotation, pastiche, irony, play).

E. V. Petrovskaya

In postmodernism, the role of the descriptive plan is great, that is, the characteristics of the newly emerged reality, and the polemical plan, associated with the revaluation of the values ​​of thought and culture. Integrity eludes words and is denied by postmodernism. Only descriptions are accepted. These descriptions are constituted as the only reality. Those features of electronic culture that blur the distinction between truth and falsehood are emphasized. Reality and merge into “virtual” reality, as in “Disneyland”. The map precedes the territory and creates the “territory”, the TV forms.

With the development of postmodern culture, a peculiar relationship arose between America and France. The USA leads in the production of films, television programs, computer games; France excels in understanding and criticizing what is emerging. This criticism merges with anti-Americanism. “Videotia” dominates in America: the most striking apologetic belongs to Marshall McLuhan.

French postmodernists (J. Baudrillard, P. Bourdieu, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, J. Lacan, J. Lyotard) attack the logocentrism of Western metaphysics, the “metaphysics of phonetic writing,” the book culture of the New Age, which imposes a limited view of the world on people, between knowledge and power, etc.

M. Foucault rejects the “naturalization” of Cartesian thought, the laws of Aristotelian logic into the laws of nature, and the pseudo-rational hegemony of the thought of white wealthy men. Deviation from norms was interpreted by the New Age as a disease, femininity - as, colored leather- as inferiority. Foucault's pathos is the defense of the “other,” the defense of the “plebs” who have become the object of subtle forms of violence.

Foucault's works cover many areas, but always focus on the problem of power, incl. sexy. His body became the most important source of modern feminism, continuing Foucault. According to D. Butler, the binary concept of gender is an artificial construct. Binary classifications (including grammatical gender) explicitly or implicitly consider the masculine as the norm. According to feminist theory, hereditary heterosexuality and phallocentrism are understood as power. This is affirmed by the language itself - it is phallocentric. It is also picked up from Foucault that legal systems of power create the subjects they then represent. Consequently, it is futile for women to seek emancipation from a political system that constitutes them as objects of manipulation and control. The men's room must be destroyed to the ground.

Behind these grotesque theories, however, there are real changes. Social movements occupy the sphere of culture and much less - economic relations. Sexual minorities, ethnic groups, environmental activists, religious fundamentalists strive for different goals than the previous one. Many groups are psychologically damaged and rebel against prevailing psychological norms.

Critics of postmodernism note that it is an intellectual elite that does not affect the “silent majority.” However, the “silent majority” simply does not see that the New Time has ended and a turn has begun to no one knows where, drift, loss and renewal of landmarks. Postmodernism has been compared to the Alexandrian period of antiquity. As then, skepticism still prevails today. Like Pontius Pilate, postmodernism asks: “What is truth?”, being confident in advance that the one who will say: “I am the truth” has not yet been born. However, there is a circumstance that undermines this historical analogy: the emergence and development of television. Some television techniques (for example, collage) were first used in prose, in essays, and in the plastic arts. Now we see the reverse influence of television on art. Technological civilization, which created television, caused irreversible shifts in man's view of the world. Postmodernism reflected them. But all attempts to perpetuate modern world, the current style of perceiving life is unfounded.

The irresponsibility of television must be overcome. The destructive influence of television on private politics and culture was noted by A. Potter, G.-H. Gadamer and others. The history of culture is the history of curbing new elements. Television provides enormous opportunities for the integration of modern man, who is unable to achieve integrity in a society spontaneously moving towards disunity and chaos. Modern culture is dominated by an unwillingness to know where one is going. human society. This escape from history leads to the idea of ​​the end of history, takes the form of art without “soil and fate”, gone into the world of dreams and free play of forms. The place of God, the absolute, and immortality is declared empty. All objects are perceived as if on the surface and are kept on the threshold of emptiness, clinging to each other. There is no hierarchy of depths, no hierarchy of the significant and the insignificant.

The culture of postmodernism frees Europeans from Eurocentrism, but at the same time frees them from any center, from any focus in which the multiplicity of the world gathers. This shattered state of mind of the West is getting new meaning in Afro-Asian cultures. For intellectuals of the “third world”, another of yesterday’s idols becomes a theoretical deconstruction Western civilization generally. There is a temptation to assert one’s own anti-Western cultural centricity, one’s national and confessional arrogance. Overcoming postmodernism requires a new spirit.

G. S. Pomerantz

New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought. Edited by V. S. Stepin. 2001 .