Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. 

DEFINITIONS

Pastiche – A parody but rather than mocking, it celebrates a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music imitating a style or character of the work of artists.

Bricolage – Creating something new out of different things.

Intertextuality – Shaping a text’s meaning by a different text.

Implosion – A collapse of a system.

Cultural Appropriation – The inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another culture.

Simulacrum – A simulation of reality

Hyperreality – When the simulation is a lot more real than reality.

Metanarrative – Narratives that have historical meaning, experience, or knowledge allowing the completion of an overall master idea.

Parody – A piece of work or performance that copies and ridicules another piece of work or performance.

Consumerist Society – A type of society where people devote a great deal of their life to “consuming”. Implosion- a sudden failure or collapse of an organization or system.

Reflexivity – The evaluation of a person’s own beliefs, judgments and practices.

Implosion – The failure of an organization or system.

PARODY VS PASTICHE

Pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist. Parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony.

INTERTEXTUALITY: SURFACE SIGNS, GESTURES & PLAY

Intertextuality suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts.

“the concept that the meaning of a text does not reside in the text, but is produced by the reader in relation not only to the text in question, but also the complex network of texts invoked in the reading process.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality#History)

SURFACE AND STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE

The emphasis of style and surface over substance, means that what something looks like becomes more important than anything else, as opposed to what something might mean, or what it could be used for.

In terms of the key principles of art and design the priority is in formal elements: of shape, colour, texture, movement, space, time and so on. As opposed to more discursive principles of: narrative, character, motivation, theme, ideology. Or put simply: STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. Put another way, are we more interested in the surface of an object than its’ inner meaning?

FRAGMENTARY CONSUMPTION = FRAGMENTARY IDENTITIES

This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction. 

THE LOSS OF A METANARRATIVE

Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. 

The focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

As an example, mobile telephony (both hardware and software) now appears to proliferate and connect every aspect of our lives, and generally does so from the perspective of consumption – consuming images, sounds, stories, messages etc – rather than production. We don’t make mobile phones, mobile networks (hardware) or Apps, content and platforms (software).

“Putting it very simply, the transition from substance to style is linked to a transition from production to consumption. ” – Strinati (235)

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Jean Baudrillard describes as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative

HABERMAS

He traces the decline in the public sphere identified already in this process through a range of societal shifts: the increased globalisation of economic trade, the transformation of citizens into consumers, the increase in digital communication technologies, the dominance of a small economic elite over global economic, political and cultural exchange