Post modernism is about consumption overtaking production, in which people are more socially separated and are not grouped within local groups

DEFINITIONS

1. Pastiche – piece of work which piggybacks ideas from other works (imitates)
2. Parody – a recreation of a genre or a piece of work with a comical twist to it
3. Bricolage – media or a piece of art that is made up of a mix of ideas and themes
4. Intertextuality – When one text heavily references another
5. Metanarrative – an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experie
6. Hyperreality –  an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies.
7. Simulacrum – A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god
8. Conumerist Society – A consumerist society is one in which people devote a great deal of time, energy, resources and thought to “consuming”. The general view of life in a consumerist society is consumption is good, and more consumption is even better.
9. Fragmentary Identities – idea of a many personalities (digital or analog )
10. Implosion – idea of society collapsing due to offshoring and other corrupt practices within our world
11. cultural appropriation – the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
12. Reflexivity – How a person is shaped by societies standards, a person with low reflexivity will be greatly shaped by society.

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play

A good place to look for illustrations of postmodern culture, in terms of media studies, is the music video. As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘ (ibid) which is the focus of this next section.

A brief economic, historical and societal backdrop to Postmodernism.

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46). As John Urry comments, this was ‘life centred upon groups of known streets’ where there was ‘relatively little separation of production and consumption‘ (2014:76). Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them.

The loss of a metanarrative

A good starting point would be to return to the concepts of PASTICHE and PARODY, as 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. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.^[28] It can be also characterised as an existence without meaning, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’ , an existentialistt crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).

Strinati points out that ‘the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality (the overarching metanarrative) appears to come from the culture (eg the media), rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media communication. In terms of media studies, this marks a juncture from previous conceptions of mass media communication, for example, as a ‘relay system’ – a process which just relays information and events in real time to a mass society, or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’ (Strinati:233). From a societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe 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 that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.

1. Pastiche- work of art,drama,literature,music or architecture that imitates another artist
2. Parody- work or performance that imitates another piece of work with irony or ridicule.
3. Bricolage – lots of things put together 
4. Intertextuality- deliberate inclusion of another text(surface signs,gestures and play)
5. Metanarrative- overarching ideas,attitudes,values and beliefs are now questioned,people now have there own perspectives and stories about history,science,religious beliefs.
6. Hyper reality- the inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.
7. Simulacrum- is an image or a representation of something or someone.
8. Consumerist Society- towns/villages/cities have high desires of consumption. They are no longer producing just constantly consuming.
9. Fragmentary Identities- disconnecting and recreating an identity.(eg-profile pictures,Facebook accounts)
10. Implosion- links to simulacra- simulations of reality, not judt a representation of the real but the real itself.
11. cultural appropriation- the adoption of elements or an element of one culture or members of a culture.
12. Reflexivity

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history that is REFERENTIAL – in that it often refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself.

pastiche – imitates something from someone else

parody – mimics something with irony

Bricolage – created with a a diverse range of things

Metanarrative – idea of storytelling, focusing on a point

Simulacrum – representation of something or someone

Conumerist Society – a lot of time and effort put into it and resources

Fragmentary Identities – different identities for different people/settings

Implosion – sudden failure of a business

cultural appropriation – elements of a culture is introduced to another culture

Reflexivity – relationship between cause and effect

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play – people can act like or look like more than one gender

• their preoccupation with visual style (roy shuker)

BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237). Similarly, INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs

Surface and style over substance

• surfaces and style become the most important defining features 

Richard Hoggart

• neighborhood lives
• an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near

POSTMODERNISM CULTURE

• focused on consumption
• more displaces (not living in a community)

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities.

• 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.
• creates alienated individuals

 Jean Baudrillard

• implosion of society

Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson

• loss of meta narrative
• crisis in historicity

hyper reality is a simulation (it’s real but not real eg copies of something)

“I’ve always said you can’t understand the world without the media nor the media without the world” (Professor Natalie Fenton, quoted in Fake news vs Media Studies J. McDougall p.17 2019, Palgrave)

PAUL GILROY

• double consciousness derived from W.E.B Dubois
• eg black british / american (you’re more than one thing so have to try to act as both to fit in and not be judged)

Postmodernism– Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking a departure from modernism. The term has been more generally applied to describe a historical era said to follow after modernity and the tendencies of this era.

Key Words: Re-Imagining, Pastiche, Parody, Copy, Bricolage

Pastiche– Something that imitates previous work

Parody– Imitates pervious work to ridicule it with a sense or irony or as a joke

Intertextuality- Idea that there’s a text inside another text

Characteristic of post modern society- More about consumption

Implosion– Collapse of society

 Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson– Talk about the loss of a meta narrative

There’s a crisis in historicity

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history that is REFERENTIAL – in that it often refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself.

 As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘

BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237). Similarly, INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it 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.

‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘ (Strinati: 234)

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46).  Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them. Postmodern culture is more about consumption and we are more displaced in postmodern culture

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities.

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).

 Jean Baudrillard – Implosion

Another way to understand this approach is to reflect on the emergence of, often off-shore, leisure and theme parks which are ‘highly commercialised, with many simulated environments more ‘real’ than the original from which they are copied’ (Urry 2014:81). Illustrating this point with references to ‘newly constructed sites of consumption excess’ (79) Urry highlights Macao described as ‘a laboratory of consumption, as the Chinese learn to be individualised consumers of goods and services being generated on an extraordinary scale’ (81). Or Dubai, which up to 1960 was one of the poorest places on earth and yet by the 2000’s was the number one global site for ostentatious shopping’ and other forms of hyppereal consumption – a domed ski resort, and copies of the ‘real’ more perfect than the originals – the pyramids, Taj Mahal, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a snow mountain etc.

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. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.

1. Pastiche: A pastiche is a work that imitates other works in a positive way, such as a homage or inspiration. 
2. Parody: A work that imitates another work with the intent of irony or ridicule.
3. Bricolage: A collection of works that are brought together in the creation of one work.
4. Intertextuality: The connection between different texts and the influence of some texts to other texts. When other texts appear in texts by different people it is an example of intertextuality.
5. Meta-narrative: The loss of a meta-narrative is described as a loss of overarching ideas, attitudes and values. So a meta-narrative is the overarching ideas in society.
6. Hyper-reality: The idea of Baudrillard that our reality is non-existent but hyper-reality exists built on simulations.
7. Simulacrum: Simulations on which our hyper-reality is based – based on representations of familiar things.
8. Consumerist Society: A society that is based on consuming products more than production. In a consumerist society, people are often fragmented and focus on themselves and their own aspirations.
9. Fragmentary Identities: Refers to the idea that in postmodern culture we are disconnected from our local societies and the people within them.
10. Implosion: The idea from Jean Baudrillard in which Society would collapse if we continue to only focus on surface elements.
11. Cultural Appropriation: The use of other cultures by people of different cultures (often more dominant ones) outside their original cultural contexts. This is an example of how dominant cultures often use aspects of disadvantaged cultures without appreciation for those cultures.
12. Reflexivity: The deliberate self-conscious technique of drawing attention to the process of creating something.

Parody v 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

A good place to look for illustrations of postmodern culture, in terms of media studies, is the music video. As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘ (ibid) which is the focus of this next section.

BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237). Similarly, INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it 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. In other words . . .

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46). As John Urry comments, this was ‘life centred upon groups of known streets’ where there was ‘relatively little separation of production and consumption‘ (2014:76). Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them. 

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary 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. Again think about mobile telephony which is now able to construct multiple possibilities identities, at multiple moments in time and space. Think about the way we construct, our (multiple) digital identities, visable and varying across different digital platforms – work identity, social identity, family identity etc, which is most often not consistent with our analogue (human?) identity – look for example, at your profile pictures?

So in summary, 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.

The loss of a metanarrative

A good starting point would be to return to the concepts of PASTICHE and PARODY, as 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. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.^[28] It can be also characterised as an existence without meaning, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’ , an existentialistt crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).

Strinati points out that ‘the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality (the overarching metanarrative) appears to come from the culture (eg the media), rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media communication. In terms of media studies, this marks a juncture from previous conceptions of mass media communication, for example, as a ‘relay system’ – a process which just relays information and events in real time to a mass society, or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’ (Strinati:233). From a societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe 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 that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.

Key Thinkers

Although Postmodernism sometimes refers to architectural movements in the 1930’s the most significant emergent point is to be found in the 1980’s with clear philosophical articulations from eminent thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and others. From which develop a number of key terms which are important to understand as they not only shed light on what is clearly a complicated and confusing topic, but they also form the body of knowledge that students are most likely to be assessed on.

1. Pastiche- work of art,drama,literature,music or architecture that imitates another artist
2. Parody- work or performance that imitates another piece of work with irony or ridicule.
3. Bricolage – lots of things put together 
4. Intertextuality- deliberate inclusion of another text(surface signs,gestures and play)
5. Metanarrative- overarching ideas,attitudes,values and beliefs are now questioned,people now have there own perspectives and stories about history,science,religious beliefs.
6. Hyper reality- the inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. 
7. Simulacrum- is an image or a representation of something or someone.
8. Consumerist Society- towns/villages/cities have high desires of consumption. They are no longer producing just constantly consuming.
9. Fragmentary Identities- disconnecting and recreating an identity.(eg-profile pictures,Facebook accounts)
10. Implosion- links to simulacra- simulations of reality, not judt a representation of the real but the real itself.
11. cultural appropriation- the adoption of elements or an element of one culture or members of a culture.
12. Reflexivity- In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures

Re-imagining, pastiche, parody, copy, bricolage.

Intertexuality – surface signs, gestures and play. Signs only have meaning in reference to other signs.

Surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture.

Richard Hoggart – Uses of Literacy (1959) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our “neighborhood lives.”

Postmodern culture focuses on consumption hence the reason why society is more displaced.

Another key characteristic of postmodernism is the developed of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

1. Pastiche – imitate the style of an artist
2. Parody – imitate the style of an artist with a comic effect
3. Bricolage – diverse range of things
4. Intertextuality – relationship between texts
5. Metanarrative – a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling
6. Hyperreality – inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
7. Simulacrum – an image or representation of someone or something
8. Conumerist Society – people devote a great deal of time, energy, resources and thought to “consuming”
9. Implosion –
10. cultural appropriation
11. Reflexivity

DEFINITIONS

Copy: where you make the same (replicate) thing that’s already been created.

Pastiche: Something that looks like or imitates something else.

Bricolage:  involves the change of juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs which produces new codes of meaning.

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

Implosion: The fall of a system.

Cultural Appropriation: inappropriately adapting a culture into ones own/ different culture.

Simulacrum: A simulation of reality

Hyperreality: When a simulation is more realistic than reality.

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

Parody: Making fun of a piece of work made by someone else by recreating it.

Consumerist Society: A type of society where people devote a great deal of their life to “consuming”. 

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

Intertextuality: signs that only have reference to other signs.

PARODY VS PASTICHE

Pastiche is a piece of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that copy’s the work of a previous artist. Instead, a Parody is a work or performance that copy’s another work or performance with ridicule or irony to make fun of it.

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. 

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

1. Pastiche– According to Jameson, parody has, in the postmodern age, been replaced by pastiche: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language.
2. Parody-an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
3. Bricolage-(in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.
4. Intertextuality-the relationship between texts, especially literary ones.
5. Metanarrative-A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; French: métarécit) in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
6. Hyperreality-Hyperreality, in semiotics and postmodernism, is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies.
7. Simulacrum-A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god.
8. Conumerist Society-A consumerist society is one in which people devote a great deal of time, energy, resources and thought to “consuming”. The general view of life in a consumerist society is consumption is good, and more consumption is even better. The United States is an example of a hyper-consumerist society.
9. Fragmentary Identities-presence of more than one sense of identity within a single human body.
10. Implosion-an instance of something collapsing violently inwards.
11. Cultural appropriation-Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures.
12. Reflexivity-Reflexivity generally refers to the examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments and practices during the research process and how these may have influenced the research. If positionality refers to what we know and believe then reflexivity is about what we do with this knowledge.

Identity and representation looked at through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.

ORIENTALISM:

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism.

“the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism” – Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi).Orientalism (1978) alongside Culture and Imperialism (1993) are key texts written by the respected academic Edward Said. He asked if ‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3)

The mode is characterised by ‘the desire to contain the intangibilities of the East within a western lucidity, but this gesture of appropriation only partially conceals the obsessive fear.’ (Suleri, 1987:255)

Similarly, ‘the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness and so on). At the same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.’ (Barry, 2017:195)

Overall, POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238). Or as Paul Gilroy puts it, ‘a civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)

Edward Said presents the idea that the West and East are shown in duality which builds a systemic worldview that justifies Western power over the East – Culture enforced by those in power influence people’s ideas, often subtly of what non-western people are like. usually the orient is distanced from the west and portrayed as the “other”

Often discussed by contempoary philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves. This also describes how without representation of people’s identities in media there can be a problem of under representation.

To link this to postcolonialism would be to suggest that the West uses the East / the Orient / the ‘Other’, to identify and construct itself. How it sees itself as the ‘West’ as opposed to . . . in other words, it acts as The Other, a mirror by which a reflection of the self can be measured out and examined.

“all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject” – Louis Althusser (1971:190)

Edward Said wrote about the orient being framed from a western perspective which links to Lacan’s theory by proposing that the West has framed the east through their perspective without representation from the east themselves.

Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity. According to Althusser, ‘the category of the subject . . . is the category constitutive of all ideology’ (214:188). In other words, we are socially constructed and what socially constructs us is ‘despite its diversity and contradictions . . . the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’,’ (2014:245)

Althusser noted that individuals often believe that they are ‘outside ideology’ and suggested the notion of ‘interpellation‘ as a way to recognise the formation of ideology. In that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way as to recruit subjects among individuals. In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpellation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology.

In other words, what we have in this section of The Wretched of the Earth is a black man living in France, articulating the way he was constructed as ‘other’ specifically through the way he was hailed, called, perceived and understood i.e. interpellated by other ‘subjects’ of France, who clearly saw him through the lens of Empire – racial stereotyping, derogatory abuse – as acceptable social interaction.

As an early critical thinker of postcolonialism, Frantz Fanon took an active role, proposing the first step required for ‘colonialised’ people to reclaim their own past by finding a voice and an identity. The second, is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued. (Barry, 2017:195). In the chapter ‘On National Culture’ (pp;168-178). Fanon presents three phases of action ‘which traces the work of native writers’:

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

‘It is well known that Alhussser drew part of his inspiration from Gramsci’ (Althusser, 2016: xxiv) the way in which class relations and subject is ‘exercised through a whole set of institutions . . . the place where encounters between private individuals occur.’ (ibid)

However, Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others, usually in line with the dominant ideas, the dominant groups and their corresponding dominant interests. In terms of postcolonialism Said, notes how ‘consent is gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native people and territories’ (1993:59).

However, this form of cultural leadership is a process of (cultural) negotiation where consent is gained through persuasion, inculcation and acceptance. Where dominant ideas, attitudes and beliefs (= ideology) are slowly, subtly woven into our very being, so that they become ‘common sense’, a ‘normal’, ‘sensible’, obvious’ way of comprehending and acting in the world.

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency.

Double Consciousness is the idea that minorities have to embody two identities of their colonisers and the colonised. ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.