Postmodernism & the Digital Age

Postmodernism is

• A rejection of the ideals of modernism
• Canonized great literary works and fine art
• A rejection of the categories of  “high art” and “mass media”
• Andy Warhol & pop art
• Encouraged people to find art in everyday life
• Jean-François Lyotard The Post-Modern Condition (1979) which introduced postmodernism into academic study.
• A rejection of metanarratives, or anything that is considered universally true.
• Pluralism
• Value of objects not on their importance to individuals, but to the community as a whole.
• The distinction between popular culture (the culture of the masses) and high culture (the culture of the elite) is relatively lost—therefore we are less capable of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” culture.
• Globalization
• Misconception that globalization is congruent to Americanization, which is the phenomenon in which the attitudes and culture of America matriculates into other international cultures.
• The hybridity of cultures, not the dominance of the American culture over everything else
• The spread of technology is one of the main reasons globalization has been enabled. 

We emphasized these points through three presentations:

The first was a demonstration of plurality and postmodern principles through an activity involving metanarratives formed through the composition of songs and images.


The second was a presentation of the history of postmodernism.

Postmodernism

The third was a presentation on pluralism and globalization.