Postmodernism - book PDF

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Postmodernism Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. -

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It is a notoriously ambiguous concept as it is difficult to define and is a concept that loosely appears in a variety of disciplines: - A blurring of distinctions between genres - A tendency towards reflexivity or self-consciousness about the production of the work of art - Rejection of boundaries between high and low forms of art - Emphasising parody, irony and playfulness - Emphasis on decentred, de-structured, dehumanised subjects. Modernism is a rage against existing order and an attack on form, whereas postmodernism is the realisation that there is no beyond, and no place outside of the existing forms. - A movement towards having less confidence in progress - Disappointment with political failure (questioning the status quo) - Scepticism about matters such as justice, whether it was really dispensed in accordance with what people assumed it was - The belief in the ability to transcend Historically, postmodernism is marked by the dissolution of the nation-state and other normative social entities (such as law), the decline in the belief in progress, and the blurring of traditional social roles and identities, and a decline in faith in formal political processes.

The law was traditionally seen as a perfect representation of a society’s normative order. -

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However, postmodernists reject this traditional view, arguing that legislators are just as biased and fallible as everyone else, which makes it impossible to speak of just one right way of applying the law. Postmodernists argue that the presence or absence of laws may have little effect on the number of incidents (e.g: people would murder each other at the same rate with or without harsh penalties)

Postmodernism is a response to Jürgen Habermas’ legitimation crisis: -

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It is one out of the four “Crises Tendencies in Advanced Capitalism” which Habermas introduced. Habermas’ legitimation crisis theory developed due to the failure of the Marxist Capitalism Theory. He argues that a modern bureaucratic state has become dysfunctional because it has inappropriately interfered with the functioning of other subsystems, the result of which are the inefficiencies in managing economic and social problems and the distortion of human relations, thus indicating the existence of a crisis. A state is perceived as being legitimate when its citizens treat it as properly holding and exercising political power.

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A crisis is a state of jeopardy that arises because of contradicting motivations of the subsystems within a self-enclosed system. - Within a social system, there exists three subsystems: economic, political, socio-cultural. - The political subsystem of the social system requires an input of mass loyalty in order to produce an output, which consists of legitimate administrative decisions that are executed by the state. A legitimation crisis is an input crisis that occurs when the legitimation system does not succeed in maintaining the requisite level of mass loyalty. The legitimation crisis refers to a decline in the confidence of administrative, functions, institutions, or leadership. - With a legitimation crisis, an institution or organisation does not have the administrative capabilities to maintain or establish structures effective in achieving their end goals. - A way of measuring a legitimation crisis is to consider public attitudes toward the organisation in question. It is an identity crisis in which an administration fails to establish normative structures to the extent that is required for the entire system to function properly. - Every crisis of legitimacy has occurred when a large or important portion of a society strongly disagrees with some or all aspects of the institutional norms, as established and advanced by a particular regime or government. As a result, the state suffers a loss of support by the public when the people judges its administration accountable for the failure. When a government loses support, it risks losing its legitimacy, as the public begins to question and doubt the grounds upon which the government’s claim to power is built. Thus, in order to maintain legitimacy, a society, constituted by both the government and the governed, must engage in an ongoing and competitive re-evaluation of its goals and norms to ensure they continue to satisfy the society’s needs.

Legitimation of a society would then lead to false consciousness: When a system is legitimate, it creates the belief that it is just; that it supposedly represents the people’s wishes and interests. In reality, the concepts are a mere fallacy as the belief in one’s own subordination (submission to the law) is false consciousness. -

The traditional belief that the state is a patriarchal being or a father figure that will protect the people The psychological conditioning or upbringing that tells the society that “that” is so The imposition of sanctions that reinforces obligation The language in the law that creates false beliefs, thus requiring existing laws to be demystified - People become accepting of the law, and do not strive to make changes - People’s lack of questioning against the law results in the system becoming a mere façade...