Maintaining all of the original content, format the following into proper paragraphs: [Music] in my last video I laid out some broad assessments of what post-modernism was in an attempt to lay the groundwork for talking about the new cultural period in which we find ourselves today a period after post-modernism I said it would be helpful to look at the views of three very influential thinkers on post-modernism before explaining how our current period came to be so here we go the first thinker is Jean Francois Lyotard who's highly influential 1979 work the postmodern condition suggested that post-modernism had arisen out of what he called an incredulity toward meta-narratives or more simply put a loss of belief in big stories such stories once served to orient society and provide the grounding for knowledge but have since lost their credibility with the population as a result all notions of an objective absolute truth or any claim to universality become inherently suspect post-modernism then is a culture that issues any and all such master narratives any grand truth or meaning that would claim to give an orienting purpose to the world because of this postmodern society winds up being characterized instead by a fragmentation into countless micro narratives a motley array of different localized realities all playing incommensurable language games truthless radically relativized technocratic elites just seek what knowledge is useful for gaining wealth and power asking only is it saleable David Harvey gives a slightly different reading of it all for him what postmoderns lost wasn't exactly a grand narrative but a commitment to any sense of eternal and immutable elements in modern life modernist since Baudelaire taking stock of the fact that their brave new world of industrialization and scientific progress marked a real break from traditional modes of existence noted that the hallmarks of this new thing modernity were quote the transient the fleeting the contingent while pre-modern lifestyles were based on enduring practices and beliefs rooted in the ancient past modern life was just the opposite with ever changing technologies ideologies and increasingly novel goods because of this growing sense of change and ephemerality modernist sought while staying true to this modern reality of flux and contingency nevertheless to give voice to whatever was still enduringly timeless and unchanging therein after the first world war the first truly modern war left the old world on its last legs there arose a particular new urgency for articulating such a stable truth high or heroic modernists desperately sought to create an orienting Mythology fit for the modern age the myth writes Harvey either had to redeem us from the formless universe of contingency or more programmatically to provide the impetus for a new project for human endeavor tragically as it turned out that new project that arose only wound up devolving into base nationalist domination and racist genocide by the time the Second World War which these myths had only inflamed ended the modern quest for some transcendent vision or mythic goal seemed horrific Lee discredited in the postmodernist world that took shape afterward a life defined by the transient the fleeting the contingent was simply accepted as the way things are or must be resigned to this says Harvey the post modernists quote does not try to transcendent counteractive or even to define the eternal and immutable elements that might lie within it post-modernism swims even Lalo's in the fragmentary and chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is the hope for some eternal and unchanging truth goal or myth is given up on all you can do is hurl yourself into flux discontinuity and transients finally what Frederick Jameson argued post-modernism to be is in part anyway actually the loss of the entire hermeneutic model or interpretive approach to experience that's simply to say that in the past people tended to look at things and seek some deeper meaning to them a work of art had a symbolic significance beyond the specific figures it depicted a person's actions might be seen as authentic or inauthentic to some true inner core or for absently as an outward manifestation of some deeper Leighton neurosis a sign only gestured towards something signified and appearance was often in tension with reality with the postmodern turn however this is no longer the case the whole notion of a deeper meaning or truth is abandoned quote depth is replaced by surface as a consequence any attempt to seek for something beyond or beneath our immediate mundane superficial experience of life is we are told futile all we have is the appearance the sign the show no more life is simply the glimmering play of shimmering surfaces a perspective which not coincidentally turns out feeds directly into the narrative of consumer capitalism in fact Jamison says what we call post-modernism is really just the cultural logic of late capitalism in which we are presented with saleable trend after saleable trend flashy new gadget after flashy new gadget in an endless stream of superficial moments without depth without history or goal life is simply a series of purchases no deeper meaning needed reading these three thinkers in light of one another some fascinating similarities emerge I think it's certainly noteworthy for instance that all three define post-modernism negatively as signaling the loss of something verb Leo Tarr this was the grand narrative for Harvey the eternal and unchanging for Jameson the deeper meaning this structural overlap of post-modernism as the resulting difference of some subtraction would seem to invite comparison even synthesis one wonders if these thinkers aren't a bit like the three blind men in the parable groping about at the tail the legs the trunk all the while missing the elephant that unites them all if so what is the elephant in the room here I'll return to this in a future video as it's crucial to the argument I'd like to make about our new emerging period especially as it relates to my own work for now let's move on equipped with the insights into post-modernism offered by leotard and Harvey and Jamison now that we have a sense of what post-modernism was we can have a better understanding of what has comment is still arising after it post-modernism dominated cultural and intellectual production during the 70s and 80s in the 1990s his energy began to dissipate the wave had crested some influential writers of the time were now critiquing core postmodern strategies from within the most notable of these in many people's minds was the author David Foster Wallace Wallace despite having been associated with the post modern paradigm himself increasingly came to voice concerns about the role of cynical irony postmodern culture co-opted by consumer capitalists and leap institutions Wallace argued irony had lost its power as an effective tool of critique an irony saturated cultures one sapped of genuine emancipatory energy its enervated feckless and thus ultimately complacent to even complicit in matters cynical irony used to critique Wallace therefore looked forward to a post cynical post-postmodern ethos that eschewed irony in favor of earnest engagement ironically dispensing with irony in a fully ionized culture could only but be subversive and the prospect of a new non institutionalized avant-garde one of of all things sincerity and credulity thus opened up is a novel and important possibility as well as concluded in a crucial 1990s a quote the next real literary rebels in this country might well emerge is some weird bunch of anti rebels born OGG lers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single entendre principals who treat of plain old on trendy human troubles and emotions in us life with reverence and conviction who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue these anti rebels would be outdated of course before they even started dead on the page too sincere clearly repressed backward quaint naive anachronistic maybe that'll be the point maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels real rebels as far as I can see risk disapproval the old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal shock disgust outrage censorship accusations of socialism anarchism nihilism today's risks are different the new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn the rolled eyes the cool smile the nudged ribs the parody of gifted ironists the oh how banal to risk accusations of sentimentality melodrama of over credulity of softness of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gays and ridicule above imprisonment without law Wallace's ideas would indeed proved prophetic as we shall see and he stands as a fascinating bridge figure between post-modernism in the period that's come after at the same time Wallace and others were posing their critiques many cultural critics were increasingly coming to the conclusion that whatever had animated the postmodern moment was now a largely spent force less and less ink was being spilt on the topic and more and more cultural products seemed less amenable to analysis using the old postmodern rubric in 2002 concluding the second edition of her influential book the politics of post-modernism theorist Linda Hutcheon drove the nail into the coffin quote let's just say it's over the postmodern moment has passed even if it's discursive strategies and its ideological critique continue to live on ask you those of modernism in our contemporary 21st century world literary historical categories like modernism and post-modernism are after all only heuristic labels that we create in our attempts to chart cultural changes and continuities post post-modernism needs a new label of its own and i conclude therefore with this challenge to readers to find it and name it for the 21st century it should be clear immediately why a post post modern period demands a new label postmodern we can admit was already a bit silly sounding itself even etymologically paradoxical but while post-postmodern might be technically correct the compound absurdity and pretense make it simply untenable besides that defining something entirely in opposition to something else fails to offer something positive about the new thing in question and it seems more appropriate that period associated with their own characteristics rather than simply as a response to another's in any event a number of new labels have been proposed by a new generation of cultural theorists that is subsequently arisen and who have taken up the challenge of period izing post post-modernism with its own label among them re-- modernism performance ISM and Netta modernism have all been proposed and I'd like to investigate each both for what they have to say on their own terms but also to see what points of commonality can be found between them to help us triangulate you could say an even larger sense of the period based on these diverse descriptions and analyses plotting these three interpretive paradigms which have been proposed as labels for the post postmodern moment I hope to reveal some trends and trajectories common to all which shed light on where we are now in 2019 you