- "Skepticism toward the 'grand narratives' of modernism; rejection of epistemic (scientific) certainty or the stability of meaning; and sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power."
An artistic and literary movement that challenges traditional notions of meaning, truth, and authority.
Modernism: Understanding the differences between modernism and postmodernism can help contextualize postmodernism as a response to modernism.
Structuralism: Structuralism emphasizes the underlying structures and patterns in language, culture, and society, which postmodernism critiques.
Deconstruction: Deconstruction is a critical approach to reading and interpreting texts that seeks to show how meaning is unstable and context-dependent.
Simulacra: The concept of simulacra refers to the idea that representations of reality have become detached from their original referents, resulting in a world of only surface appearances and representations.
Intertextuality: Intertextuality is the idea that texts are always in dialogue with other texts and cultural contexts, and no text or meaning exists in isolation.
Fragmentation: Fragmentation refers to the breakdown of traditional narrative structures and coherent meaning in postmodern literature.
Subjectivity: Postmodernism critiques the notion of a unified, stable self and emphasizes the plurality and fluidity of subjectivity.
Postcolonialism: Postcolonialism is concerned with the cultural, political, and economic legacies of colonialism and imperialism, which are themes frequently explored in postmodern literature.
Globalization: Globalization refers to the integration of economic, political, and cultural practices across national and international borders, which has led to new forms of inequality and oppression.
Identity: How identity is constructed, represented, and experienced is a central concern in postmodern literature, which often challenges traditional categories of race, gender, sexuality, and class.
Paranoia: The postmodern condition is characterized by an overarching sense of paranoia, as individuals struggle to distinguish between reality and the false realities created by media and technology.
Metafiction: Metafiction is a literary technique that draws attention to the artificiality of the narrative form and the act of storytelling itself, often through self-reflexive techniques such as breaking the fourth wall.
Posthumanism: Posthumanism is concerned with the blurring of boundaries between human and nonhuman entities, which is reflected in postmodern literature through the use of non-human narrators and protagonists.
Irony: Irony is a key stylistic feature of postmodern literature that challenges authority and exposes the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary culture.
Foucault: The work of the philosopher Michel Foucault is influential in postmodern thinking, particularly his ideas about power, knowledge, and subjectivity.
Cultural Hybridity: A focus on the mixing of different cultural traditions and the creation of new cultural forms.
Subaltern Studies: An emphasis on the experiences of marginalized groups, such as women, workers, and lower castes, as a means of challenging dominant cultural narratives.
Postmodernism: A range of theoretical and aesthetic approaches that challenge the idea of a stable, universal truth or reality.
Diaspora Studies: A focus on the experiences of people who have migrated from their homeland and their complex relationships with their new environments.
Ecocriticism: An approach that explores the relationship between colonialism, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of natural resources.
Transnationalism: An emphasis on the ways that globalization and digital media have transformed the way we understand national and cultural identities.
Queer Theory: A theoretical framework that examines the intersections of sexuality, gender, and race in the context of postcolonial societies.
Globalization Studies: An exploration of the political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the postcolonial world and its relationship to the global North.
Feminist Theory: An emphasis on the ways that gender inequality intersects with other forms of oppression in postcolonial societies.
Orientalism: A critical examination of the ways that Western culture has historically represented and constructed the "Orient" as an exotic, primitive, and inferior Other.
- "Claims to objectivity are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses."
- "Self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism."
- "It rejects the 'universal validity' of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization."
- "Initially emerging from a mode of literary criticism, postmodernism developed in the mid-twentieth century as a rejection of modernism."
- "Postmodernism is associated with the disciplines deconstruction and post-structuralism."
- "Postmodernism has been observed across many disciplines."
- "Various authors have criticized postmodernism as promoting obscurantism, as abandoning Enlightenment, rationalism and scientific rigor, and as adding nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge."
- "Rejection of epistemic (scientific) certainty or the stability of meaning."
- "Sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power."
- "Claims to objectivity."
- "Moral relativism."
- "Stable identity."
- "In the mid-twentieth century."
- "The 'grand narratives' of modernism."
- "The stability of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses."
- "Irony and irreverence."
- "Categorization."
- "Promoting obscurantism."
- "Hierarchy."