Research Innovator: International Multidisciplinary Peer-Reviewed Journal ISSN: Print: 2395-4744 http://research-chronicler.com/resinv/index.asp ISSN: Online: 2348-7674 Theory of Postmodernism Dr. Suresh Wakchaure Ex-Vice-Principal, Associate Professor & Head, Department of English Coordinator, Post-Graduate Department of English & Incharge, Ph.D. Research Centre of English, Mithibai College, Juhu, Vile-Parle (West), Mumbai, (M.S.) India Abstract Postmodernism is an umbrella term. It represents specific setoff contemporary ideas. To some it is perpetual present. Postmodernism stands for : collapse of cultural distinction, skepticism, the space between old and the new, plurality, hybridity, deconstruction of established metanarratives, space and scope for little narratives, resisting closure, a new aesthetic style, an inclusive theory, incredulity to metanarratives, fully developed modernity or hyper- modernity, challenge to traditional exploitative center or unity. Postmodernism is an inexplicable umbrella term which various theorists and critics have tried to define. The postmodernists celebrate difference, plurality, and are always conscious of the global change and exchange of ideas and information traffic which has created a process of hybridization at all levels with the help of globalization of cultural ethos. Postmodernism reveals fragmentation, ephemerality and discontinuity, preferring difference over uniformity. The postmodernists put an emphasis on local factors or plural explanations, like the micro-politics of power relations in different social contexts and in relation to specific discourses, language games or interpretative communities. They stand for local narratives, ethnic groups, religious minorities, women and weaker sections with unified voice. Key Words : Postmodernism, plurality, metanarrative, hybridity, deconstruction, little- narratives, difference, fragmentation, micro-politics Postmodernism is an umbrella term. It is, cultural mongrelization. It is the most to some extent, like a party manifesto “democratic” of literary codes which has which has at its base a set of beliefs which very much to do with the practicalities, not are not in fact held by all, and are unlikely only of history but of life, individual, to reflect the universal condition of men society, and his choice of political agenda and women in contemporary society. To .Stuart Sim defines postmodernism as an J.G. Ballard, postmodernism is a updated version of scepticism.3 conceptualization of the present that seeks Postmodernism, in its wider popular to historicize the effacement of the reception appears to be a rather vague, historical – thus, in some ways eternalizing nebulous word for everything that is more itself, freezing the movement of time. 1 modern than modern. Brian McHale Balsamo thinks that, the dominant describes postmodernism as: “The shift of interpretative theory of postmodernism dominant from problems of knowing to concerns the penchant to celebrate the problems of modes of being – from an perpetual present.2 epistemological dominant to an ontological one”.4 Postmodernism stands for collapse of Postmodernism is only the representative cultural distinction and the process of system of an ‘inflation of discourse’, in the Volume IV Issue VI: December 2017 (21) Author: Dr. Suresh Wakchaure Research Innovator: International Multidisciplinary Peer-Reviewed Journal ISSN: Print: 2395-4744 http://research-chronicler.com/resinv/index.asp ISSN: Online: 2348-7674 spheres of culture and communication. Fredric Jameson, postmodernism is not Postmodernity may be defined as those merely a new aesthetic style, but rather a plural conditions in which the social and new stage of ‘cultural development of the the cultural become undistinguished. logic of late capitalism. It is the cultural Arnold Toynbee defines postmodernism dominant of late capitalist society, as: The decline of Western civilization – eclipsing modernist styles in various art into irrationality and relativism since the forms and creating new forms of 1870s.5 consciousness and experience that Postmodernism is the space between the predominate over older modern forms. old and the new. It is a movement of Postmodernism is a regression behind the merging, a deliberate complication of the progressive advances of the idea of generic integrity. The postmodern Enlightenment. It has become such a spirit lies coiled within the great corpus of pervasive phenomenon in modern literary modernism. This is to see postmodernism history and the term is used to denote so partly as a kind of Dionysian virus within many trends that it may soon meet the fate modernism, tempting it to the extremes of of similar ‘inclusive’ terms such as madness and self- dissolution, and partly Romanticism and one might be tempted to as the secret inner principle of modernism. say like Lovejoy on Romanticism that it Brian McHale defines literary means ‘everything’ and therefore postmodernism as : “a riotous cacophony ‘nothing’.8 of conflicting discourses or ‘heterotopia’ Postmodernism is a phenomenon, literary of incompatible geographies”.6 and cultural, that points to the collapse of Postmodernism is a term synonymous with Western humanism and of the literature that current of contemporary theoretical and culture sustained by it. It is debate whose main focus is the fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any representation and analysis of a perceived tradition with that of the immediate past breakdown in the universalizing and which is both a continuation of modernism rationalist metanarratives of the and its transcendence. Its best works are Enlightenment. According to characteristically double coded and ironic, Radhakrishnan, the very term making a feature of the wide choice, “Postmodernism” is a necessary conflict and discontinuity of traditions, misnomer; a misnomer, since it attempts to because this heterogeneity most clearly “periodise” a break, and necessary, since captures pluralism. the language of the break has initially to mention and problematize its immediate Postmodernism is the privilege of a antecedent before it commences its own particular group within Western Society. projects.7 It is the ultimate justification, the master alibi, for the continued exploitation and Postmodernism resists closure. oppression of non-western cultures. Postmodernism also recognizes, however, Charles Jencks sees postmodernism in that human beings cannot live without terms of ‘paradoxical dualism’ or ‘double trying to make sense. Neither innately coding’.9 positive nor negative, postmodernism is an opening a space created for a particular Not all postmodern historical theorists are awareness, interrogation. According to hostile to explanation on principle, but that Volume IV Issue VI: December 2017 (22) Author: Dr. Suresh Wakchaure Research Innovator: International Multidisciplinary Peer-Reviewed Journal ISSN: Print: 2395-4744 http://research-chronicler.com/resinv/index.asp ISSN: Online: 2348-7674 is certainly the tendency of the postmodern the consensus of a taste which would make it milieu, and it is virtually a definition of possible to share collectively the nostalgia for postmodernism that it is hostile to the attainable; that which searches for new explanatory models – in other words, more presentations, not in order to enjoy them but or less the same thing as incredulity in order to impart a stronger sense of the towards metanarratives. unpresentable. Postmodernism is the explicit In its earliest manifestation an architectural rejection of metanarratives, i.e. the style, postmodernism has come to be presupposition that human history is regarded as a view of culture which is following any particular course of wholly skeptical towards any claims of development, whether in religious, liberal , certainty in science or society and particularly identified with the Enlightenment, conflates representation with reality. In or Marxist guises. Fredric Jameson points to historiography it is identified with the a defining sense of the postmodern as : “ The linguistic turn so that historian’s attention disappearance of a sense of history’ in the is shifted towards texts and discourse culture, a pervasive depthlessness, a ‘perpetual present’ in which the memory of rather than what these purport to reveal 13 about historical reality. tradition is gone.” Postmodernism is the very vast term used to According to Beatrice Skordili, describe the new aesthetics, cultural and postmodernism can be defined as the intellectual forms and practices, which eruption of differends in the sociopolitical horizon in the wake of the breakdown of emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. It stands for 10 confusion of meanings stemming from two grandnarratives. Postmodernity, to Zygmunt Bauman, is fully developed riddles . It resists and obscures the sense of modernity. Modernity for itself; modernity modernism and implies a complete emancipated from false consciousness.11 knowledge of the modern which has been surpassed by a new age. Postmodernism The postmodern moment is not something represents a flow of ultra-technological that is to be defined chronologically, rather images in a consumerist hyper-reality. It also it is a rupture in consciousness. Its implies dominance of multinational definition lies in change and chance, but it corporations on the world and the data they has everything to do with how people read control as a power game of big nation .In a the present, as well the past. general sense, post-modernism is to be Postmodernism is a