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Brief Introduction to Post-Modernism in Literary Criticism and Theory


Postmodernism is associated with the disciplines of deconstruction and post-structuralism. It developed in the mid-20th century as a rejection of modernism. It is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse. Post Modernism characterizes the "grand narratives" of modernism. Postmodernism dismissed naive realism. Postmodernism rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity and hierarchy. It employs concepts such as hyperreality, simulacrum, trace, and difference. Jacques Derrida is one of the prominent figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. Michel Foucault was associated with Structuralism. A significant part of Foucault's oeuvre can be attributed to post-structuralism and postmodernity. Post Modernism theorists or critics have discussed their associated areas, which you can find in the later sections: They include:

  • Michel Foucault

  • Roland Barthes

  • Jacques Derrida

  • Jean-François Lyotard

  • Jean Baudrillard

  • Gilles Deleuze,

  • Félix Guattari

  • Maurice Blanchot

  • Richard Rorty

  • Fredric Jameson

  • Douglas Kellner

High Modernism:

It is a form of modernity characterized by steadfast confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Grand Narrative/Meta Narrative:

It is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge. It offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of an as-yet-unrealized master idea.

Structuralism:

It examines the universal underlying structures in a text, the linguistic units, and how the author conveys meaning through any structures.

Post-structuralism:

It is a catch-all term for various theoretical approaches, such as deconstruction.

It criticizes or goes beyond Structuralism's aspirations to create a rational science of culture by extrapolating the linguistics model to other discursive and aesthetic formations.

Deconstruction:

It is a strategy of "close" reading. It elicits how key terms and concepts may be paradoxical or self-undermining, rendering their meaning undecidable.



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