The Condition of Postmodernity

Abstract

Postmodernism has been particularly important in acknowledging 'the multiple forms of otherness as they emerge from differences in subjectivity, gender and sexuality, race and class, temporal and spatial geographic locations and dislocations'. Postmodernism also ought to be looked at as mimetic of the social, economic, and political practices in society. The meta-narratives that the postmodernists decry were much more open, nuanced, and sophisticated than the critics admit. The rhetoric of postmodernism is dangerous for it avoids confronting the realities of political economy and the circumstances of global power. The sharp categorical distinction between modernism and postmodernism disappears, to be replaced by an examination of the flux of internal relations within capitalism as a whole. The reproduction of the social and symbolic order through the exploration of difference and 'otherness' is all too evident in the climate of postmodernism.