Start of Postmodern Essay

You have just opened your new textbook. You are sure that you are on your way to ‘understanding postmodernism’. The cover was intriguing, or was it just stupid. Did it matter? Did it make sense? Does it matter if it makes sense? You ponder this as your eyes begin to follow the lines of lines that shape letters that shape words that shape sentences that shape paragraphs that shape chapters that shape meaning if there is such a thing. The fact is a single pen stroke has just as much meaning or non meaning as a single letter as a single word as an entire novel…You hate this textbook already, or do you love it? Want the questions to stop? Want solid meaning? Well too bad because this is postmodernism and though you may find meaning you can never hold it for even an instant. Multiple factors of multiple levels of reasoning.

Postmodernism is essentially a rebellion against the concepts of modernism which is concerned mainly with the search for the ‘fundamental truth’ that lies beneath human existence. Postmodernism occurs in literature, art, music, architecture, science and more or less any field that was once considered to have perceivable meaning in modernism. Postmodernism seeks to shake the foundations of modernism, denying essences, natures and any universals which place a grounded meaning on existence. In postmodernism this meaning can never be grasped and is far from grounded. According to postmodernism there are no grounds for interpretation as society today is so decentralised that meaning is always shifting and is different for every person leading to the author of a text being independent of its meaning.

Why? Well studying postmodernism is very different to studying any other movement or subject. To study postmodernism