Today I started an interview with a German Magazine who are doing a special on postmodernity. Here is one of my answers to their questions.
CK: What is postmodernity?
AJ: Quite simply, postmodernity is the period of time in which we live, which happens to come immediately after the time we call Modernity (from the Latin “modo” meaning “just now”)
If postmodernity is the time period, the historical era, then postmodernism is the attempt to name it, to describe it, to express it in art, architechure, music, physics, and of course, philosophy, which is where the church gets bogged down.
Postmodernity is a fact of life. We cannot change the fact that we live in this period. Postmodernism(s), however, will come and go. Some are helpful and some are not. Some are true and some were true.
In some senses of the word, postmodernism is stuck in a previous decade and does not adequately explain the current and emerging culture. For example, post-modern aesthetics (blurred, shaded, dark, juxtaposition, focus on boundaries) is a 1980’s phenomenon and is very different from the current aesthetics on continuity, composition, layering in a sharp and clear environment.
Postmodernism as a philosophy is often locked into the 1970’s ides of deconstructionism and nhilism, rather than the more constructive postmodernism of the 1980’s or the more intuitive and synchronic philosophies of recent times. Much of the post-modern conversation going on in the church is framed and measured in modern concepts of dualism, propostions, singularity, and the desire for absolutes. This doesn’t get us anywhere. Even the concept of a catastrophic paradigm shift that we are using to talk about postmodernity is a modern concept, taken from your German ancestors – Kuhn and Heidegger.
This is why I like the fact that you asked me about the emerging global culture and not postmodernism, because the two subjects can be very different.
I am hoping that more German speakers can help us in our journey. Many postmodern writers have condemned modernity for its Enlightenment excesses, without looking deeply at the positve aspects of early modernity (Renaissance, Baroch) or at the constant dance between romanticism and rationalism that occurred all the way through the Enlightenement period. And, as you know, the primary influences of Romanticism were German. I believe that a second look at the Romantic side of modernism, that emphasized the desire for connection rather than seperation, for mystery, for harmony with nature, for relationship between things, these elements of Romanticism were alive and well during modernity and provide a direct link to current postmodern thinking. Perhaps our present worldview should not entail such a sharp break from the past after all but rather a fuller evolution that has been developing for centuries. This view, focusing on continuity rather than discontinuity, may be the new postmodernism, but it is crying out for some German-speaking thinking practitioners who can help provide the vital links.
CK: What is postmodernity?
AJ: Quite simply, postmodernity is the period of time in which we live, which happens to come immediately after the time we call Modernity (from the Latin “modo” meaning “just now”)
If postmodernity is the time period, the historical era, then postmodernism is the attempt to name it, to describe it, to express it in art, architechure, music, physics, and of course, philosophy, which is where the church gets bogged down.
Postmodernity is a fact of life. We cannot change the fact that we live in this period. Postmodernism(s), however, will come and go. Some are helpful and some are not. Some are true and some were true.
In some senses of the word, postmodernism is stuck in a previous decade and does not adequately explain the current and emerging culture. For example, post-modern aesthetics (blurred, shaded, dark, juxtaposition, focus on boundaries) is a 1980’s phenomenon and is very different from the current aesthetics on continuity, composition, layering in a sharp and clear environment.
Postmodernism as a philosophy is often locked into the 1970’s ides of deconstructionism and nhilism, rather than the more constructive postmodernism of the 1980’s or the more intuitive and synchronic philosophies of recent times. Much of the post-modern conversation going on in the church is framed and measured in modern concepts of dualism, propostions, singularity, and the desire for absolutes. This doesn’t get us anywhere. Even the concept of a catastrophic paradigm shift that we are using to talk about postmodernity is a modern concept, taken from your German ancestors – Kuhn and Heidegger.
This is why I like the fact that you asked me about the emerging global culture and not postmodernism, because the two subjects can be very different.
I am hoping that more German speakers can help us in our journey. Many postmodern writers have condemned modernity for its Enlightenment excesses, without looking deeply at the positve aspects of early modernity (Renaissance, Baroch) or at the constant dance between romanticism and rationalism that occurred all the way through the Enlightenement period. And, as you know, the primary influences of Romanticism were German. I believe that a second look at the Romantic side of modernism, that emphasized the desire for connection rather than seperation, for mystery, for harmony with nature, for relationship between things, these elements of Romanticism were alive and well during modernity and provide a direct link to current postmodern thinking. Perhaps our present worldview should not entail such a sharp break from the past after all but rather a fuller evolution that has been developing for centuries. This view, focusing on continuity rather than discontinuity, may be the new postmodernism, but it is crying out for some German-speaking thinking practitioners who can help provide the vital links.
