What Is Post-Modern Thought?
Holly Blackmore
One great, almighty truth does not exist, says the postmodernist. The only thing that we can be fairly certain about is the way in which everything we do is dictated by cultural biases. These can be conscious or subconscious, and they are deeply connected with our experience. It is important to note that anybody who speculates about postmodernism - including myself - is not exempt from cultural influence. Please, pardon my prejudices.
“Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was about subjectivity. Where modernism sought a singular truth, postmodernism sought the multiplicity of truths.”
This means that there is no singular purpose for existence, nor one identity that encapsulates who we are for the rest of time. I can’t and won’t identify as ‘Queen Krule’ for the remainder of my life, even though it’s published in my Instagram bio. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Well, you’re neither. At least not for very long, anyhow. You are morphing, evolving with context and new experience, conferring privilege onto whatever binary opposite suits you at this time.
Even the very act of interpreting reality, as it takes place via our senses, is determined by cultural discourse. Such discussions not only influence what we do experience, but also define the limits of what we canexperience.
The implications of this line of thought reach far and wide. Regarding religion, postmodernists would say that such universal approaches to sin/truth/etc are delusional. In a political sense, common ideologies (think capitalism, Marxism) are reductive and unrealistic in that they imply an overarching ‘principle’ or ‘solution’ for the whole of society. In essence, postmodernism refutes the existence of ultimate beliefs, whether they be in science, philosophy or any other field.
So what is post-modern thought? The answer is that there is no ‘real’ or ‘true’ answer. As Vaclav Havel puts it, “we live in a postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain”.