Postmodernism and the commodification of art :: essays research papers

Postmodern Methodology is Hypocrisy   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   â€Å"What is striking is precisely the degree of consensus in postmodernist discourse that there is no longer any possibility of consensus, the authoritative announcements of the disappearance of final authority and the promotion and recirculation of a total and comprehensive narrative of a cultural condition in which totality in no longer thinkable.† So there is a consensus that there is no consensus, an authority saying there is no final authority and a totalizing narrative that totality no longer exists. These three ideas could lead one to believe that postmodernism is hypocrisy. In a way, it has to be hypocritical. If a definition of postmodernism is the erosion of the six pillars of modernity but those six pillars still exist regardless of postmodernism that how does postmodernism exist? Postmodernism seems to have two completely separate trains of thought. The first train of thought is the idea of paralogy and disrupting the hegemony . The second train of thought is the idea of commodification. The two seem to have nothing to do with each other. On one hand, one could think that postmodernism is a good thing because it frees people’s thought processes. Postmodernism is the destruction of hegemony, opening up plurality, diversity, and heterogeneity. On the other hand, it commodifies culture and feeds into capitalism†¦though back over in the first hand it seems to be against capitalism because capitalism is hegemony. Why does postmodern thought try to disrupt the modern capitalist hegemony that it is also feeding into? Postmodernists can claim to argue against everything modern, but where does that actually get them? They use the claim that there are no patterns or archetypes as a paradigm for postmodernism, therefore defeating the purpose. Postmodernism seems to be a push for Lyotard’s idea of paralogy. We’ll define paralogy as â€Å"faulty or deliberately contradictory reasoning, designed to shift and transform the structures of reason itself.† It seems that postmodernists are argumentative to modernists in hopes of changing reality and power structures, but appear to create a new just as static reality and power structure in their places. This new reality becomes hegemony, becomes modern. So do postmodernists need to evolve to stay ahead of the ever-changing modernism that they help create? Is the purpose of postmodernism only to engage modernism in some sort of power struggle? This is, of course, only my own speculation. Culture is Commodified After an arduous analysis of the reading, class notes and discussions, the author of this paper has come up with the following summary: All the forces of media and cultural production are interrelated.