by Olha Romaniuk

Created on: May 21, 2009

Like many of the isms today, Post-Modernism is a broad-sweeping term that continues to spark debate and cause confusion in philosophers, art critics, and architects alike. Beyond the realm of academia, Post-Modernism becomes even more vague as many people throw it around to mean anything from avant-garde to repulsive to futuristic to incomprehensible. So what does Post-Modernism really mean? And of course, the more important question is is Post-Modernism still relevant in today's high-energy, high-voltage, low attention span society so preoccupied with defining everything in broad terms that it never takes the time to validate any of the definitions?

The first item to address is the origin of the term itself. This is where the confusion comes in, because, after all, how can one definite something that comes after modernity? The movement of postmodernism can bring clarification to the subject simply when one starts to examine its theories and agendas. Indeed, Post-Modernism, in general sense, prides itself on its deliberate departure from the preconceived and established standards. PoMo, as Post-Modernism is often referred to, is not avant-garde nor is it gaudy; it is simply more self-referential. It comes in a direct response to Modernism and its beliefs and ideas, and it speaks strongly against Modernist views by asserting itself as anti-modernist or, in a sense, following Modernism on the chronological timelime.

Voila, the term Post-Modernism is, thusly, coined, and it is, ironically, easier to define by listing what the movement is not, rather than what it is. As its philosophies vary as one begins to look at the movement's activities in architecture, art history, or politics, it becomes quite evident that the movement is, indeed, that of a reactionary manner. Anti-establishment of the 1960's is the essence of PoMo in the academia; rejection of purism and the aesthetics of Philip Johnson and his cult of perfection is a prevalent goal of PoMo in architecture. Finally, the term can go back in its usage as far as the early twentieth century to define a new way of painting that was setting itself up as being different from Impressionism.

Post-Modernism is, in a way, anarchist, if one wants to be brave and dramatic about defining the movement's ideas. This is especially true in the political realm, with Martin Heidegger's calling for destruction of modern thought. Even in its more socialist agenda, Post-Modernism comes face-to-face to defying the previously-set

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