Prose in Postmodernism

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The next is the effacement of the boundary between high culture and low (or mass) culture. With disappearing the certain meaning of truth, the differences between high and low culture are destroyed. If there is not a specific meaning of truth, nobody decides whether low and high cultures are precious, or not.

The tenth is pastiche. From a postmodernist perspective, specific artistic styles (Baroque, Renaissance etc) tend to look rather arbitrary. Their coherence has generally been explained as a kind of “authentic” expression of their era- a creation of a specific Zeitgeist (in a Hegelian sense) or perhaps an expression of the soul of a notion (in the sense of the German nationalist Herder).

The next is the exposure of “the Canon”. The Canon refers to that set of works that every academic field has which are set apart as special, unique, “classic” and therefore necessary knowledge for anyone who wants to carry out work in academic field. For example: Shakespeare.

The next is the inevitability and productivity of tension, confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity. Postmodernism has come to see tension, confusion, contradiction and ambiguity as an inevitable product of multiple levels of systems of knowledge and narratives circulating at one time. And where little ambiguity or confusion exists the postmodernist is generally very suspicious, since it has to be suspected that there are powerful forces at working creating coherence that is making everything and everyone conform.

The last one is liberation. Most postmodernist believe they are working towards a kind of liberation, the notion of liberation is always problematic from a postmodernist perspective; furthermore “liberation” from the system has a tendency to generate meaning and systems of practise that in the long run becomes the rules that bind future generations.

To sum up, although postmodernist tend to, ambiguities and contradictions within the systems open up a certain space for individual action; the result is the possibility for spontaneity, unpredictability, and in the something which maybe could be identified as “freedom”, so long as they understand the limitations of this term.