by hmwut » Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:26 am
i understand modernism as a western embrace of new order, built from enlightenment ideals, romantic expression and 19-20th century science. nietzsche, kierkegaard, marx, darwin, flaubert, seurat and many many others broke from the traditional passages of their fields of thought and expression. those with access to these new concepts and feelings found much of their society lacking in comparison, rejected the tradition of the Christian past and accepted/developed emergent ideas and values.
developing western science was/is a primary influence of modernism. the work of scientists like freud, einstein, tesla, mendel, pasteur gave western society a vocabulary and toolset for a strange but thrilling new reality. quauntum physics, germ theory, genetics, brain mapping, the modern state, mechanical transportation, industrial production, abstract art, photography, movies. the future was clear, and it was embraced.
postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. disillusionment with modernism's belief in the new, or at least what modernism historically proposed. inattention to human dignity, spiritual and moral vacuum, destruction of environment, lack of direction are all things that postmodernists observed in modernist society and sought to capture in their work. i understand postmodernism's major catalyst to be World War 1, further spread by 2.
the modern society had a modern war, and it was horrifying. the devastation of industrial warfare, urban poverty, pollution and mutation, fascism and eugenics, reliance on technological constructs, the atomic bomb, rampant nationalism and militarization etc are all disturbing creations of modernism. postmodernists dwells on the consequences of modernism with a language formed by people like heidegger, foucault, derrida. in doing so they seek to either replace or adjust the systems that modernism put into place.
modernism has, in it's rejection of tradition created things without known precedent. today we wake with a very real threat of apocalypse, environmental or nuclear. humanity in it's ambition characterized by modernism has gone beyond it's past reach, places where old world tradition (the validity of which we increasingly become aware of) has never stepped. the fear of the unknown that naturally follows is fuel for postmodern thought.
modernism and post-modernism are both alive, their respective ideologies are present in every aspect of society in a range of conflict. they are a binary of contemporary discourse, thesis and antithesis slowly synthesizing.
hope this helps.