What is Postmodernity / Postmodernism?

1. A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

2. THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

3. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNISM

WORKS CITED

1. A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

David Harvey asks how economic shifts can bring about cultural transformations like postmodernism. He believes in material basis of culture, and tries to explain Postmodernity as a historical-geographical condition; Marxism provides the meta-narrative behind postmodernism; it’s not so different that Marxism cannot cope with it

For Harvey, shift in experience of time and space lies at heart of Postmodernity. Effect of a crisis of Fordist economy. It is link between economy (flexible accumulation) and culture

Each mode of production will produce a certain way of how space and time are experienced. Defined through social practices, for ex. circular vs. progressive sense. Since capitalism is revolutionary process that aims at ever more profitability, Time-Space-concepts change and strive towards acceleration of processes and abolishment of spatial borders

The ordering of time and space plays major role in the production of social order. Every change of S-T-order reproduces the dominance of the ruling class.

But this is no continuous process: C tends to overaccumulation and must devise new ways of production, and there are ongoing class struggles (in Harvey, economy depends on

exploitation of working class). Insecurity: Nobody really knows what “right time and place for everything” is. During times of max. change and crises (overaccumulation), great

disruptions in T-S-orders major shifts in representation, cultural forms and philosophical

2. THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1848 marks beginning of M. Significant T-S-compression through technical developments like photography, new printing techniques