ginger griffin 1/15

What is postmodernism? When did postmodernism occur? Why did it occur? These are only a very small sample of questions that I had before entering into the classroom this morning. And now after class I have many more questions as to what it is and how it came about but with much more detail. I had figured that postmodernism was simply a time period given a certain day, maybe even time, after modernism. I learned today that postmodernism has happened many times throughout history, mainly when catastrophic events happened to the world.

I was so ignorant to the fact that such dramatic events around the world would change the way we see it. For example, the Holocaust and the Atomic bomb and since then has taught America to live a life of fear. And to take that a step farther, we now enjoy to be in this state of fear. It is almost like we want to be scared.

My generation has been taught sense they were young not to trust anything or anyone. An example we talked about in class was when the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, told the nation that he did not have "sexual relations with that woman." Our first instinct was to believe that what he said was a lie. And this was our President! My generation is vastly different from the ones before us and the ones following us. You can not really understand these generations without understanding what happened in the ones prior. Postmodernism is almost the same way, you can not understand it without understanding what happened in the years before.

I think the best way to understand postmodernism is the way Casey said it, "It's an aura, not an era." It is not so much a certain time period but rather it is something that we can feel.