DBA123, Lyotard

"A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern.  Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant." (p 44)

Although we have been studying postmodernism for a couple weeks, I found Lyotard's definition to actually make it all make sense.  We use the word post to describe what we do after something; for example, we have to write a post class response every week.  Post in the postmodern definition is stating what happens after now, being the present, modern times.  To be postmodern it must be modern, but it is also still foreign, or beyond what we are ready for.

In one of the first classes we talked about when postmodernism actually began.  We discussed the atomic bomb being dropped.  We discussed the end of the 1960's and all the radical changes taking place.  We even discussed the tragedy of 9/11.  I'm not saying one of these marks the beginning of the postmodern era; but they all fit with Lyotard's definition.  Although some of them had disastrous outcomes, they all were the first of its time (meaning modern) and we still have yet to discover what their occurrences actually meant (the nascent state) for our society.  In the world today, there is the technology to blow up entire countries and the power to break barriers that were once in place by law.  We have seen it happen, but what does that mean for the future?  That question is not answered.

Lyotard states, "post modern would have to understood according to the paradox of the future anterior," (p 46).  Maybe in time we will understand what those events have yet to bring to the future, but hopefully not.