The End of Postmodernism: New Directions

Abstract

It is hard, perhaps impossible, to say when an era has reached, or will reach, its end, especially if that era happens to define one's own contemporary environment. Perhaps we have come to clamor for the end of postmodernism because we feel increasingly uncertain about its beginnings and thus our own stance within it. Or, unhappy with postmodernism's ambiguities, we feel the urge for a new beginning and new directions. Or, worst of all, we despair of ever getting out from under postmodernism and thus ironically proclaim its end in the hopes of seeing it arrive. The uncertain beginnings of postmodernism are often, and correctly, associated with the appearance of one particular text, although postmodernism applies to the other arts as well, first and foremost to architecture, but also to music, painting, photography, and dance.

Public self-reflection in the context of the European migrant crisis: Towards a new transdisciplinary model of discourse analysis in politics, media and the arts

“…In the context of the re-politicization of aesthetics, negotiated under terms such as 'the return of the real' (Foster, 1996), 'new realism' (Ferraris, 2014), or 'post-postmodernism' (Braun and Stiegler, 2012), many literary texts and films in recent years have dealt with the social and political complexities of migration in new aesthetic ways, and have questioned Eurocentric perspectives on cultural hegemony and citizenship. As I have shown elsewhere (Lippert, 2018), self-reflexive elements play important roles in a considerable number of these works: not only do they challenge suspicions of aestheticism and playfulness, but they also 'reconstruct' (Ferraris, 2014) self-reflexivity as a humanist ideal, replacing deconstructivist 'narcissism' (Ziegler, 1993). In light of the overarching terminology drafted above, crucial questions that need to be posed include: how do authors and filmmakers present, through the use of literary or filmic means, reflections on literary or filmic representations of the migrant crisis (wide modality), especially their own (narrow modality)?…”