Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jaime Puente
ENG 3340
Dr. Murray
To some the word postmodern means nothing more than an idea with no beginning or
end. Since the 1970s the word has been understood as a description of a particular form of
cultural production that is a clear demarcation from the more antiquated modernist movement.
Stressing the plurality of possible experiences, postmodern aesthetics have become an academic
and cultural force bordering on the line of hegemony. David Harvey's The Condition of
Postmodernity (1990) examines the transition from modern to postmodern in Western culture by
looking at their various incarnations such as cities, artistic production, and historical
contextualization. Rather than being a dramatic change from modernism, Harvey asserts that
postmodernism is just a different form of modernism because it relies upon several layers of
hegemonic influence of capitalism, the author argues that even though history is discarded as
Harvey acknowledges this in the second chapter of his book, "Modernity and Modernism."
Drawing on Baudelaire, Harvey places the thirst for development at the center of modernism
because it is the process of making something new while at the same time discarding the past as
irrelevant. Modernity "can have no respect even for its own past, let alone that of any premodern
social order" and because of this there is no need to look upon objects or histories with any form
of nostalgia (11). The modern age is characterized by the continuous tearing down and
rebuilding of structures, ways of life, and political networks, so that the "universal, eternal, and
the immutable qualities of humanity [can] be revealed" (12). This statement hearkens back to
Baudelaire and reveals a paradox in this conception of modernism because if one of its major
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tenets is to step away from the confines of tradition, it still seeks to retain certain elements of the
past. Harvey uses this discussion to point out a key problem associated with the so-called
modernist project, and that is the danger of the modernist to develop him/ herself out of
existence.
In the efforts to "make it anew" the high modernists of the early twentieth century took
the formulations pioneered by Baudelaire to new heights. In the constant push for development
there was an attempt by the modernists to divorce themselves from the past, and by doing so
apply a unified theory to the process of cultural production. For most of the modernist period,
artists, theorists, and even scientists, sought to liberate the production of culture from "the chains
of subjective dependence," by asserting "the true nature of a unified, though complex, underlying
reality," (26, 30). Because modernism, for so many of its varied champions, meant a definite
change from the past, from tradition, the potential for the movement to spin wildly out of control
into an infinite number of possible meanings and incarnations was seen more as a threat.
According to Harvey, the problem that cultural anarchism created spurred a reaction in
modernists to seek a single, all encompassing answer to the question of being. The modernist
project, brought to life by individuals and governments, made its point to be completely new,
outside of historical context, and yet a fixed in place and time through "the imposition of rational
order," (31). The reliance on single theory to guide the progress of human endeavors is one of the
many criticisms Harvey levels on the modernists of the early and mid twentieth century. His
definition of modernism as "the belief 'linear progress, absolute truths, and rational planning of
social orders' under standardized conditions of knowledge and production "reflects a process of
culture that in effect, developed itself from existence because it was a rehashing of antiquated
mythology for the specific purpose of unifying a given theory (35). Harvey tells us that the goal
of these particular modernist incarnations reflected more of a return to core Enlightenment ideas
than a radical change in aesthetic. The way of being became the focus of intellectual, artistic, and
political theory, and this allowed the historical context of human lives to be disregarded as
unimportant. In the search for one meaning to define the entirety of cultural production,
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system. Postmodernism, as we will see, is what Harvey calls a response to the negative and
Harvey recognizes the problems inherent in the act of labeling something as abstract as
postmodernism with a particular moment in time, but he does make a distinction between the
modern and postmodern eras. He argues that the passage to a postmodern understanding of
culture began to take definite shape in the early 1970s as a study of the vernacular. Citing the
failure of so many modernist endeavors, Harvey argues that the latest aesthetic movement
diverges from its predecessor by asking "questions s to how radically different realities may
coexist, collide, and interpenetrate," (41). Instead of seeking one theory, one answer, to the
problems and questions of human life, there can now be multiple realities that are equally
important and worthy of study. For the postmodern student, the quest is not to understand how
one is being, but how one is becoming. The structural rigidity of the high modernists is taken
apart to show how interwoven politics, economy, and culture really are. Where the modernists
tried to divorce their productions from the historical and social contexts from which they arose,
the postmodernist takes it all into consideration as a constructive force because the new-new
theorists, such as Michel Foucault and Jean Francois Lyotard, use their work to "castigate the
imperialism of an enlightened modernity that presumed to speak for others . . . with a unified
voice," (47-48). The depression and regression of Western societies, as well as the destruction of
non-Western societies, that accompanied many of the larger modernist projects (public housing
projects, free market ideology, and dogmatic belief in the primacy of democracy) can be
understood a negative implications of the quest for a single explanation, a deus ex machina, that
would solve all problems. Seeking out complexity and appealing to paradox, the postmodern
Harvey maps out the intentionally complex theoretical positions of what he calls a
reaction to the effects of modernism's failures. Where modernism tried to place a single idea at
the helm of cultural production, the postmodern revels in the stratification of meaning because
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"whatever we write [or produce] conveys meanings we do not or could not possibly intend, and
our words [products] cannot say what we mean," (49). Trying to understand a person's being,
assumed an ability know it in its entirety, and because meaning can be infinitely complex and
layered, complete knowledge is unattainable because our experiences are fragmented and
fleeting. The transience of experience is a condition of postmodern awareness that Harvey says
led to an abandonment of "all sense of historical continuity and memory, white simultaneously
developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some
aspect of the present," (54). History is often based on a person's memory of an event, and
because memories are by nature a fallible links to particular moments in space and time, they
cannot be used as a so-called objective reference. For postmodernists, Harvey says, the
meta-narratives, yet it relies on sporadic elements of the past to define itself in the present. This
poses one of the great risks of postmodernity that Harvey describes, and it becomes central to his
The stratification of meaning that marked the drastic change from modernism comes full
circle as producers of culture arose out of every category of 'otherness' to create new forms of
beauty. The dislocation of a definite meaning from experience and cultural production left the
possibility for these 'others' to influence what became known as popular culture. In the United
States especially, the postmodern aesthetic, disassociated from history, is one of facades. Harvey
points to this when he criticizes the influence of television as an "attachment to surfaces rather
than roots, to collage rather than in-depth work, to a collapsed sense of time and space rather
than solidly achieved cultural artifact," (61). The ubiquity of the television in the late twentieth
century must be taken into context when discussing the production of culture because as with
modernism, the continuing development of new technologies allows access to even more diverse
realities. Television as a cultural producer has recreated, in however objectionable form, the past
to fits its own subjective will by accessing and reproducing moments in space and time.
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The presence of television and other media are, according to Harvey are used by the real
creators of culture to produce a hegemonic structure of society that permeates all levels of
experience. Here Harvey's critique of the strict postmodernist is laid out in detail. The
development of postmodern culture in the 1970s and throughout the remainder of the millennium
strove to create beauty on the surface. In the chapter "Postmodernism in the City," Harvey
discusses to affects of this so-called new aesthetic on the architecture of urban centers. He lays
out clearly the postmodern critiques of modern designs, but also is sure to acknowledge "the
deep limitations . . . as well as the superficial advantages of many post-modernist efforts," (75).
To solve the problem of civil unrest that inflamed so many American cities in 1960s, developers
south to harness the diversity and employ postmodern techniques to community building. Where
modernists built drab and depressing box shelters, postmodernist built reproductions of
historically relevant structures but with all the bells and whistles of new technologies. This type
of design process, while seeking to be inclusive, often succumbed to clichd sense of "contrived
depthlessness" that Harvey says dominated much of postmodern creation (88). This is a key
problem for Harvey because it is through the prominence of superficiality that the most harm can
Putting on a show is the best form of reality, and for postmodernists the show is the most
important aspect of culture. Rather than promote the access to a singular ability to define the
world, the postmodern mogul is comfortable with his or her position being in a constant state of
flux. Harvey returns to a discussion of modernism because it is useful to refer to Marx when
discussing the facades of postmodernism. Relating the appeals to only that which is on the
surface mirrors Marx's formulation of the fetishized commodity. The commodity having been
imbued with a supernatural power (the labor power of worker from which it was produced) is
analogous to the culture being produced by the postmodernist because it is attempting to stand on
its own without relation to its material context. Harvey confirms this saying that "advertising and
commercialization destroy all traces of production in their imagery, reinforcing the fetishism that
arises automatically in the course of market exchange," (102). Leveling one of the toughest
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criticisms of the postmodern project, Harvey sees the use of the overly important surface in
artistic production as dangerous because it can be used so easily a tool for manipulation. In fact
Harvey's overall theme in this work is a critique of postmodernism's inability to create new ways
For Harvey the postmodern attempt to throw away any type of meta-narrative has failed,
and in fact is doing more damage to the production of culture. Rejecting the assertion that there
is no meta-narrative, Harvey outlines the economic basis for what he deems an underlying
connection of modernism and post-modernism more that either schools would like to
acknowledge. Harvey goes so far as to say that the "rhetoric of postmodernism is dangerous for it
avoids confronting the realities of political economy and the circumstances of global power," and
in effect "comes dangerously close to complicity with the aestheticizing of politics upon which it
is based," (117). Together the images and shows that make postmodern culture so inclusive are
used as a mask, or veil, to hide the reality of processes and actions being taken. What Harvey
ultimately describes is the postmodern development of a social hegemony based on the repacked
and reproduced elements of culture. Along with the radical changes in aesthetic definitions of
meaning came new definitions of political identity, and the riots of the many different Civil
Rights movements in the 1960s proved the possibility for further instability of state authority,
Harvey concludes that, "whereever capitalism goes, its illusory apparatus, its fetishisms, and its
system of mirrors come not far behind," (344). Postmodernism is so closely linked to capitalism
that Harvey believes they are inseparable, because just as capitalism is a quest for having,
postmodernism is a quest for being. In this world of complex social structure that is dominated
by the hegemonic influence of late-capitalism, being and having are one in the same.
Modernism and postmodernism are abstract ideas that have been used to try to enunciate
the peculiar experiences of people living in the age of technology and capitalism. Both are
referent to particular eras of technological innovation and wealth gain. David Harvey's The
Condition of Postmodernity takes on the monumental task of mapping out the two broad
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concepts in order to pin down an understanding of their role in modern cultural experience.
Describing modernity as the continual destruction and construction of cultural artifacts with a
single driving idea, Harvey lays out the criticisms and basis for the seemingly radical change
called postmodernism. Doing so provides the foundation for a more in-depth review of the
capitalism. Ultimately Harvey argues that the postmodern project is just an extension of
modernism through a more pluralistic lens, and it can be understood through a unifying concept--
capitalism.