Theorists

Jean Baudrillard

 

“The secret of theory is that truth doesn’t exist.”

 

He described media culture as consumed by what he called ‘an effect of frantic self-referentiality’ and stated that the implication of this is that as the media doesn’t have to make any necessary reference to reality, we now face a situation in which the image ‘bears no relation to any reality whatsoever’. In other words, there is no such thing as reality, known as simulacra.

 

He said that due to our apparent obsession with images, for instance parents filming their children and the fact that there are images everywhere we look, we can only experience the world through a form of filter of preconceptions and expectations created in advance by culture.

 

Jean-François Lyotard

 

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodernism as incredutity towards the metanarratives.”

 

He said that the older and larger scientific explanations may no longer apply due to changes in culture and society, so therefore newer theories need ti be developed that have more relevance to the present.

 

His main focus was knowledge and therefore looks at the scientific theories.

 

He said that postmodern science:

Ø  Is no longer coherent

Ø  Its contribution can no longer be valued for its contribution towards human progress

Ø  No longer follows the idea that the sum of all knowledge will give us a perfect set of information

Ø  Has becomes a mass of incompatible theories that has no goal other than to further research

 

He said there is no certainty of ideas, instead there are better or worse ways to interpret things. This is because of the limited amount of knowledge that humans can understand, so humans will never know this objective truth.

 

Fredric Jameson

 

I would like…to characterize the postmodernic experience of form with what will seem, I hope, a paradoxical slogan namely the proposition that difference relates.”

He categorized postmodernism into two parts: pastiche and parody.

 

Pastiche mixes different past styles together, but shows no understanding of history and the need to move forward, as it cannot think of anything better to do. This reflects a society that has abandoned any possibility of change. Jameson’s belief is that pastiche is taking over as postmodernisms most dominant trait.

 

He said that parody is more common to modernism and copies from old styles, but unlike pastiche takes a critical view of it. So therefore it asks questions about it, rather than simply duplicating it.