After reading and discussing “Defining the Postmodern” by Jean-Francois Lyotard, I want you to reflect about the following thesis suggested by Lyotard: 1) Postmodernity implies a rupture or break with Modernity or the past. 2) The current Postmodern global order has divided mankind into two fundamentally differentiated groups of people: a) those living a Modern life determined by several complexities created by human beings, such as taking decisions regarding job prospects, consumption freedom, individual competition, etc. And b) those living a non-Modern life determined by several global inequalities that have been also created by human beings. 3) Due to the new global organization and its inherent distribution of global resources in an unequal and biased way, the possibilities for humans to challenge or criticize this new global order are progressively more limited; so to speak: as global resources are appropriated by more restrictive elites, we as a society have less social power and less intellectual freedom.
Considering all the above, craft a definition of Postmodernity that encompasses/includes as many as possible of the following concepts: rupture, tradition, history (past, present, future), society, freedom, inequality, competition, humanity.
Post your definitions as comments (“Leave a Reply”)
Dr. FLC's Pedagogical Blog 
Logan Simmons
There are multiple parts to the concept of postmodernism. From the view of most, the difference between modern time and postmodern time is similar to that of a “rupture” which is now continuously dynamic. The world around us is ever-changing and nothing stays “new” for very long. This rupture of postmodernism has caused significant changes in our values, traditions, and behaviors.
In today’s era, in order to “fit in” people have a fixed mindset that you must be entirely up to date, have the latest phone, computer, news and so forth. In earlier times, these were the least of people’s concerns, who were less focused on keeping up to date with the rest of the world and more focused on developing stronger interpersonal relationships. “Fitting in” during the previous “modern” era would include having good, true friends, and maintaining a good status amongst your peers. However, in today’s “postmodern” era, you are judged by your peers as to how technologically advanced you are.
Our values have changed, and thus so has our humanity. Today, we live in a world where inequality and competition exist globally. For instance, those who live in third world countries, are typically not seen as equal to those who live in first world countries such as England and the US, despite the fact that they are human, just like us. In today’s postmodern era, our world is a place of endless competition. The matter of getting into your desired college is now a competition as to who finishes at the top of their high school class. During the modern era, this may not have been the case, colleges not only focused on student’s high school grades before accepting them, but also took into account what kind of person the student was and how they may have helped or led within their community.
In all, postmodernism is the embodiment of fading modernistic cultures, behaviors, and values. Despite living in a world of continuous innovation with technology advancement occurring so rapidly, the advancement seems to only be hurting humanity as a whole, more or less dividing us instead of uniting us. Inhabitants of different countries judge each-other by their technological capabilities instead of their humanistic characteristics such as kindness, loyalty, and so forth.
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Postmodernity is the ability for society to be progressive with novel ideas by using traditional elements of the past. Essentially, postmodernity is an innovative style of recycling history. An example of the historical component of postmodernity is cell phones. Portable phones have been amongst humanity for quite some time, though society displays the latest updates with technology through releases of new cell phones. However, are cell phones genuinely new? This idea of a portable phone is not new; society is simply reflecting on the history of the phone to make it new and up to date. According to Lyotard, this review is to be considered the “post” in postmodernity. Moreover, analyzing time is essential for innovation to take place. If humanity gives up on this idea, he or she is fundamentally giving up on free thought. Postmodernity is the reason of thought, through which individuals can be open-minded and laugh at obsolete modernity. We as a society will have less intellectual freedom if citizens become narrow-minded, due to an absence of pushing boundaries of our thoughts. Postmodernity is nevertheless the articulation that the world is in a state of perpetual incompleteness and permanent peculiarity.
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Postmodernity is not a competition between the past and present; it is a time where society analyzes and reconstructs its traditions and histories with the goal of obtaining freedom from the things that keep it from progressing.
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Post modernity is criticized as the inability to make social, scientific, and architectural changes but being able to remodel its traditions. It is not able to learn from past history by making new, not innovated, ideas in western societies, whom have created a global inequality between them and most other countries whom are unable to keep up with global competition due to lack of money, infrastructure, and education.
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Postmodernism is combining the past and the present to make something new. Even though it isn’t new, but just a combination of the two.
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Postmodernism is a way of life that society has evolved into a way that people no longer create originally ideas. Instead, they take them from the past and form them into their own. In this way of life, humanity has limited freedom int heir thoughts. Traditionally, modernism created a competition to make great strides in the world and have progression to a greater quality of life. But now postmodernism leaves little room to grow.
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Postmodernism can be defined as progression. Progression towards a society where everyone is emancipated. Progression towards new scientific, architectural, literary, etc. discovers. While postmodernism tries to break away from modernism and make something new, it tends to look back at the traditional and mix it with modern to create a new idea or concept. Postmodernism is very skeptical of modern ideas of there being an ultimate truth that explains everything for everyone.
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Tatiana Taylor
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Postmodernity is the act of expanding or redesigning ideas that were modern during their time, but have since become outdated. Postmodernism takes those ideas that were modern and reshapes them.
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Postmodernity can be defined as a figurative noncompetitive art movement in which the current society lacks the creativity and freedom to create new ideas for themselves, so they subliminally take ideas from past traditions; trying to form a rupture.
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Postmodernity is a time period where ideas of the past were taken and recreated to fit with more modern times. It combines the past with the present to create something old in a new light.
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Postmodernity is taking the traditions and history of the past and redesigning them to appropriately fit the demands of societies in the present and future.
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Postmodernity is taking things from the past and altering them in a way that peeks the interest of society in the present.
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Postmodernism is a movement that uses past styles and changing them into current mainstream ideas.
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Postmodernity is the idea that the world is constantly changing and with the changing world we recreate things from the past to better the society we live in. However not all of the complexities that we develop are beneficial to our society at this time because we tend to overcomplicate our lives in some aspects.
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Postmodernity is the concept that a society become more inventive by using elements of the past to change the future. Elements such as humanity, societal influences, and traditions.
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Postmodernity is the concept that a society can become more progressive with new and inventive ideas by using elements of the past. These elements can include humanity, societal influences and traditions.
(Use this Blog Post)
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Postmodernism is a movement that takes things from the past and making them popular in a modern society.
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Postmodernism is taking something from the past and remaking it to fit with society now. They play it off as something new but it is from the past and they just remake it.
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Postmodernism is the revamping of past aspects of culture in society in order to create a new popular trend.
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Postmodernity is taking the traditions and history of the past and redesigning them to appropriately fit the demands of societies in the present and future.
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Postmodernity is a reflection and reanalysis of the modern. It is unoriginal in content but new in its means of translating original ideas of the past into the present.
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Postmodernity is the concept that what we as people have accomplished is in the past and we have to innovate new ideas to build off of what we have. Extending beyond what is considered normal in a time period and creating every opportunity can be considered postmodern. Postmodernism focuses on the future because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth.
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Post modernity is the idea that there are no new ideas left for people to create. While people can use those ideas for improvement or refinery, there is no original concept created. Therefore, humans are limited in concepts, but have an infinite amount of ways they can reshape the idea. Post modernity focuses on improving society.
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Postmodernism is a break in tradition and challenges the traditional, old fashioned ideas to make them new and more innovative.
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Post modernity is focused on mankind. The technology developments create hindrances in our lives because instead of being beneficial, they cause more complexities and disruptions. There is the desire to step back from the innovations that are useless and not improving our lives. Postmodernism is skeptical towards modern ideas. Postmodernism is taking a step back and analyzing a object as a whole. The painting of the pipe is an example of postmodernism.
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Postmodernism is the use of an individuals perspective to create art and beauty out of pre-existing art and ideas after they have already been used.
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Postmodernism is a way of taking ideas from past history and making them into something new. Postmodernism relates to the art and sciences. Postmodernity focuses on the idea that there are not any new ideas left, so you have to take from the past and recreate them to improve society.
This picture is postmodern because it combines an older building with a new design.
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Postmodernism is improving past traditions and changing things from the past for the better. However, in this we seem to get our values mixed up. For example, we get caught up in the fact that everything has to be bigger and better so we only focus on ourselves and the people immediately around us. When in reality there are people in the world who barley have a roof over their head. The world can not be seen as “booming” just because these new ideas take center stage. There are many places around the world that don’t have access to clean water. Postmodernism needs to increase in places like Ethiopia and Liberia where the changes are ideal and improve life for the people there.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwjly5XDr8jWAhWF6yYKHWp8BeMQjRwIBw&url=%2Furl%3Fsa%3Di%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dimages%26cd%3D%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0ahUKEwjly5XDr8jWAhWF6yYKHWp8BeMQjRwIBw%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.worldviewimages.com%252Fkeyword%252Fhomes%253Bpoor%26psig%3DAFQjCNGg3PStowAFn_XKn9gtkrWNTZA0IQ%26ust%3D1506704857607027&psig=AFQjCNGg3PStowAFn_XKn9gtkrWNTZA0IQ&ust=1506704857607027
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Postmodernism is taking aspects from the past such as archaeology, technology, and thoughts/ideas and not only using them, but improving them and making them better. These aspects were once modern, but have now become outdated and therefore we expand and revamp them. This picture is of one of my favorite tv shows: Fixer Upper. They restore old and outdated houses into new and updated houses, but still keep and reuse many of the old and unique aspects from the original house. This is why I believe that it is a good example of postmodernism.
https://www.google.com/urlsa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjb_azA9MjWAhUEySYKHSDsAzEQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hgtv.com%2Fshows%2Ffixer-upper&psig=AFQjCNEG-QK_x7T7vKsa0sNRQgznK0LxNA&ust=1506723474460912
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Postmodernism is taking aspects from the past such as archaeology, technology, and thoughts/ideas and not only using them, but improving them and making them better. These aspects were once modern, but have now become outdated and therefore we expand and revamp them. This picture is of one of my favorite tv shows: Fixer Upper. They restore old and outdated houses into new and updated houses, but still keep and reuse many of the old and unique aspects from the original house. This is why I believe that it is a good example of postmodernism.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjb_azA9MjWAhUEySYKHSDsAzEQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hgtv.com%2Fshows%2Ffixer-upper&psig=AFQjCNEG-QK_x7T7vKsa0sNRQgznK0LxNA&ust=1506723474460912
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Postmodernism is a way to express progressive or innovative thoughts or ideas in a way that bridges classic or historic aspects with current ones. The Hunger Games is a good example of this. Author Suzanne Collins uses influences from ancient Rome to create the fictional country of Panem. The arena-style fighting, extravagant chariots, and even many of the characters names are nods to the ancient civilization.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi84dGvoM7WAhUHTCYKHR6-BqQQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffcc.gctnetwork.com%2Fhunger-games%2F&psig=AOvVaw2tIitX6Z5wnvKDVL5m60YU&ust=1506907043389726
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postmodernism does not create new content but they combine things from the past and present to form new perspective. https://www.dezeen.com/2015/08/21/postmodern-architecture-piazza-d-italia-charles-moore-new-orleans/
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Postmodernism is a way of taking old (post) ideas and turning them into something new (modern). http://www.onpostmodernism.com/images/architecture/postmodern_architecture_explained.jpg
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Post modernism is forcing the viewer to experience/view something in a modern way. Post modernism is not the creation of a new thing, but rather the modification of older things.
this building has a very postmodern design, it takes a basic building and twists it. This would have been completely taboo 100 years ago, but this has been becoming much more common.
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Modernity focuses on breaking away from the past, transitioning into a new mode of thinking and living. However, postmodernism doesn’t forget or repress the past as modernity tends to do and instead focuses on both analyzing and reflecting on the past while remaining loyal to its “modern” roots.
This is a comparison of classical, modern, and postmodern architecture to get an idea of postmodernism.
http://www.onpostmodernism.com/articles/architecture/postmodern_architecture_explained
Real life example of postmodern architecture.
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Postmodernism is the 20th century idea that involves taking something out-dated and modernizing it. This is commonly seen in architecture, technology, and ideas. https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onpostmodernism.com%2Fimages%2Farchitecture%2Fpostmodern_architecture_explained.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.onpostmodernism.com%2F&docid=ww3XFrvOghcswM&tbnid=Fk4RG7EY9YVCyM%3A&vet=1&w=820&h=400&client=safari&bih=602&biw=1277&ved=0ahUKEwijh8nI5NDWAhWE2SYKHZrdCCwQMwiEAigWMBY&iact=c&ictx=1
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Postmodernism is way for people to display their beliefs and ideas that go against tradition.
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Post-modernity is the contrast of past history with present and futuristic designs or ideals. It is a set of cultural tendencies influencing art movements and changing the flow of tradition even rupturing it changing it from tradition into a new and postmodern beliefs.
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-245a0d8318ea343ad33e79c21a7e6149-c
This building displays the postmodernity by having the shape of a non modern building but within a postmodern look and modern materials.
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Postmodernism is in simple, a way to go against the flow. It is when you make something modern and up to date that previously was not.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSaDkeoROF2USjjSfA8Lsp-wbbCPyTZ1zuMJSm56dK67ARSg8lLmw
this building is postmodern because of its unusual shapes and designs compared to what we normally see in everyday life.
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