(Post)Modernity I: Blog Post #4

1- According to introduction to Part IX, what is the fundamental difference between modernist and postmodernist theories? What are the main characteristics associated with postmodernism?
Recently, self-proclaimed "modernists" and "modernists" have been fruitlessly debating about whether or not the changes in the patterns of social relations, economic flows, and moral regulation in modern societies should be best considered part of the same "modern" era that the founding figures of sociology studied, or whether it is best to define this as a new "postmodern" era. According to the introduction, "The concepts of modernity and postmodernity are deeply linked." (411) Jean-Francois Lyotard claimed that "postmodernity is undoubtedly part of the modern," and Calhoun said that "Postmodernism has actually been beneficial in helping us reinterpret our understanding of the modern." (411) Postmodernism first arose as a rejection of modernism, while modernism rejects formal aesthetic theories in favor of the functional. (412) Another characteristic of postmodernism is thinking in terms of fragmentation, ephemerality, and discontinuity. On the other hand, modernists tend to think in terms of totality, genre, or system. "While modernism laments the fragmentary and the chaotic, postmodernism accepts, and even valorizes it." (412) A postmodernist will be critical of claims of truth and monological readings. It is crucial for one to question the very status of knowledge in modern discourse. While modernism privileges science, above all, as the source of object knowledge and truth, postmodernism claims that language is central to the production of knowledge, scientific knowledge included. Jacques Derrida suggested that texts must be treated as linguistic products, independent of authors with specific intentions. In the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, postmodernism may be characterized as "incredulity toward meta-narratives," (412) which refer to grand theories and are associated with those such as Marx and Freud. These grand theories are taken to have at their center a category that is assumed to be universal, thereby masking any internal differentiation. A postmodern approach favors focusing on the micro, rather than the macro. These narratives take into account that the nature of the social world is contingent, provisional, and unstable.