Post-modernism
From Geography
Since the ’60 postmodernism dominates in the literature, arts and architecture. In the late 1980’s the postmodernism became a trend in human geography. Postmodernism is a theoretical approach to human geography. This approach is born as an critique approach against the modernism. The postmodernism rejects the theory of the modernism. That means that the postmodernism doesn’t believe in the absolute truth and that every person has it’s own truth. Nobody is able to doubt about others truth because life-experiences and personal visions create a personal truth. This is for every person different. Therefor nobody can be wrong about the truth. In short postmodernists seemed to throw reason itself into doubt. Everything is a subjective truth. Science is a matter of faith just as much as anything else.
There are tree major practitioners of postmodernism: - Jean-François Lyotard - Michel Foucault - Zygmunt Bauman
As told before the postmodernism is a critique approach against modernism. Modernism exist since the 17th century and is also called as the enlightment. The modernistic peoples are interested in the working of the world en they think that they can understand the world as an absolute truth. Own experiences and reasons to believe in a own truth are rejected bij the modernism.
Postmodernism doesn’t follow modernism in a chronologic order, modernism and postmodernism exists next to each other, but there is no conflict between the two trends. You can say that postmodernism is the deconstruction of modernism. It looks at the intersubjectivity instead of the objectivity, which modernism is focused on.
The postmodernist is convinced about the “fact” that everybody is equal. The postmodernist people are concerned about the world around us. The way people use the world is not the right way, the economical system is not fair and the ratio between the poor and the rich people is wrong. Concludes can be said that in many ways the postmodernism is an opposite approach against the modernism.
There is also a specific approach which is focused on structures, namely the Post-structuralism approach. Post-structuralists say that all truths are constructions . Structures are not fixed, but dynamic and they are also not universal, but contextual. They think structures are the outcomes of our actions.
In the explanation about post-modernism above, there is told about what post-modernism is. But if we look at this as a real postmodernist, you have to doubt all of this, because there is never one truth.
Example
This example refers to abolition of the binary thinking in post-mordernism. The binarity between centre and periphery is not existing according to post-modernism. There is not a clear distintion between the two concepts, because there are also places that are neither of them, or opposite, both of them. Think about a place like Amsterdam, for the Netherlands this is the big centre, but on worldscale, this isn't a centre. Another example is 'black and white', according to post-modernists everthing isn't one thing or the other, but something in between. Like in black and white, this is something colourful.
This example is about the fact that there is no absolute truth, according to the post-modernists. Their was a young boy in his hometown Uden, who thought Uden was very large with 40.000 inhabitants. In the beginning of his high school time that feeling was more strengthened, due to the fact that only people from smaller villages in the area near Uden came to his school, which also considered Uden as a big town. But as he got older he saw more of the world and he saw way bigger cities. Eventually he went studying in Nijmegen and his point of view about Uden as a big town totally changed. Now he considers it as a small town in comparison with Nijmegen and other cities. The same counts for people who are from for example Amsterdam, they won’t consider Uden as a big town as he used to do. This example shows that not only different people have different perception about what is ‘the truth’. But also people can change their opinion during their lifetime about what is ‘the truth’. This stakes the meaning of Post-Modernists, who don’t believe in some kind of ‘absolute truth’.
References:
Aitken S, Valentine G,2010, Approaches to Human Geography, California, London, New Delhi, Singapore,Sage
Postmodernisme, wat is de waarheid?, http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/dutch/postmodernisme.htm, 11 october 2010
Verhoeven M,Glossarium, http://www.verhoevenmarc.be/PDF/Glossarium.pdf, 11 october 2010.
Published by Robbert Vossers (4080939)
Edited by Fenki Evers and Anton de Hoogh
Edited by Malou van Woerkum, 17-10-2012
Edited by: IrisVanDiest --IrisVanDiest 15:57, 21 October 2012 (CEST)
Edited by: --MaikVanDeVeen 16:05, 31 December 2012 (CET)
