Ancient And Postmodern Christianity

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"I AM POST-MODERN ≠ I AM DEAD"!!

              "I AM POST-MODERN ≠ I AM DEAD"!!

I.Sarkar

Postmodernism, particularly as an academic movement, can be understood as a reaction to Modernism in the Humanities. Whereas Modernism is often associated with identity, unity, authority, and certainty; Postmodernism is distinctly associated with difference, plurality, arteritis, and skepticism. Postmodernist school of philosophers believes that no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths exist. Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. Postmodernism claims to be the successor to the 17th century Enlightenment. For over four centuries, "Postmodern thinkers" have promoted and defended a new way of conceptualizing and rationalizing human life and progress. Postmodernists are typically atheistic or agnostic while some are inclined to follow eastern religious thoughts and practices. Many are naturalist including humanitarians, environmentalists, and philosophers. Postmodernism is not just a single thought, or a single idea. It encompasses a host of heterogeneous ideas in almost all the branches of 21st century life. For this vast magnitude and fathomless dimension any discussion on Postmodernism puts the reader into a great cyclonic wave where all his rational thoughts become helpless leaky boats.

       At the very beginning, the reader's confusion arises about the meaning of the term ‘Postmodernism'. The term is semantically not only anomalous but also chaotic, and confusing. The prefix ‘Post' means ‘After'; in this sense Postmodernism is a contemporary phenomenon which comes after the Present. But how can it be possible? Logically it sounds absurd and ambiguous. If any body says, "I am Postmodern", it would apparently sound like saying "I am dead". The only way to overcome the confusion is to concentrate on the suffix "ISM". Here the suffix ‘ISM' implies an organized system of Poetics and aesthetics.

   The main problem of understanding the concept of Postmodernism is whatsoever, its varied and vast scope and magnitude. It means different things to different person. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations. In particular, it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields, such as literary criticism , architecture, visual arts, and music and so. To a literary critic it is an aesthetic style, to some it is a Cultural situation or a critical practice while some others hold it as an economic situation. For example, to John Barth it is the literature of replenishment; to Charles Newman it is the literature of an inflationary economy. Again, Jean Francois Léonard views it as a general condition of knowledge in the contemporary informational regime; for Ibab Hassan it is a stage in the road of spiritual unification of human mind. Harry Levin, Leslie Fiedler, Irving Howe, Torrey Eagleton, Douw Fokkema, Frederic Jameson and others have also used the term in their own manner. The diversity reminds us of Lovejoys similar comment on Romanticism, that "There is not a single Romanticism but many ----". The statement holds justification regarding Postmodernism too.

              According to an American economist of present time Postmodernism is the "dominant cultural logic of late capitalism." And again, "Late capitalism" is defined by the economist Mandel as  "roughly equivalent to "globalization", "multinational capitalism", or "consumer capitalism"." Jameson's theory portrays the instances of postmodernism as it moves in aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and economics.

   But it would be easier to understand Postmodernism if we have a look into Modernism first. Modernity or Modernism means which is not overshadowed by the ancient dogmas. Sometimes, Modernism is mistakenly used as a synonym to Contemporary .Modernism or Modernity is not just ‘Present or contemporary' activities. It is something more.

Modernism or modernity is a time-bound phenomenon. The predominance of Time is its hall-mark. It is Historical. It originated in Europe. In Europe Modernity came hand in hand with the advancement of science and technology. But in India and in most other countries it emerged as the by-product of Colonization. Modernity is of two distinct faces—Capitalistic and Socialistic.

          Life tries to free itself whenever and wherever it finds rigid confinement. A certain desire to know the unknown and to see the unseen, to discover the dormant truths of life develops dynamism or mobility in one's activity. The apparent linear line of modernism frees the background act, tendency and location of an act, and releases man from the unified forces of all these. Multi-dimensional modern life gets freedom by forming peri-plus.In modernity we notice konglomoretas or free individual simplicity in words. In modernity Literature is purposeless or agenda less. Women empowerment, upliftment of the back words or the down trodden, are dominant tendencies of modernism. Over and above, Eco feministic ideals occupy a strong position in modernism.

Postmodernism as a concept, on the other hand, emerged out of local condition, local thoughts and ideas. It is concerned with geographical and localized aspects of a particular land. It is a thought of those countries and their populace who were never given any importance by modernity.

It is a common notion that any new ‘ISM' originates in Europe. But the concept of Postmodernism is in reality ‘a reaction' to the modernism of the European World. Postmodernism originated in the Middle-East and Oriental countries not in European soil. Practically postmodernism as a concept originated in the post-colonial Latin-America (Nicaragua) The immediate cause of this concept was the ups and downs of in the hybridized life after the age-old, colonial exploitation. Frederica de Ones published in 1934 a book of poems titled "Anathologea the Poesia & Spanola a Hispanomaricana" where he used the term Postmodernism for the first time as a literary term. Next, Dudley used the term in his book ‘Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Poetry' in 1942.Arnold Toynbee also used the term post-modern in his book "A study of History" in 1934.In the 50s and 60s Charles Opson used the term frequently. In the 60s, in order to show the sharp deviation from Modernity, Irving Howe and Harry Lavin used the term in a negative sense.

              Postmodern thoughts are electric. Here ideas are collected from postmodern and even modern world. Postmodernists do not reject any idea. Postmodernists follow the path shown in the UPANISHADS—"Approaching anything from Parts to the Whole." Postmodern world is a world of fragmentation. The seamless totality of the classical and the Christian world are lost to us. With the death of God (!),the World is fragmented, the society is fragmented, the family is fragmented and more over this process of fragmentation has become an ‘on-going' process. For this in postmodernism we notice breaking of forms, use of montage and collages, and mixing of genres in unexpected manners.

Postmodernism is a collectivity of many ISMs. Just as the Colonial Rulers took gold, silver and many other valuable things from the Colonies, similarly they took putties, stone and brick inscriptions, texts, signs (e.g. It is said that Hitler took the  Sacred and invincible sign of the Hindu symbol of Swastika from India and used it as his insignia by distorting it slightly), definitions, meanings and many other cultural ingredients to their country too. Then they changed these things partially, modified and sometimes transformed them according to their own interest which ultimately found expression in Postmodernism.

Again, as postmodern culture is essentially mass-culture, all prevailing canons are discredited. The traditional values are flouted; culture is decolonized. The classic example of this practice is Duchamp's presentation of Mona Lisa with a goatee. Here art has been carnival zed. The carnivalization is, in a way, reflector of the comic and absurdist ethos of postmodernism.

While modernism gave way to the energies of mass-culture and a decadence for aesthetics of Kitsch, postmodernism insists on the pleasure of the moment(monokronoshedonics) and looked for cheaper aspects of life. The pleasure principle of postmodernism has inevitably led to an endless mixing of genres and modes of aesthetic thinking and conceptual art; film literature, Avant-grade and mass-culture, the tragic and the comic, the sublime and the ludicrous, interior monologue and magic realism. All kinds of stuff are lumped together into a form, which reflects the instinct of via novae, trying to forge a new aesthetic that would correspond to the postmodern situation.

We feel astonished when we read the following lines of John Donne's ‘The Anniversary of the world' (1611)—which beautifully grasp the whole concept of Postmodernism:

"The new philosophy calls all in doubt,

‘Tis all in pieces, all coherences gone,

All just supply and all relation.

For every man alone thinks he hath got,

To be a phoenix and then can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he".

                              *****

References:-

References:-

1. Postmodern---What and Why?  By Samir Roy Choudhury.
2. The Genealogy of Post-modernism by dr.Mohit K.Roy.PP.13-14
3. Postcolonial Discourse by R.K.Dhawan

 

About the Author

Associate Professor in the Dept. of English,Sapatgram College,Sapatgram,Assam.

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