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What is postmodernity? 
 
Postmodernity is that which comes after modernity. For many postmodernists 
this era is characterized by a shift away from production and towards an 
economy, culture, identities and life-styles based on consumption. 
Postmodernity has brought the aims and spirit of modernity crashing down, 
especially the Enlightenment preoccupation with absolute truth and certainty. 
 
How is the world in postmodernity? 
 
As Anderson (1996) notes, ‘We are living in a new world, a world that does not 
know how to define itself by what it is, but only by what it has just-now 
ceased to be’. In this view the world has changed rapidly, so rapidly that 
confusion has taken over from certainty. The modernist world was fixed – it 
had a definite character. The postmodern world is based on the collapse of all 
that modernity held o be true and fixed. In postmodernity truth, certainty and 
reality are provisional and relativistic. There are no more absolutes – no more 
definite standards. This is the case not just for morality but also for the 
knowledge we have about the world around us. There are too many choices on 
offer, all claiming to be the ‘real’ version of the ‘truth’. Religion, politics, 
the sciences and so on all claim special access to the truth, but how can we 
tell which is correct? Knowledge has become a commodity and a form of 
power, rather than an absolute, a truth. Just as truth fragments into a 
plurality of truths,, so the traditional means of identity formation bade on 
class gender, ethnicity and so on has been replaced by a plurality of sources 
of identity. In this way, dominant cultural meaning has been replaced by an 
individual search for meaning, and life-style has become a matter of choice. 
Ultimately, uncertainty, confusion, ambiguity and plurality will be all that is 
left. 
 
How do postmodernists see modernity? 
 
 
 
Despite the oft-remarked looseness and imprecision of the term 
postmodernism, it does have the merit of directing our attention towards the 
nature of contemporary cultural change. 
Modernity is seen by postmodernists, as a mistaken project. Investment in it is 
shown to have been illusory. No absolutes are possible in an age when 
‘anything goes’. 
Postmodernity has occurred in four key areas of social life: 
- Our self-concepts have become more mouldable – we are able to be who we 
want to be and there are innumerable choices on offer. 
- Morality has dissolved – there are no fixed and absolute moral standards 
- As there are no rules or set ways to behave, in art and culture there is no way 
of telling if one tradition or style is ‘better’ than any other. The distinction 
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is no more. All there is left to do is to play 
with styles – to mix and match. 
- The process of globalization has had a dramatic effect on the world. The 
world appears a much smaller place due to global communications, world 
travel and tourism and the spread of ideas across the globe. 
This means that what we once thought was true is now exposed as simply one 
truth among many. The more contact we have with other peoples and once 
distant cultures the more we question the way we are. Space and time have 
changed – we can contact people on the other side of the world in an instant 
via the phone, the internet or video-conferencing. We can travel to any where 
we wish and can experience and appreciate other cultures, art forms and 
music. 
 
How is identity dealt with in the postmodern age? 
 
In the postmodern age identity is both a problem and a ‘project’. Our sense of 
who we are is not given to us, handed-down in a fixed and stable form – it is 
up to us to construct or create it. Postmodernists claim that it is through the 
consumption of popular culture, especially media products, that we are able 
to construct a sense of identity. However Kellner rejects this particular 
version of postmodernism as it is too different from and opposed o the 
 
 
modernity that came before it. Kellner objects to the simplistic division 
between: 
- modernist identity: fixed, passive, stable, certain 
- postmodernist identities: open, active/creative, fragmented, illusory 
 
Kellner argues that this differentiation between modernity and postmodernity 
ignores the fact that identity was/is also a problem in modernity. He argues 
that ever since preindustrial ‘traditional’ society identity has been expanding 
with the opening up of new possibilities, requiring choices to be made and 
therefore causing anxiety and uncertainty. Kellner suggests that it is a 
mistake to see these as exclusively new aspects of a new era. In this view 
postmodernity is an extension of modernity, not a complete challenge to it 
and change from it. Postmodernity starts where modernity left off, leading to 
even more uncertainty and fragmentation – but this was a condition of the 
modernity in the first place.