Postmodernity ( post-modernity or the postmodern condition ) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity . Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, and still others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity. The idea of the postmodern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state like regressive isolationism, as opposed to the progressive mind state of modernism .
94-416: Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being that is associated with a postmodern society as well as a historical epoch. In most contexts it should be distinguished from postmodernism , the adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in the arts, culture and society. In fact, today's historical perspectives on
188-670: A copulative or copular verb . In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb . In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns , as in Classical Chinese and Guarani , or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean , Beja , and Inuit languages . Most languages have one main copula (in English, the verb "to be"), although some (like Spanish , Portuguese and Thai ) have more than one, while others have none . While
282-464: A sentence to a subject complement , such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase was not being in the sentence "It was not being cooperative." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called
376-718: A "convergence" marked by the rise of " participatory culture " in the words of Henry Jenkins . One demarcation point of this era is the liberalization of China in the early 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Francis Fukuyama wrote " The End of History? " in 1989 in anticipation of the Fall of the Berlin Wall . He predicted that the question of political philosophy had been answered, that large scale wars over fundamental values would no longer arise since "all prior contradictions are resolved and all human needs satisfied." This
470-405: A "fundamental mutation" so that it has "now become a set of texts or simulacra ". Whereas modernist art sought to redeem and sacralize the world, to give life to world (we might say, following Graff, to give the world back the enchantment that science and the decline of religion had taken away from it), postmodernist art bestows upon the world a "deathly quality… whose glacéd X-ray elegance mortifies
564-481: A broader view, the main positions are generally considered classifiable as: extreme realism , nominalism (sometimes simply named "anti-realism" with regard to universals), moderate realism , and idealism . Extreme Realists posit the existence of independent, abstract universals to account for attribute agreement. Nominalists deny that universals exist, claiming that they are not necessary to explain attribute agreement. Conceptualists posit that universals exist only in
658-408: A circle and natural numbers as universals. Plato's views on universals did, however, vary across several different discussions. In some cases, Plato spoke as if the perfect circle functioned as the form or blueprint for all copies and for the word definition of circle . In other discussions, Plato describes particulars as "participating" in the associated universal. Contemporary realists agree with
752-422: A class or a subset relationship: She was a nurse. Cats are carnivorous mammals. Similarly they may express some property, relation or position, permanent or temporary: The trees are green. I am your boss. The hen is next to the cockerel. The children are confused. Some languages use different copulas, or different syntax, to denote a permanent, essential characteristic of something versus
846-552: A copula. Some co-occurrences are common. The English verb to be is also used as an auxiliary verb , especially for expressing passive voice (together with the past participle ) or expressing progressive aspect (together with the present participle ): The man was killed. (passive) It is raining. (progressive) Other languages' copulas have additional uses as auxiliaries. For example, French être can be used to express passive voice similarly to English be ; both French être and German sein are used to express
940-548: A cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of progress . Postmodernity then represents the culmination of this process where constant change has become the status quo and the notion of progress obsolete. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein 's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge, Lyotard further argued that the various metanarratives of progress such as positivist science, Marxism , and structuralism were defunct as methods of achieving progress. The literary critic Fredric Jameson and
1034-691: A form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with utopian and transcendental "modern" critiques by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens rejects this characterisation of "modern critique", pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals was central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche . Jameson views a number of phenomena as distinguishing postmodernity from modernity. He speaks of "a new kind of superficiality " or "depthlessness" in which models that once explained people and things in terms of an "inside" and an "outside" (such as hermeneutics ,
SECTION 10
#17330856163501128-433: A historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity. This usage is ascribed to the philosophers Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard . One "project" of modernity is said by Jürgen Habermas to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic life. (See also post-industrial , Information Age ) Lyotard understood modernity as
1222-430: A human ' , (te) ember vagy ' you are a human ' , mi emberek vagyunk ' we are humans ' , (ti) emberek vagytok ' you (all) are humans ' . The copula also reappears for stating locations: az emberek a házban vannak ' the people are in the house ' , and for stating time: hat óra van ' it is six o'clock ' . However, the copula may be omitted in colloquial language: hat óra (van) ' it
1316-429: A human ' ; Arabic: أنا إنسان , ʾana ʾinsān ' I (am a) human ' ; Hebrew: אני אדם , ʔani ʔadam ' I (am a) human ' ; Geʽez: አነ ብእሲ/ብእሲ አነ , ʔana bəʔəsi / bəʔəsi ʔana ' I (am a) man ' / ' (a) man I (am) ' ; Southern Quechua : payqa runam ' s/he (is) a human ' . The usage is known generically as the zero copula. In other tenses (sometimes in forms other than third person singular),
1410-412: A non-copular use as an existential verb, meaning "to exist". This use is illustrated in the following sentences: I want only to be , and that is enough ; I think therefore I am ; To be or not to be , that is the question. In these cases, the verb itself expresses a predicate (that of existence ), rather than linking to a predicative expression as it does when used as a copula. In ontology it
1504-581: A noun, but they may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs: -u- in Inuit languages . In some other languages, like Beja and Ket , the copula takes the form of suffixes that attach to a noun but are distinct from the person agreement markers used on predicative verbs . This phenomenon is known as nonverbal person agreement (or nonverbal subject agreement ), and the relevant markers are always established as deriving from cliticized independent pronouns. In some languages, copula omission occurs within
1598-485: A particular grammatical context. For example, speakers of Bengali , Russian , Indonesian , Turkish , Hungarian , Arabic , Hebrew , Geʽez and Quechuan languages consistently drop the copula in present tense: Bengali: আমি মানুষ , Aami manush, 'I (am a) human'; Russian: я человек , ya chelovek ' I (am a) human ' ; Indonesian: saya seorang manusia ' I (am) a human ' ; Turkish: o insan ' s/he (is a) human ' ; Hungarian: ő ember ' s/he (is)
1692-517: A positive development. Other philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as within The Modern Project , see the state of postmodernity as a negative consequence of holding postmodernist ideas. For example, Jürgen Habermas and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running Counter-Enlightenment ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that universality cannot be so lightly dispensed with. Postmodernity,
1786-510: A room, each of which is green. These two chairs share the quality of " chairness ", as well as "greenness" or the quality of being green; in other words, they share two "universals". There are three major kinds of qualities or characteristics: types or kinds (e.g. mammal), properties (e.g. short, strong), and relations (e.g. father of, next to). These are all different types of universals. Paradigmatically, universals are abstract (e.g. humanity), whereas particulars are concrete (e.g.
1880-483: A second, distinct phase that is nevertheless still "modernity": this has been termed the "second" or "risk" society by Ulrich Beck , "late" or "high" modernity by Giddens, "liquid" modernity by Bauman, and the "network" society by Manuel Castells . Third are those who argue that contemporary society has moved into a literally post-modern phase distinct from modernity. The most prominent proponents of this position are Lyotard and Baudrillard. Another set of issues concerns
1974-448: A temporary state. For examples, see the sections on the Romance languages , Slavic languages and Irish . In many languages the principal copula is a verb , like English (to) be , German sein , Mixtec kuu , Touareg emous , etc. It may inflect for grammatical categories like tense , aspect and mood , like other verbs in the language. Being a very commonly used verb, it
SECTION 20
#17330856163502068-475: A unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that the English there -sentences are subtypes of inverse copular constructions . Predicates formed using a copula may express identity: that the two noun phrases (subject and complement) have the same referent or express an identical concept: I want only to be myself. The Morning Star is the Evening Star. They may also express membership of
2162-450: A universal practice. Jameson argues that distance "has been abolished" in postmodernity, that we "are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial co-ordinates". This "new global space" constitutes postmodernity's "moment of truth". The various other features of the postmodern that he identifies "can all now be seen as themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of
2256-460: Is " digitality " – the increasing power of personal and digital means of communication including fax machines , modems , cable and high speed internet , which has altered the condition of postmodernity dramatically: digital production of information allows individuals to manipulate virtually every aspect of the media environment. This has brought producers into conflict with consumers over intellectual capital and intellectual property and led to
2350-410: Is a human ' ; but: (paykuna) runakunam kanku ' (they) are human ' . In Māori , the zero copula can be used in predicative expressions and with continuous verbs (many of which take a copulative verb in many Indo-European languages) — He nui te whare , literally ' a big the house ' , ' the house (is) big ' ; I te tēpu te pukapuka , literally ' at (past locative particle)
2444-437: Is a kind of 'endism' also taken up by Arthur Danto who in 1964 acclaimed that Andy Warhol 's Brillo boxes asked the right question of art and hence art had ended. The debate on postmodernity has two distinct elements that are often confused; (1) the nature of contemporary society and (2) the nature of the critique of contemporary society. The first of these elements is concerned with the nature of changes that took place during
2538-501: Is a noun. Ba , the past/conditional, cannot be deleted. If the present copula is omitted, the pronoun (e.g., é , í , iad ) preceding the noun is omitted as well. Universal (metaphysics) In metaphysics , a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in
2632-482: Is also used by a variety of other English speakers. An example is the sentence "I saw twelve men, each a soldier." In Ancient Greek, when an adjective precedes a noun with an article, the copula is understood: ὁ οἴκος ἐστὶ μακρός , "the house is large", can be written μακρός ὁ οἴκος , "large the house (is)." In Quechua ( Southern Quechua used for the examples), zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular ( kan ): Payqa runam ' (s)he
2726-519: Is an ancient problem in metaphysics on the existence of universals. The problem arises from attempts to account for the phenomenon of similarity or attribute agreement among things. For example, grass and Granny Smith apples are similar or agree in attribute, namely in having the attribute of greenness. The issue is how to account for this sort of agreement in attribute among things. There are many philosophical positions regarding universals. Taking " beauty " as an example, four positions are: Taking
2820-553: Is big ' ; Ko te pukapuka kei te tēpu ' It is the book (that is) on the table ' ; Ko au kei te kai ' It is me eating ' . However, when expressing identity or class membership, ko must be used: Ko tēnei tāku pukapuka ' This is my book ' ; Ko Ōtautahi he tāone i Te Waipounamu ' Christchurch is a city in the South Island (of New Zealand) ' ; Ko koe tōku hoa ' You are my friend ' . When expressing identity, ko can be placed on either object in
2914-586: Is corroding the circumstances that provide for its subsistence and will eventually result in a decline of individualism and the birth of a new neo-Tribal era. According to theories of postmodernity, economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society in which ideas are only simulacra , inter-referential representations and copies of each other with no real, original, stable or objective source of communication and meaning. Globalization , brought on by innovations in communication, manufacturing and transportation
Postmodernity - Misplaced Pages Continue
3008-450: Is fiercely contested. The terms "postmodernity" and "postmodernism" are often hard to distinguish, the former being often the result of the latter. The period has had diverse political ramifications: its "anti-ideological ideas" appear to have been associated with the feminist movement , racial equality movements , LGBT movements , most forms of late 20th century anarchism and even the peace movement as well as various hybrids of these in
3102-479: Is likely that the copula has irregular inflected forms; in English, the verb be has a number of highly irregular ( suppletive ) forms and has more different inflected forms than any other English verb ( am , is , are , was , were , etc.; see English verbs for details). Other copulas show more resemblances to pronouns . That is the case for Classical Chinese and Guarani , for instance. In highly synthetic languages , copulas are often suffixes , attached to
3196-436: Is often cited as one force which has driven the decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication or intellectual production. The postmodernist view is that intersubjective , not objective, knowledge will be the dominant form of discourse under such conditions and that ubiquity of dissemination fundamentally alters
3290-399: Is often considered to be part of the predicate , the remainder being called a predicative expression . A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below: The book is on the table. In that sentence, the noun phrase the book is the subject, the verb is serves as the copula, and the prepositional phrase on the table is the predicative expression. In some theories of grammar,
3384-447: Is omitted when introducing oneself. Bora ben ' I am Bora ' is grammatically correct, but Bora ben im (same sentence with the copula) is not for an introduction (but is grammatically correct in other cases). Further restrictions may apply before omission is permitted. For example, in the Irish language , is , the present tense of the copula, may be omitted when the predicate
3478-426: Is seen as futile. The third feature of the postmodern age that Jameson identifies is the "waning of affect" – not that all emotion has disappeared from the postmodern age but that it lacks a particular kind of emotion such as that found in " Rimbaud 's magical flowers 'that look back at you'". He notes that " pastiche eclipses parody" as "the increasing unavailability of the personal style" leads to pastiche becoming
3572-467: Is six o'clock ' . Hungarian uses copula lenni for expressing location: Itt van Róbert ' Bob is here ' , but it is omitted in the third person present tense for attribution or identity statements: Róbert öreg ' Bob is old ' ; ők éhesek ' they are hungry ' ; Kati nyelvtudós ' Cathy is a linguist ' (but Róbert öreg volt ' Bob was old ' , éhesek voltak ' they were hungry ' , Kati nyelvtudós volt ' Cathy
3666-578: Is sometimes suggested that the "is" of existence is reducible to the "is" of property attribution or class membership; to be, Aristotle held, is to be something . However, Abelard in his Dialectica made a reductio ad absurdum argument against the idea that the copula can express existence. Similar examples can be found in many other languages; for example, the French and Latin equivalents of I think therefore I am are Je pense, donc je suis and Cogito ergo sum , where suis and sum are
3760-440: Is the beginning of analysis, not the end, because the first task of enquiry is the questioning of accepted "universal" and "objective" norms. The Benhabib-Butler debate demonstrates that there is no simple definition of a postmodern theorist as the very definition of postmodernity itself is contested. Michel Foucault rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews yet is seen by many, such as Benhabib , as advocating
3854-508: Is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting in a society conditioned to mass production and mass politics. The work of Alasdair MacIntyre informs the versions of postmodernism elaborated by such authors as Murphy (2003) and Bielskis (2005), for whom MacIntyre's postmodern revision of Aristotelianism poses a challenge to the kind of consumerist ideology that now promotes capital accumulation . The sociological view of postmodernity ascribes it to more rapid transportation, wider communication and
Postmodernity - Misplaced Pages Continue
3948-547: Is the state or condition of being postmodern – after or in reaction to that which is modern, as in postmodern art ( see postmodernism ). Modernity is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the Progressive Era , the Industrial Revolution , or the Enlightenment . In philosophy and critical theory postmodernity refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity,
4042-478: Is to denote an obligatory action or expected occurrence: "I am to serve you". "The manager is to resign". This can be put also into past tense: "We were to leave at 9". For forms like "if I was/were to come", see English conditional sentences . (By certain criteria, the English copula be may always be considered an auxiliary verb; see Diagnostics for identifying auxiliary verbs in English .) The English to be and its equivalents in certain other languages also have
4136-537: The United States but trade volumes increased within the developed core. In 1967–1969 a crucial cultural explosion took place within the developed world as the baby boom generation , which had grown up with postmodernity as its fundamental experience of society, demanded entrance into the political, cultural and educational power structure. A series of demonstrations and acts of rebellion – ranging from nonviolent and cultural, through violent acts of terrorism – represented
4230-461: The death of history and of notions of teleology and progress, and the death of metaphysics defined as the search for objective truth. Benhabib argues forcefully against these critical positions, holding that they undermine the bases upon which feminist politics can be founded, removing the possibility of agency, the sense of self-hood and the appropriation of women's history in the name of an emancipated future. The denial of normative ideals removes
4324-456: The dialectic , Freudian repression , the existentialist distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, and the semiotic distinction of signifier and signified) have been rejected. Second is a rejection of the modernist " Utopian gesture", evident in Van Gogh , of the transformation through art of misery into beauty whereas in the postmodernism movement the object world has undergone
4418-420: The mind , or when conceptualized, denying the independent existence of universals, but accepting they have a fundamentum in re . Complications which arise include the implications of language use and the complexity of relating language to ontology . A universal may have instances, known as its particulars . For example, the type dog (or doghood ) is a universal, as are the property red (or redness ) and
4512-410: The perfect forms of certain verbs (formerly English be was also): Je suis arrivé(e) French for ' I have arrived ' , literally ' I am arrived ' . The auxiliary functions of these verbs derived from their copular function, and could be interpreted as special cases of the copular function (with the verbal forms it precedes being considered adjectival). Another auxiliary usage in English
4606-538: The referents of general terms, such as the abstract , nonphysical, non-mental entities to which words such as "sameness", "circularity", and "beauty" refer. Particulars are the referents of proper names, such as "Phaedo," or of definite descriptions that identify single objects, such as the phrase, "that person over there". Other metaphysical theories may use the terminology of universals to describe physical entities. Plato's examples of what we might today call universals included mathematical and geometrical ideas such as
4700-459: The 1920s' new movements in the arts. Both of these terms are used by philosophers, social scientists and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary culture, economics and society that are the result of features of late 20th century and early 21st century life, including the fragmentation of authority and the commoditization of knowledge ( see " Modernity "). The relationship between postmodernity and critical theory, sociology and philosophy
4794-471: The 1960s and 1970s included such a shift, and that this shift should be denoted as from modernity to postmodernity. [See French (2016), French & Ehrman (2016), or Sørensen (2007)]. Criticisms of the postmodern condition can broadly be put into four categories: criticisms of postmodernity from the perspective of those who reject modernism and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism who believe that postmodernity lacks crucial characteristics of
SECTION 50
#17330856163504888-579: The Second World War. (See also consumerism , critical theory .) Other academics, such as the archaeologist Artur Ribeiro, also identify postmodernity with late capitalism. Though in the case of Ribeiro, he places the start of modernity at the beginning of the Bretton Woods system. Those who generally view modernity as obsolete or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution leading to disasters like Auschwitz and Hiroshima , see postmodernity as
4982-537: The ability to abandon standardization of mass production, leading to a system which values a wider range of capital than previously and allows value to be stored in a greater variety of forms. Harvey argues that postmodernity is an escape from " Fordism ", a term coined by Antonio Gramsci to describe the mode of industrial regulation and accumulation which prevailed during the Keynesian era of economic policy in OECD countries from
5076-574: The assumption that culture can be positioned outside "the massive Being of capital " upon which left-wing theories of cultural politics are dependent, has become outmoded. The "prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating and colonizing those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and Archimedean footholds for critical effectivity". Postmodern sociology can be said to focus on conditions of life which became increasingly prevalent in
5170-409: The backlash against these movements. The postmodern political sphere is marked by multiple arenas and possibilities of citizenship and political action concerning various forms of struggle against oppression or alienation (in collectives defined by sex or ethnicity) while the modernist political arena remains restricted to class struggle. Theorists such as Michel Maffesoli believe that postmodernity
5264-411: The cause of the riot is (not are ) these pictures of the wall . Compare Italian la causa della rivolta sono queste foto del muro ; notice the use of the plural sono to agree with plural queste foto ' these photos ' rather than with singular la causa ' the cause ' . In instances where an English syntactical subject comprises a prepositional object that is pluralized, however,
5358-501: The clause without changing the meaning ( ko tēnei tāku pukapuka is the same as ko tāku pukapuka tēnei ) but not on both ( ko tēnei ko tāku pukapuka would be equivalent to saying "it is this, it is my book" in English). In Hungarian, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular and plural: Ő ember / Ők emberek — ' s/he is a human ' / ' they are humans ' ; but: (én) ember vagyok ' I am
5452-494: The consequence of holding postmodern ideas, is generally a negative term in this context. Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the West since the 1950s, whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, the "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since
5546-437: The copula in bold and the predicative expression in italics: Mary and John are my friends . The sky was blue . I am taller than most people . The birds and the beasts were there . The three components (subject, copula and predicative expression) do not necessarily appear in that order: their positioning depends on the rules for word order applicable to the language in question. In English (an SVO language),
5640-412: The copula usually reappears. Some languages drop the copula in poetic or aphoristic contexts. Examples in English include Such poetic copula dropping is more pronounced in some languages other than English, like the Romance languages . In informal speech of English, the copula may also be dropped in general sentences, as in "She a nurse." It is a feature of African-American Vernacular English , but
5734-466: The creation of a new economy whose supporters argue that the dramatic fall in information costs will alter society fundamentally. Digitality, or what Esther Dyson referred to as "being digital", emerged as a separate condition from postmodernity. The ability to manipulate items of popular culture, the World Wide Web, the use of search engines to index knowledge, and telecommunications were producing
SECTION 60
#17330856163505828-502: The current anti-globalization movement . Though none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition they all reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas. Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely postmodernity, while others, such as Zygmunt Bauman and Anthony Giddens , would extend modernity to cover
5922-515: The developments denoted by postmodernity. Others still contend that modernity ended with the Victorian Age at the turn of the 20th century. Postmodernity has gone through two relatively distinct phases: the first beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s and ending with the Cold War (when analog media with limited bandwidth encouraged a few, authoritative media channels), and the second beginning at
6016-469: The developments of postmodern art (postmodernism) and postmodern society (postmodernity) can be best described as two umbrella terms for processes engaged in an ongoing dialectical relationship like post-postmodernism , the result of which is the evolving culture of the contemporary world . Some commentators deny that modernity ended, and consider the post-WWII era to be a continuation of modernity, which they refer to as late modernity . Postmodernity
6110-410: The difficulty of maintaining, in the case of such sentences, the usual division into a subject noun phrase and a predicate verb phrase . Another issue is verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person): in English, the copula typically agrees with the syntactical subject even if it is not logically (i.e. semantically ) the subject, as in
6204-402: The early 1930s to the 1970s. Fordism for Harvey is associated with Keynesianism in that the first concerns methods of production and capital-labor relations while the latter concerns economic policy and regulation. Post-Fordism is therefore one of the basic aspects of postmodernity from Harvey's point of view. Artifacts of postmodernity include the dominance of television and popular culture,
6298-472: The end of the Cold War (marked by the spread of cable television and " new media " based on digital means of information dissemination and broadcast). The first phase of postmodernity overlaps the end of modernity and is part of the modern period (see lumpers/splitters , periodization ) . Television became the primary news source, manufacturing decreased in importance in the economies of Western Europe and
6392-465: The equivalents of English "am", normally used as copulas. However, other languages prefer a different verb for existential use, as in the Spanish version Pienso, luego existo (where the verb existir ' to exist ' is used rather than the copula ser or estar ' to be ' ). Another type of existential usage is in clauses of the there is ... or there are... type. Languages differ in
6486-463: The geographer David Harvey have identified postmodernity with " late capitalism " or "flexible accumulation", a stage of capitalism following finance capitalism , characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression". They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which, they believe, defined the economic order following
6580-438: The late 20th century in the most industrialized nations, including the ubiquity of mass media and mass production, the rise of a global economy and a shift from manufacturing to service economies . Jameson and Harvey described it as consumerism , where manufacturing, distribution and dissemination have become exceptionally inexpensive but social connectedness and community have become rarer. Other thinkers assert that postmodernity
6674-401: The late 20th century. There are three principal analyses. Theorists such as Alex Callinicos and Craig Calhoun offer a conservative position on the nature of contemporary society, downplaying the significance and extent of socio-economic changes and emphasizing a continuity with the past. Second a range of theorists have tried to analyze the present as a development of the "modern" project into
6768-489: The medieval philosophers Roscelin of Compiègne and William of Ockham and contemporary philosophers W. V. O. Quine , Wilfred Sellars , D. C. Williams , and Keith Campbell . The ness-ity-hood principle is used mainly by English-speaking philosophers to generate convenient, concise names for universals or properties . According to the Ness-Ity-Hood Principle, a name for any universal may be formed by taking
6862-405: The modern project, critics from within postmodernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism , and those who believe that postmodernity is a passing, and not a growing, phase in social organization. State of being In linguistics , a copula /‘kɒpjələ/ ( pl. : copulas or copulae ; abbreviated cop ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of
6956-406: The name of the predicate and adding the suffix "ness", "ity", or "hood". For example, the universal that is distinctive of left-handers may be formed by taking the predicate "left-handed" and adding "ness", which yields the name "left-handedness". The principle is most helpful in cases where there is not an established or standard name of the universal in ordinary English usage: What is the name of
7050-419: The nature of critique, often replaying debates over (what can be crudely termed) universalism and relativism , where modernism is seen to represent the former and postmodernity the latter. Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler pursue this debate in relation to feminist politics, Benhabib arguing that postmodern critique comprises three main elements; an anti-foundationalist concept of the subject and identity,
7144-516: The opposition of the young to the policies and perspectives of the previous age. Opposition to the Algerian War and the Vietnam War , to laws allowing or encouraging racial segregation and to laws which overtly discriminated against women and restricted access to divorce, increased use of marijuana and psychedelics , the emergence of pop cultural styles of music and drama, including rock music and
7238-421: The ordering given above is the normal one, but certain variation is possible: It is also possible, in certain circumstances, for one (or even two) of the three components to be absent: Inverse copular constructions , in which the positions of the predicative expression and the subject are reversed, are found in various languages. They have been the subject of much theoretical analysis, particularly in regard to
7332-438: The personhood of Socrates). However, universals are not necessarily abstract and particulars are not necessarily concrete. For example, one might hold that numbers are particular yet abstract objects. Likewise, some philosophers, such as D. M. Armstrong , consider universals to be concrete. Most do not consider classes to be universals, although some prominent philosophers do, such as John Bigelow. The problem of universals
7426-432: The possibility for utopia, central for ethical thinking and democratic action. Butler responds to Benhabib by arguing that her use of postmodernism is an expression of a wider paranoia over anti-foundationalist philosophy, in particular, post-structuralism . A number of positions are ascribed to postmodernism – Discourse is all there is, as if discourse were some kind of monistic stuff out of which all things are composed;
7520-497: The prepositional object agrees with the predicative expression, e.g. "What kind of birds are those?" The definition and scope of the concept of a copula is not necessarily precise in any language. As noted above, though the concept of the copula in English is most strongly associated with the verb to be , there are many other verbs that can be used in a copular sense as well. And more tenuously A copular verb may also have other uses supplementary to or distinct from its uses as
7614-413: The reified eye of the viewer in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death or the death obsession or the death anxiety on the level of content" (ibid.). Graff sees the origins of this transformative mission of art in an attempted substitution of art for religion in giving meaning to the world that the rise of science and Enlightenment rationality had removed – but in the postmodern period this
7708-413: The relation betweenness (or being between ). Any particular dog, red thing, or object that is between other things is not a universal, however, but is an instance of a universal. That is, a universal type ( doghood ), property ( redness ), or relation ( betweenness ) inheres in a particular object (a specific dog, red thing, or object between other things). Platonic realism holds universals to be
7802-410: The relationship between reader and that which is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce. Another conception of postmodernity is as an epistemological shift . This perspective suggests that the way people communicate and justify knowledge (i.e. epistemology) changes in conjunction with other societal changes, that the cultural and technological changes of
7896-441: The same general spatial object". The postmodern era has seen a change in the social function of culture. He identifies culture in the modern age as having had a property of "semi-autonomy", with an "existence… above the practical world of the existent" but, in the postmodern age, culture has been deprived of this autonomy, the cultural has expanded to consume the entire social realm so that all becomes "cultural". "Critical distance",
7990-686: The subject is dead, I can never say "I" again; there is no reality, only representation. These characterizations are variously imputed to postmodernism or poststructuralism, which are conflated with each other and sometimes conflated with deconstruction, and understood as an indiscriminate assemblage of French feminism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian analysis, Rorty's conversationalism, and cultural studies ... In reality, these movements are opposed: Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against poststructuralism, that Foucauldian rarely relate to Derridideans ... Lyotard champions
8084-477: The table the book ' , ' the book (was) on the table ' ; Nō Ingarangi ia , literally ' from England (s)he ' , ' (s)he (is) from England ' , Kei te kai au , literally ' at the (act of) eating I ' , ' I (am) eating ' . Alternatively, in many cases, the particle ko can be used as a copulative (though not all instances of ko are used as thus, like all other Māori particles, ko has multiple purposes): Ko nui te whare ' The house
8178-399: The term copula is generally used to refer to such principal verbs, it may also be used for a wider group of verbs with similar potential functions (like become , get , feel and seem in English); alternatively, these might be distinguished as "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas". The principal use of a copula is to link the subject of a clause to a subject complement . A copular verb
8272-415: The term, but he cannot be made into the example of what all the rest of the purported postmodernists are doing. Lyotard’s work is, for instance, seriously at odds with that of Derrida Butler uses the debate over the nature of the post-modernist critique to demonstrate how philosophy is implicated in power relationships and defends poststructuralist critique by arguing that the critique of the subject itself
8366-568: The thesis that universals are multiply-exemplifiable entities. Examples include by D. M. Armstrong , Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reinhardt Grossmann, Michael Loux. Nominalists hold that universals are not real mind-independent entities but either merely concepts (sometimes called "conceptualism") or merely names. Nominalists typically argue that properties are abstract particulars (like tropes) rather than universals. JP Moreland distinguishes between "extreme" and "moderate" nominalism. Examples of nominalists include Buddhist logicians and apoha theorists,
8460-469: The ubiquity of stereo, television and radio helped make these changes visible in the broader cultural context. This period is associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan , a philosopher who focused on the results of living in a media culture and argued that participation in a mass media culture both overshadows actual content disseminated and is liberating because it loosens the authority of local social normative standards. The second phase of postmodernity
8554-471: The way they express such meanings; some of them use the copular verb, possibly with an expletive pronoun like the English there , while other languages use different verbs and constructions, like the French il y a (which uses parts of the verb avoir ' to have ' , not the copula) or the Swedish finns (the passive voice of the verb for "to find"). For details, see existential clause . Relying on
8648-429: The whole expression is on the table may be called a predicate or a verb phrase . The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the complement of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may be a noun or noun phrase, an adjective or adjective phrase, a prepositional phrase (as above), or an adverb or another adverbial phrase expressing time or location. Examples are given below, with
8742-427: The wide accessibility of information and mass telecommunications. Postmodernity also exhibits a greater resistance to making sacrifices in the name of progress discernible in environmentalism and the growing importance of the anti-war movement . Postmodernity in the industrialised core is marked by increasing focus on civil rights and equal opportunity as well as movements such as feminism and multiculturalism and
8836-425: Was a linguist ' ). In Turkish, both the third person singular and the third person plural copulas are omittable. Ali burada and Ali burada dır both mean ' Ali is here ' , and Onlar aç and Onlar aç lar both mean ' They are hungry ' . Both of the sentences are acceptable and grammatically correct, but sentences with the copula are more formal. The Turkish first person singular copula suffix
#349650