Descriere

Faced with a world where it is impossible to resist, let alone oppose diversity and diference, where notions such as tolerance, multiculturalism, interdisciplinarity have becomekey concepts, we are actually in the position to reconsider and redefine our own experience of the world and in the world and to question centuries of philosophical and scientific certainties; we are in the postmodern condition. On close analysis, all definitions of postmodernism, as different and numerous as they are, do actually revolve around two basic perspectives on the present-day state of affairs or what we have grown accustomed to call postmodernism. One, that I would call oversimplifyingpolarizes the negativistic features of the phenomenon, focusing exclusively on its potential of completely rejecting the previous systems, values, norms and concepts. The other goes further and exposes postmodernism s ability to understand differences, its ability to conceiveof a rhetoric of both/and. The firts perspective chooses to define postmodernism as a culture of rejection and denial, a destructive and violent phenomenon that refuses to take into consideration what has previously existed if it is not to demolish it. In this respect, Ihab Hassan s attempt to create a visual chart of the irreconcilable oppositions between modernism and postmodernism is fairly illustrative and can successfully summarize the tenets of this perspective.