The concept of postmodernity. Basic concepts of postmodern culture

• Introduction
• The emergence of postmodernism
• Evolution of writing
• Drawings
• Pre-scripts
• Verbal syllabic systems
• Slavic writing
• Prehistory of Slavic writing
• The importance of writing in the history of the Slavic peoples
• The importance of writing for humanity
• Writing as art
• Writing and religion
• Writing and science
• conclusions

Introduction

Taking up the topic of postmodernism, I first of all wanted to find a clear definition of this word. But I was surprised when I discovered what kind of debates were going on between critics about this term and its essence some 10-15 years ago. There was a great dependence on the interpretation of the term postmodernism and on the time in which this or that article was written.

We can say that this is a word whose meaning was located somewhere between “aesthetic novelty” and “all sorts of ugliness,” but at the same time, as a rule, did not require any clarification.

Now, as I noticed, much less is written about postmodernism in our time. I wonder whether this concept is outdated, or whether, after all, in the last years of the last century, very significant changes really took place in postmodernism, concerning both its internal state and its place in culture - so significant that the debate ended and they began to simply remain silent? What kind of changes are these?

It turns out that debates about postmodernism began from the moment of its inception and continue to this day. The complexity and ambiguity of this phenomenon gives rise to a very wide range of assessments of it - from the recognition of postmodernism as the most relevant and “advanced” part of modern culture to its complete rejection and interpretation as a virus that is corrupting modern culture.

And in general, some see in postmodernism simply a certain literary movement, others - as something more global, an entire cultural process that inevitably influences our era. Postmodernism has forced many philosophers to think.

The topic of the essay is called: “The main characteristics of postmodern culture.” Still, I think it lacks a certain amount of time. In addition, even in the European-Asian and American-Latin ends of the world, you can also find quite a lot of differences. If we consider this topic starting from the very appearance of the term postmodernism, with all the nuances, then the essay will be too long.

Therefore, I will allow myself to make only brief reflections on this topic, focusing on more interesting details, without covering the entire complexity of this issue, simply discarding some parts. It is better to understand some issues more deeply and thoroughly than to understand all of them little by little, so that in the end it does not turn out that nothing is clear at all.

The emergence of postmodernism

"The question of the essence and time of the emergence of postmodernism still remains controversial. What is indisputable is that postmodernism arose as an artistic phenomenon. The emergence of new postmodern forms was first noted in the mid-50s of the twentieth century in the USA in such areas of culture as architecture, sculpture, painting. Then it quickly spread to literature and music.

Brief characteristics of postmodernism

Let's look superficially at the characteristics of postmodernity, without touching on aspects of this concept directly related to our immediate modern time, which I will try to explain later.

Culture as a system of signs

The idea of ​​culture as a system of signs is the first and main idea of ​​postmodernism. Poststructuralism as the philosophical basis of postmodernism was formed in the general mainstream of the “linguistic turn” that Western modern philosophy carried out. Therefore, the focus of postmodernism is the problem of language, the linguistic nature of thinking, and the activities of people as “discursive practices.” All theorists of postmodernism, despite differences in particulars, believe that language “owns” its speaker, determining his ways of thinking and living, and not vice versa.

Language is described in postmodernism as a sign structure, which is a container of meanings independent of their connection with the “facts” of the world or the intentions of the subject. Thus, it is argued that meanings are born in the context of the relations between the signs that make up the structure of language, due to their specific position in this structure, and not due to their correspondence to the “facts” of reality. Postmodernism abandons the old belief in referential language, that is, in a language capable of truthfully and reliably reproducing reality, telling the “truth” about it. Therefore, the understanding of the world, possible only in and through language, according to postmodernism, is not a product of “the world as it is,” but a consequence of the “history of texts.”

The world as text

One of the most famous theses of postmodernism. In postmodernism, all reality is conceived as text, discourse, narrative. “Narrative”, “textuality”, “intertextuality” are the most important concepts that are used by postmodernism to describe modern reality, the main words of its language. “Nothing exists outside the text,” says J. Derrida. The culture of any historical period appears as a sum of texts, or intertext. Understanding texts is possible only in the “discursive field of culture.”

In other words, they can only be understood in relation to other texts, not in relation to any “literal” meaning or normative truth. The inevitable presence of previous texts—intertextuality—does not allow any text to consider itself autonomous. Deconstruction as a general method of postmodern analysis, applicable to the analysis of any cultural phenomenon, any text, inevitably turns into a meaningless and endless interpretive process that relativizes any text, any concept, and therefore deprives the problem of truth of meaning.

Thus, language turns out to be an unstable medium; it cannot directly convey meaning or truth. From this follows the most important thesis of postmodernism about the non-self-identity of the text and the unreliability of knowledge obtained through language, and as a consequence - about the problematic nature of that picture of reality - the episteme, according to M. Foucault, which exists in one or another historical era. According to M. Foucault, in each historical era there is a specific, more or less unified system of knowledge, which is formed from the discursive practices of various scientific disciplines, - episteme. It is realized as a language code, a language norm that unconsciously predetermines language behavior, and consequently, the thinking of individuals. According to Foucault, episteme is always internally subordinated to the structure of power relations, acts as a “totalizing discourse” that legitimizes power, therefore it cannot be neutral or objective. This initial and main idea of ​​postmodernism and all the critical pathos associated with it, which gives rise to an attitude towards resistance to the power of linguistic structures, cannot be understood without the fundamental changes in the sociocultural situation that have occurred in the world, primarily in Western society, under the influence of the globalizing mass media system, mystifying mass consciousness, giving rise to myths and illusions. These changes lead to a fundamental, ontological transformation of culture.

Postmodernism reveals the internal mechanism of the process of mystification of public consciousness, which occurs under the influence of the media, proves the unreliability, unreliability - “untruth” of “knowledge” about the world formed in this way. And this demystification of “knowledge” takes the form of a “denial of ontological boundaries” (Derrida), leading to the fact that the “dividing line” between world and knowledge is no longer clear.

Subject's death

The thesis about the “death of the subject” is the second, no less important philosophical component of postmodernism. The most influential is the version of the concept of “death of the subject” developed by M. Foucault and R. Barthes;

Considering literature, culture, society and history as a text, postmodernists and the consciousness of the individual liken it to a certain sum of texts in the totality of texts that makes up the world of culture. Since “nothing exists outside the text,” then any individual inevitably finds himself inside the text, which leads to the “death of the subject” through which “language speaks” (M. Foucault). In this process of “absorption of the subject by the text,” the transformation finds its completion “ the essential man" of modernity into the "man of relationships" characteristic of postmodernity.

The new postmodern subject can be conceptualized as a kaleidoscope of identity fragments “tied” to local historical and cultural circumstances. The transformation of the subject into a text makes it impossible for him to treat himself as something permanent, existing independently of the world of signs in which he is entangled. Thus, postmodernism destroys the ideological position of modernity, based on the idea of ​​the subject as the center of the universe, the theoretical tradition of considering the individual as sovereign, independent, self-sufficient and equal to his consciousness (person). From the point of view of postmodernism, such an idea of ​​​​a person has become untenable and even absurd. Postmodernism substantiates the impossibility of independent individual existence, proves that the individual is constantly and mainly unconsciously determined by linguistic structures in the process of his thinking.

This position, common to the entire postmodern way of thinking, one of the main constants of the general postmodern doctrine, is called “theoretical anti-humanism.” Its essence is the recognition of the fact that, regardless of the consciousness and will of the individual, through him, on top of him and in addition to him, forces, phenomena and processes are manifested over which he has no control, and therefore the individual cannot be an explanatory principle in the study of any "social whole". It is customary to emphasize the weakness of the alternative program proposed by postmodernism, the unconvincingness of the ways it substantiates the individual’s resistance to the stereotypes of mass consciousness imposed on the individual by the media.

Decentration

Postmodernism criticizes centrality as a basic principle European culture New time, rational thinking of modernity, which is rejected as metaphysical. The decentration of the subject as the core, the center around which cognition, culture, social life was built, the deconstruction of any text, revealing the looseness of signs, relativizes any text, any concept. On this basis, postmodernists prove the impossibility of the existence of a holistic, universal system of knowledge - it can only be a fragment of many local cultural contexts that make it possible and give it meaning. Therefore, no knowledge can be assessed outside the context of culture, tradition and language.

It is with this thesis that the postmodernist criticism of the entire previous culture, the way of thinking as metaphysical and logocentric, its “methodological doubt” in relation to rationally based universal values, truths and beliefs, to the very rational forms of knowledge, its rejection of the basic concepts of the epistemology of modernity, such as truth, causality, etc. According to J.-F. Lyotard, until recently, the unity of knowledge was ensured by people turning to the great basic ideas. Now they lose their significance as a guarantor of truth and value.

The methodological foundation of postmodernism is the awareness of the limitations of any form of rationality, activity, way of life, the recognition of the naturalness of their diversity and pluralism, the equivalence of any forms of rationality, various creative paradigms, the rehabilitation of those that were pushed to the periphery of culture and which, under the dominance of modern methods of development, the world was denied legitimacy. Postmodernists consider it impossible and useless to try to establish any hierarchical order, any system of priorities - in knowledge, culture, life. They are against any totalitarianism, especially modern – technological, informational.

Their slogan is the equality of all life forms. Therefore, it is natural for them to reject the concept of historical progress, from universal forms historical development, from the very idea of ​​the linear development of history, which was replaced by M. Foucault’s concept of the spasmodic alternation of epistemes, the metaphor of the rhizome as a disordered, multidirectional development.

Postmodern sensibility

One of the key concepts of postmodernism. Disappointment in the ideals and values ​​of the Renaissance and Enlightenment with their faith in Progress, the triumph of reason, and the limitlessness of human possibilities was transformed into rejection of the entire tradition of Western European rationalism. This led to the formation of “postmodern sensitivity” - a specific vision of the world - a fragmented, disordered world, devoid of cause-and-effect relationships and value guidelines, appearing to consciousness only in the form of hierarchically disordered fragments. Any attempt to construct a “model” of such a world is pointless.

V. Khalipov’s point of view

V. Khalipov has a very interesting point of view. He examined postmodernism, rejecting all other critics, on a completely different plane, considering it as the last, to date, link in the chain of ideological and aesthetic trends that have successively replaced each other over the centuries. In a simplified and generalized form, such a chain, according to Khalipov, looks like this:

“... - Archaic - Greek classics - Hellenism - Greco-Roman classics - Decline of the classics of late Rome - Art of the “Dark Ages” - Gothic - Renaissance - Baroque - classicism - Romanticism - Realism - Modernism - Postmodernism - ...”

“Such a sequence, where such, at first glance, seemingly incomparable things as Gothic and Realism, Romanticism and Greco-Roman classics stand in the same row, may seem somewhat far-fetched, not having a single basis for highlighting the elements included in this series. Therefore, I will make a reservation right away that as such a basis I have chosen the most general, characteristic features of the artistic vision of the world inherent in a particular era, regardless of the specific types (types) of art that expressed them.

In one era, the creative potential of peoples is realized primarily through sculpture and architecture, in another - through painting, in a third - through music and literature, etc., while other types of art find themselves on the periphery for some time cultural process without significantly influencing its course. It seems justified to highlight the distinctive features of such “dominant” forms of art as distinctive features of the culture of the era in general.”

If we isolate the most essential features of each direction, the “cultural chain” will take the following form:

• Archaic: extreme stylization of sculpture, syncretism of arts, philosophy, religion; fluctuations in proportions; festivity, brightness of coloring.
• Greek classics: harmonious artistic ideal; "realism" of sculpture; rational planning of buildings; integrity; clarity; proportionality; priority of the polis (public) over the personal.
• Hellenism: lack of integrity; complex, contradictory, ambiguous attitude towards the world; the desire to aesthetically master a person’s private life; development of intimate garden sculpture.
• Greco-Roman classics: attempts at theoretical formulation of aesthetic canons; rigor, restraint; rational approach to the creative process; proportionality, proportionality; didacticism, the dominance of social and state ideals.
• Decline of the classics of late Rome: shift in proportions; development of formalist schools; cultural-religious and genre-specific eclecticism; attraction to intimacy, small forms; unsteadiness social ideals, the gravitation of the arts towards the private, personal.
• Art of the Dark Ages: asceticism, dryness, restraint; didacticism; extreme ideological regimentation; attraction to utilitarianism; negative attitude towards personal creativity.
• Gothic: ornamentality, pretentiousness, sophistication; the desire for a synthesis of architecture, modeling, sculpture, painting; the displacement of rational calculation by the free flight of creative thought and intuition.
• Revival: appeal to antiquity; faith in reason; optimism; clarity; the social and educational function of art, the indisputable authority of works of art recognized as exemplary, and imitation of them.
• Baroque: expressiveness; pomp; dynamism; theatricality; the principle of “Combining incompatible”; attraction to complex metaphorism and hyperbole; cultivation of allegory and emblems; sensationalism; the development of opera and ballet as a reflection of the general trend towards a synthesis of arts; the idea of ​​the impermanence of the world combined with hedonism.
• Classicism: turning to antiquity, recognizing its canons, proportions, and aesthetics as exemplary; rationalism; fixedness of forms; strict hierarchy of genres; tendency towards typification; a view of the creative process as a conscious, logically organized process; didacticism.
• Romanticism: opposition to “imitation of nature” of the artist’s creative activity; denial of normativity, rational regulation; renewal of artistic forms; polysemy, associativity, condensed metaphoricality; openness of genders and genres; interpenetration of arts; synthesis of art, philosophy, religion; demonstrative conventionality of form; pessimism, disbelief into progress; art as the highest reality.
• Realism: objectivity; typing; consideration of reality in development; view of art as a means of understanding reality; educational function of art.
• Modernism: pessimism, the idea of ​​the absurdity of the world; priority of the personal over the public; artistic reality has minimal connections with objective reality; associativity; active search for new forms of expression; synthesis of various types of art; denial of art's obligations to society and to history.

Khalipov writes: “Even the eyes of a person inexperienced in the subtleties of cultural studies will easily notice in the given chain quite regularly realized patterns: steady repetition, periodic revival over the centuries of some essential features of culture, striking similarity of aesthetic criteria of literature and art of certain eras, etc. Order these patterns, to bring them into a single, consistent, logically coherent system, even partly explaining their nature helps the concept of two types of culture and two principles of being, developed by F. Schlegel, F. W. J. Schelling and finally formalized by F. Nietzsche in his work " The origin of tragedy from the spirit of music.” According to this theory, the opposition “Apollonian” (“light”, rational) - “Dionysian” (“dark” irrational, chaotic, passionate) allows us to describe the entire spectrum of manifestations of human culture and life in general.

Let's try to classify, in accordance with the concept of F. Schlegel, F. W. J. Schelling and F. Nietzsche, the elements of the above “cultural chain”. Having analyzed the essence of the previously identified features, we obtain:

Cultural chain

The presented diagram clearly illustrates the proposed concept of the development of artistic and aesthetic thought in Europe and the countries that have adopted its culture, demonstrates the “zigzag” nature of this process, the orderly alternation of its “light” and “dark” beginnings.

Let us now give a more expanded description of the latter by “summing”, bringing together the characteristics assigned respectively to each of the directions:

This, in its most general form, is the system of cultural coordinates in which later I will directly consider the phenomenon of postmodernism. From the noted pattern of orderly alternation of “Apollo” and “Dionysian” principles as dominant in certain eras, it clearly follows that “dark” modernism was replaced by “light” postmodernism. Does such a purely theoretical statement “fit” with the real signs of this trend? Among the latter, the main ones are usually considered:

• Use of works literary heritage previous eras as a “building material” for creation (and citation as its most common manifestation);
• Reinterpretation of elements of the culture of the past (and parody, irony as a more private form of implementation of this phenomenon);
• Multi-level text organization;
• Reception of the game.

The first of the signs fits quite clearly into the system of the “Apollo” beginning, continuing (naturally, in a modified, modernized form) the Renaissance, so to speak, tradition of “light” movements. Thus, the appeal of the Greco-Roman classics to the achievements of the Greek classics played a decisive role in the formation of the first. The values ​​of both of these areas formed the basis of the Renaissance, combined with own discoveries the latter were uniquely refracted in classicism.

All of them, taken together, “carried out” realism in their depths (it is no coincidence that researchers consider it possible to talk about a kind of realism in the works of Phidias (Greek classics), the works of Shakespeare (Renaissance), the plays of Moliere (classicism), and in postmodernism some literary scholars see a kind of “true realism”, “super-realism”, which reflects the world, sensations, and train of thoughts much more fully, truthfully, and multifacetedly modern man than realism itself in the traditional sense of the term). The “bright” link in the sequence that I used, such as the art of the “dark ages” (paradoxically, sometimes words are combined), falls somewhat out of this series, which is explained by the general extreme decline of art during this period. The trend nevertheless finds a way out, affecting the development of religion, which at that time almost completely took over the functions of culture as a whole.

The cornerstone of scholasticism is turning to canonical books, the works of the “church fathers.” The activities of theologians and preachers actually boiled down to selecting the necessary quotes on a certain topic and interpreting, comprehending and rethinking them, and the volume of the quoted text often far exceeded the volume of the commentary on it. Similar things manipulation of excerpts from other people's works is the previously noted characteristic moment of postmodernist poetics.

The above confirms our assumption that postmodernism develops mainly in line with the “Apollonian” beginning. “Apollo” trends are created, for the most part, on the basis of generalization and creative processing of the artistic heritage, figuratively speaking, - facing the past, in contrast to the “Dionysian” trends, more concentrated on the independent search for the new, unconventional, - facing the future.

Let us now move on to the second of the highlighted features of postmodernism - rethinking, the nature of which, in our opinion, is closely related to the above-described trend of “light” trends and in many ways even stems from it. Let me explain my point.

None of the cultural elements of the past borrowed by any movement could fit completely, unchanged, into the value system of an era distant from the time of its creation by tens or even hundreds of years. However, it was impossible not to recognize, to reject it, even in the case of an obvious discrepancy with the prevailing ideas in society, due to the “authority” of the element as part of the model, the canon. The way out of such difficult situations from time to time was precisely the technique of rethinking, which carried out a kind of “juggling of facts”, as a result of which the outer shell of the element, preserved unchanged, imperceptibly began to contain a somewhat adjusted, and sometimes even directly opposite, original meaning.

F. Nietzsche in his work “On the Genealogy of Morals” notes that, for example, such a concept as hypocrisy, which has a purely negative evaluative marking, in the era of Greek classics, on the contrary, was unambiguously perceived as a purely positive trait of the person endowed with it, an indicator of his intelligence, ingenuity, endurance At the same time, from our point of view, such a bright phenomenon as hope was interpreted as a deficiency, a vice, a sign of weakness, passivity, and helplessness.

In directions with a predominance of the “Dionysian” principle, the method of rethinking is practically unknown.

To summarize as much as possible, we can say that “Apollonian” is the predominance of content over form, “Dionysian” - form over content, and the said technique, being addressed exclusively to the essence, does not affect the shell. Parody as a special case of rethinking also involves, firstly, “returning to the past” (the presence of a previously created work of art, which is chosen as the object of parody), and secondly, manipulation of the content of such a work in order to create a comic effect, and the merit of the parody is determined the degree of reliability of the reproduction of the formal features of the original.

Let's consider the remaining signs of postmodernism - the method of play and the multi-level organization of the text. Their essence is in a logically thought-out, initially planned organization of the material, rational calculation of sequentially taken moves, and the non-randomness of each element used.

Systematic “deceptions” of the reader, viewer, as well as the encoding, “hiding” of entire layers of meaning, would be simply absurd to attribute to the intuitive improvisations of “Donisianism”. In addition, the artist, when creating such constructions, focuses primarily on what reaction they will cause in the reader, how they will influence him, which is another important generalized sign of the “light” principle, while the “dark” tends to mainly to chaotic subjective self-expression, caring relatively little about its intelligibility and ease of perception for the reader, viewer, listener.

The research carried out allows us to assert with a sufficient degree of confidence that postmodernism is the dominant direction artistic creativity our days with a relatively clearly expressed predominance of the “Apollo” beginning, which therefore continues to modern stage naturally, in a specific, original form, the “Apollonian” - “classical-realistic” tradition and, thus, sufficiently dissociated from its closest neighbor in the chronological chain of modernism (closeness with which is an illusion based only on the similarity of some private external features both directions). This is not some super-stage in the development of art that is fundamentally different from all that came before it, and not its death throes, but another, the last, for today, link in the chain of cultural trends that naturally replace each other throughout history.

I immediately had an objection to what was said... After all, modern creativity is represented by numerous directions, there are a lot of them. But at the end of the article, Khalipov talked about this too.

“Always during the birth and formation of new trends, for some time (sometimes even for a very long time), the old ones continue to exist in parallel, gradually being supplanted. However, no one, for example, would think of challenging the dominance of realism in Russian literature of the 30s and 40s years of the 19th century on the grounds that during this period individual classicist works were still being created, not to mention the most active creative activity of the romantics."

Pyatigorsky's reception

Piatigorsky thought quite a lot about postmodernism from a philosophical point of view. I would like to outline one of his speeches on the radio, where he uses a rather unusual method of interpreting the characteristics of postmodernism: “The world as a text”

“...well, imagine that you, a cultured and educated person, want to declare your love to a woman whom you consider not only cultured and educated, but also smart. Of course, you could simply say: “I love you madly,” but you cannot do this, because she knows very well that these words were already spoken in exactly the same way to Anne of Austria in Alexandre Dumas’s novel “The Three Musketeers.” Therefore, to protect yourself, you say: “I love you madly, as Dumas said in "The Three Musketeers" Yes, of course, a woman, if she is smart, will understand what you want to say and why you say it in this way. But it’s a completely different matter if she really is so smart - does she want to answer “yes” to such a declaration of love?

You are always like someone else, your words are always like quotes from someone else, your situation is always like someone else's - what are the conditions of the phenomenon that calls itself postmodernism. Don’t they all boil down to one main thing, namely, that I no longer have a history, that it is the history of another, and now listen to my current history of a person without history. But every quotation from another is always something that has already been said and, thus, the past by definition. You renounce the past, but live in its quotes and repetitions. Here, perhaps, it could be noted that the position of the postmodernist can be reduced linguistically to expressions like “I am as ...” or “as if I were ....” One Hellenistic philologist noted that the latter expression is absent from Plato and Aristotle. There are no fools, I am me, and the other is another.

This is wonderfully expressed in the socio-political statements of postmodernists, where any statement is attributed to a game where you play like the other, but where the other loses, although you play. Well, as in the case when someone at a card table asks one of the spectators to play instead of him without the risk of paying the loss. When quoting someone else, you are not playing on your own behalf. Hence the wide opportunity for a postmodernist to express almost any political ideas - for him they are nothing more than episodes of the past. But in the past they were linked into one system of ideology or appeared as links in one story. Now these are fragments, the meaning of which lies only in their actualization in the present.”

Evolution of the image

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard writes that the evolution of the image passed through four stages:

• on the first - the image, like a mirror, reflected the surrounding reality;
• on the second - he perverted it;
• on the third, it masked the absence of reality;
• “Finally, the image has become a “simulacrum”, a copy without an original, which exists on its own, without any relation to reality.” (Baudrillard J. Simulations // Columbia U., NY, 1983)

The validity of this scheme can be demonstrated using the material of domestic culture:

• the “mirror” stage is the “honest” realism of the classics;
• an image that distorts reality - the avant-garde of Khlebnikov, Malevich or Meyerhold;
• the art of phantoms (socialist competition, for example) is socialist realism;
• Simulacra, images that simulate reality, include social art that copies non-existent originals, such as the famous painting “Stalin with the Muses” by V. Komar and A. Melamid.

At each step of this ladder, the image becomes more and more important, and the reality less and less important. If at first he strives to copy nature, then in the end he can do without it altogether: the image “eats” reality.

This central theme of modern culture was developed in detail by pop art, which studies the life of an image that breaks away from its prototype to begin a frighteningly independent life. Thus, one of Andy Warhol’s early paintings “Peaches” depicts not the fruit itself, but a tin can of fruit. This difference is the pathos of the entire movement, which has discovered that in today's world it is not the product that is important, but the packaging, not the essence, but the image.

Pop art produced not so much an artistic as an ideological revolution. Peering anxiously at the world around him, the pop art artist tries to understand what reality, made up of countless images of astronauts and cowboys, Lenins and Marilyn Monroe, Mao-Zedong and Mickey Mouse, is telling him.

The problems of pop art are essentially ecological. In the process of developing the surrounding world, not only virgin nature disappears, but also virgin reality. Primary, fundamental, “raw” reality, not transformed by man, became a victim of purposeful manipulations of culture. The myriad of images propagated by the media have polluted the environment, making it impossible to consume it in its pure form.

We do not have (or perhaps never had) a natural world with which to compare the artificial universe of culture.

As an ecological crisis, the crisis of reality caused by the development of mass society and its communications is universal, but in Russia it leads to particularly radical changes; here the lack of reality is felt more acutely than in the West. Not only because the surrogates replacing her, as usual, worse quality, but also because Soviet metaphysics always set before art the task of depicting precisely that true, uncompromisingly authentic reality, which probably was meant by both Stalin, who recommended writers to write only the truth, and Solzhenitsyn, who called on “not to live by lies.” .

Here in Russia, from 1991 to, say, 1995, postmodernism was the main topic of literary criticism. Postmodernism had a lot of opponents who considered it their duty to speak out on its unfortunate occasion. At one time it was criticized for being weak and not providing examples" real literature". (Kuritsyn)

What's boring about postmodernism?

One might suggest that what is most boring about postmodernism. Firstly, the transformation of the initially harmless “political correctness” into a big ideology, into “ideological consistency” (Zholkovsky A. About the editors. Znamya, 1996, No. 2)

The soft postmodernist thesis that vertical is horizontal, that all cultures are equal in rights and of equal quality, regardless of historical tradition, economic success and quantity, has led to terror of minorities. American university curricula are being overhauled so that they are not dominated by white, able-bodied men.

The hours allotted, say, to Leo Tolstoy are divided into five parts: part is left to Tolstoy, the rest is distributed unfairly to unknown classics of different tribes, skin colors and sexual orientations. The famous joke - "The next President of the United States will be a one-legged black lesbian" - shows how far things have come.

In addition, theories of political correctness can reduce the level of the “theoretical market” itself. This happened, say, with the feminist movement, which very often gives rise to quite weak and boring theory, weak literature, weak art. The main value of this movement is that it is “melting”. At the edges of the ideas of political correctness, unexpectedly original and powerful artifacts are possible. Essentially, the project of Oleg Kulik’s “Party of Animals,” which involves a struggle for the political and economic rights of animals (why is a fly filmed in a popular science series and shown after a television audience not paid a fee?), is simply work with the ideas of political correctness “beyond chessboard."

It is, of course, worth keeping in mind one more factor: the large white majority needs political correctness, if only because it is rapidly ceasing to be the white majority. It seems that in a few decades the colored culture will dominate the earth, the white race is increasingly marginalized and its goal is to ensure, by the time of its final marginalization, reliable rights for any marginalized people, that is, in fact, the white majority cares about its future as non- majority. But, one way or another, the costs of political correctness can cause sharp rejection in modern culture.

Secondly, I'm tired of irony. “Ten, even five years ago, irony was a universal language for describing any political conflict. Now this reliable means is increasingly failing” (Alexander Timofeevsky. The End of Irony. Russian Telegraph, No. 72, December 30, 1997).

Previously, reliability was ensured precisely by universality: the universality of the totalitarian cultural space in which the ironists built their deconstructionist figures. Thanks not least to their activities, the universal space split into hundreds of local ones; And we're talking about It’s no longer about making fun of the universal, but about choosing the part that suits you.

The postmodern intellect, which rightly considered the surrounding macro-context a simulacrum, was forced to make itself the content of the text (in rough form: novels about how novels are written), which ultimately turned into sheer self-criticism, the party syndrome. A good symbol of the era seems to be the story of the destructive British cows who fell ill with the Kronzefeld-Jakob disease after they were fed flour made from other cows (it was immediately announced that such a virus had already been discovered in some wild native tribe - in this tribe as since the habit of eating the brains of the dead is widespread).

The conceptualist thesis “contemporary art is the art that analyzes its own language” seems quite anachronistic today. Reflection has no limit, since the postmodernist has no opponent. Meaning is not closed, and every completed text, every utterance is a violation of meaning, a barrier to interpretation, a terrorist truncation of semantic infinity. To close the meaning, you need an enemy or competitor. The postmodernist, who mixes genres, has no competitors: he is ready to admit and justify anything.

But there is another situation in which the meaning is locked: if it belongs to you, you will always find an opportunity to complete the statement. The ownerless postmodern meaning is endless. Dead is the fluid virtual postmodernist Author. But the author is alive, who signs the statement, who has realized his private and class interests, who closes his meaning into a genre in order to put it on the market. Genres can be in a state of market competition, like different products. (Kuritsyn, conclusion again)

Football and postmodernism

In recent years, we can observe quite closely one grandiose postmodern project - the transformation of Europe into a single political space. This event, of course, has and will have very serious cultural consequences. Thus, thanks to the unity of Europe, we are now witnessing a revolution in European football. This is the number one game on our continent.

Reason for national pride and national disgrace. The European National Football Championship is held every four years, like the World Cup in the same sport, like the Olympic Games: it is supposed to be a very significant and rare event. Several European cups are played annually, in which teams from different countries participate. Nations compete with nations. England, Scotland, Wales and North. Ireland, while not being independent states, has - like the founders of football - its own national teams. Good European conservatism.

Until recently, in Europe there was such a thing: no more than three “legionnaires”, that is, citizens of foreign countries, could enter the field at the same time as part of one or another club. The club could have at least ten stars on its roster, bought up all over the globe, but could only field no more than three. The core of the team was made up of local football players. This worked for both national championships and international club games. Thus, football in Europe was national. The Italian championship was Italian; Italians also played for Italian clubs in European cups.

A completely different system in North America, in the land of victorious postmodernism. The main games there are hockey and basketball, and in both cases, hockey and basketball players from all over the world play for American teams, without any national restrictions.

Now such a system threatens European football. The European Court ruled in the so-called “Bosman case”, according to which the limit on foreigners is contrary to the freedom of movement of labor throughout the continental community. UEFA had to agree with the decision, the limit on foreigners was abolished. Less than a year after this cancellation, in the leading (and not the most leading) clubs in Italy, for example, or Spain, five or six foreign stars take to the field, turning the club into an enterprise, into a small commercial team. The number of foreigners continues to increase every month. A new tournament has emerged in Europe - the Champions League. It replaced the Champions Cup, in which the winners of the championships of all countries played.

This is an elite club for the strongest clubs: first up to eight, then sixteen, and next season already twenty-four. This tournament already looks like a prototype of an all-European football league, in which players from all over the planet will defend not the honor of the national flag, but the honor of the club. Many people do not like this damned Americanization-postmodernization of Europe, which concerns, of course, not only football, and resistance to completely reckless integration is gradually growing.

Epilogue

Yes, debates about postmodernism began from the moment of its inception and continue to this day... But this word is really going out of use. It seems to me because using it with all its inconsistency becomes simply bad form.

The complexity and ambiguity of this phenomenon of postmodernism gives rise to a very wide range of its assessments - from the recognition of postmodernism as the most relevant and advanced part of modern culture to its complete rejection and understanding as a virus that is corrupting modern culture. However, today the unproductiveness and unacceptability of radical assessments of postmodernism, both positive and negative, is quite obvious.

On the one hand, the expectation that postmodernism is “about” to exhaust itself as some kind of peripheral and rather random issue in Western culture did not materialize.

The profound cultural transformation associated with the development of mass media, which in principle changes the sociocultural situation in modern society, the mechanisms of cultural production and social control, has finally destroyed the foundations of worldview characteristic of Western bourgeois consciousness. This primarily concerns the consciousness of Western intellectuals, whose “historical fall”, together with their criteria of unified knowledge, truth and morality, according to Z. Bauman (Z. Bauman. 1988), is what social basis, on which postmodernism emerges, with its pluralism of cultures, local traditions, forms of life and language games.

But on the other hand, the limitations of postmodernism are quite obvious, the fundamental impossibility of solving fundamental problems within its framework. scientific tasks. The inability to develop an authoritative theoretical justification for the ongoing social changes has led to the loss of historical perspective and thereby historical coordinates in the study of society. Irrationalism, emphasis on literary, artistic, poetic forms of comprehension social reality leads to its illusory, superficial perception, a departure from the essence of things into hyperreality. The slogan of radical pluralism deprives a person of objective criteria for assessment and choice, equating “high” and “low”, hinders the construction of a new vertical in culture, and contributes to the preservation and deepening of the value crisis.

Postmodernism, both from the point of view of its “poststructuralist origin” and from the point of view of real content, cannot be considered identical to postmodern culture, which is formed by various movements and theories that differ in their methodological foundations. And postmodernism is just one of them.

Postmodernism is special look on the world, a special worldview characteristic of a person of a new era - the postmodern era, and its conceptualization on the philosophical basis of poststructuralism.

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Postmodern culture is the culture of a post-industrial, information society. The first signs of postmodernism appeared in Italian architecture in the late 50s. A little later they also appear in the architecture of the USA and other European countries and in Japan. By the end of the 50s, they spread to other areas of culture and became more and more stable. As a special phenomenon of postmodernism, it manifested itself quite clearly in the 70s.

In the 80s, postmodernism spread throughout the world, achieving impressive success and triumph. Thanks to the means of mass communication, it becomes fashion, a kind of trademark of the time.

Postmodernism arose as a result of understanding the development of Western society over the last two to three centuries, called “modernity”.

In the middle of the 17th century, as if opening the New Age, F. Bacon and R. Descartes set a grandiose goal for humanity: with the help of science, to make man “the lord and master of nature.” Thus began the great transformation and conquest of nature, based on science and constituting the main content of modernity in its practical aspect.

Enlightenment philosophers further elevated the authority and importance of reason and science. In addition, they made Renaissance humanism extremely relevant. The Enlightenmentists developed the concept of a new society, the core of which was universal social principles, values ​​and ideals: freedom, equality, justice, reason, progress, etc. The most important feature of this concept was futurism, aspiration to a “bright future”, in which the above should triumph ideals and values.

The 19th century became a time of concrete implementation of educational ideals and values, the entire program as a whole.

In the art of postmodernism, two main trends are clearly distinguished: the first is in line with mass culture. She contrasts modernism and avant-garde with eclecticism and passeism, the hedonism of the present. Its participants rehabilitate the classical aesthetics of the beautiful, or rather, the beautiful (D. Vattimo); the second is related to the structural-semiotic flow and has a less pronounced postmodern character. Proponents of this trend profess semiotic principle, according to which under the image lies another image (Italian theorist U. Eco ).

Postmodernism in painting represented by artists of the Italian transavantgarde: S. Chia, F. Clemente, E. Cucchi, M. Palladino. He is also joined by the artist J. Garouste - in France, A. Penk - in Germany, D. Schnabel - in the USA.

Representatives of postmodernism V movie are directors P. Greenway - in England, J.-J. Beinex - in France.

Toward postmodernism in music include the English composer M. Nyman, American composer J. Adams, Polish composer G. Goretzki.

The art of postmodernism is the art of detail, nuance, halftone. It does not pretend to be “great”, “eternal art”. It is often content with little. It has everything, but as if in miniature: not too great feelings, moderate passions, modest thoughts. It prefers irony, parody, ridicule, joke, and grotesque to everything sublime, significant and grandiose.

There are no rules of genre or style for him. He is not tormented by inconsistency, ambivalence, incoherence, or mixing of styles and genres. His works often look like strange hybrids, in which modernism is combined with kitsch. However, unlike the avant-garde, whose works often have a repulsive appearance, the works of postmodernism have a beautiful, pleasant, caressing look or ear.

In general, postmodernism represents a transitional state and an era of transition. He did a good job of destroying many of the outdated aspects and elements of the previous modern era. As for the positive contribution, so far he does not even pretend to have one. Nevertheless, some of its features and characteristics will apparently be preserved in the culture of the next century.

Nature and culture form the living environment of a person; they are the main and indispensable conditions of his existence.

Nature constitutes the foundation, and culture is the very building of human existence. Nature ensures the existence of man as a physical being. Culture, being “second nature,” makes this existence truly human. It allows a person to become an intellectual, spiritual, moral, creative person. Therefore, the preservation of culture is as natural and necessary as the preservation of nature.

The ecology of nature is inseparable from the ecology of culture. If nature accumulates, preserves and transmits a person’s genetic memory, then culture does the same with his social memory. Violation of the ecology of nature poses a threat genetic code man, leads to his degeneration. Violation of the ecology of culture has a destructive effect on a person’s personality and leads to his degradation

Cultural heritage represents the main way of existence of culture. What is not part of the cultural heritage ceases to be cultural and, ultimately, ceases to exist. During his life, a person manages to master and transfer into his inner world only a small fraction of cultural heritage. The latter remains after for other generations, acting as the common property of all people, of all humanity. However, it can only be such if it is preserved. Therefore, the preservation of cultural heritage to a certain extent coincides with the preservation of culture in general.

As an issue, the protection of cultural heritage exists for all societies. However, it faces Western society more acutely. The East in this sense differs significantly from the West.

Features of the culture of the Eastern world include: the presence of evolution; absence of radical, revolutionary breaks; continuity of traditions and customs; the strong position of religion as the foundation of culture.

Eastern society quite calmly moved from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, from paganism to monotheism, having done this back in Antiquity. Its entire subsequent history can be defined as the “eternal Middle Ages.”

The value of cultural heritage was not questioned. Its preservation appeared as something natural. The problems that arose were mainly of a technical or economic nature.

History of Western Society I often forgot about continuity. The transition of the West from Antiquity to the Middle Ages was turbulent. It was accompanied by significant large-scale destruction and the loss of many achievements of antiquity. The Western “Christian world” was established on the ruins of the ancient, pagan, often literally: many architectural monuments of Christian culture were erected from the rubble of destroyed ancient temples. The Middle Ages, in turn, were rejected by the Renaissance. The new era was becoming more and more futuristic. The future was the highest value for him, while the past was resolutely rejected. Hegel declared that modernity pays off all its debts to the past and becomes in no way connected with it.

French philosopher M. Foucault proposes to consider Western culture from the point of view of radical shifts, outside the principles of historicism and continuity. He distinguishes several eras in it, believing that they do not have any general history. Each new era owes nothing to the previous one. History is characterized by “radical discontinuity.”

Since the Renaissance, religion in Western culture has lost its role and significance. Its place is taken by science, which is oriented towards the future.

In cultural and aesthetic terms, postmodernism acts as the development of the experience of the artistic avant-garde (“modernism” as an aesthetic phenomenon). However, unlike the avant-garde, a number of movements of which did not break with the didactic-prophetic understanding of art characteristic of the classics, postmodernism completely erases the line between previously independent spheres spiritual culture and levels of consciousness - between “scientific” and “everyday” consciousness, “high art” and “kitsch”.

Postmodernism finally embraces the transition from “work” to “construction”, from art as an activity of creating works to activity regarding this activity. Postmodernism in this regard is a reaction to the changing place of culture in society.

The postmodernist attitude towards culture arises as a result of a violation of the “purity” of such a phenomenon as art. The condition for its possibility is the initial generation of meaning, going back to the creative principle (subject), the original creative act. If these conditions are violated - and this is exactly what happens in post-industrial society with its endless possibilities of technical reproduction - then the existence of art in its previous (classical or modernist) forms is called into question. Another side of the change in the status of culture is that today's artist never deals with “pure” material - the latter is always culturally mastered in one way or another. His “work” is never primary, existing only as a network of allusions to other works, and therefore as a collection of quotations.

Postmodernism consciously reorients aesthetic activity from “creativity” to compilation and citation, from the creation of “original works” to collage.

At the same time, the strategy of postmodernism is not to affirm destruction as opposed to creativity, manipulation and play with quotes - serious creation, but to distance itself from the oppositions themselves “destruction - creation”, “seriousness - play”.

A sign of the expressed cultural situation are quotation marks, which are placed every now and then as an indication of the non-conditionality of any significations. Postmodernism owes its popularity not so much to the authors who actually inspired the corresponding shift in culture, but to the avalanche of critical literature that formed something like the ideology of postmodernism.

The culture of the late 20th century, postmodernity, is characterized by the following features:

• · decentralization, pluralism and fragmentation of culture. “Absent-mindedness and confusion of values” (J. Baudrillard) leads to a violation of the hierarchical organization of culture, the equal coexistence of “high” and “low”, elite and mass, to the transformation of irony into a means of self-destruction of culture;
• · the displacement of reality by a system of phantoms of consciousness, erasing the difference between the real and the imaginary, copies closing on themselves without originals.
• · theatricalization of today's socio-political and spiritual life. This feeling of theatrical illusoryness and inauthenticity of life especially manifested itself in the 80s, and it also stimulated the processes of rethinking the possibilities and boundaries of the realization of human individuality in post-modern society;
• · searching for new forms of achieving social and cultural identity. 80-90 marked by the emergence of new trends in spiritual life - a return to the sphere privacy, religious and spiritual issues. This transformation of the spiritual climate was due to the feeling of the approaching end of the millennium, the decline of the image of a public person, the excessive narcissism and cynicism of the consumer society. Of course, this was not a return to the canonical forms of religiosity, but the flowering of many different sects and rituals, which could only be called truly religious only with a great degree of convention. This also includes various types of fundamentalism, interest in pagan rituals, esotericism, occultism, oriental diets, environmental movement, meditation, spiritualism, Satanology, etc., in a word - everything that was previously on the periphery of culture.
• · uncertainty, openness, incompleteness, erasing spatial and temporal boundaries. Newness here means as much a movement forward as it does a return to what was seemingly irretrievably lost by modernity. The idea of ​​continuity of the historical process becomes irrelevant, culture acquires a mosaic-quotational appearance, it willingly resorts to the practice of comparing different historical eras and traditions of thinking.

In postmodern philosophy, the most important category of new thinking - time - is ignored. We are, of course, not talking about physical, but about socio-cultural time, about that time. This time, like space, can be covered with a single glance, you can “move around” in it using one or another

the experience accumulated by mankind.

Postmodernism, opposing the idea of ​​the whole, breaking the “connection of times,” is unable to penetrate to the essence of the problem, it simply ignores it. The concept of postmodernity as the highest type of modernity is designed to solve the problem. Modernity means opposition to the unmodern, outdated. The past is considered as a prerequisite for the present, as a lower stage, “removed” by subsequent development. Postmodernity differs from modernity in that it sees in the past not just a prerequisite, but its integral part; it is the merging of what is and what was. And another important point is the search in the past for what is lost in the present.

We are, of course, talking about cultural achievements. Postmodernity brings them together. The concept of modernity is the conquest of the New Time as an era that contrasted itself with previous periods of social development. It was then that historicism arose - the requirement to consider phenomena in the specific conditions of their occurrence and in the light of the general movement forward. Awareness of the present as postmodernity has arisen in our days; it does not imply the abolition, but the deepening of the principle of historicism. The causal explanation remains, but it is supplemented by a direct correlation of the result achieved in the past with the current situation, recognition of the reference, exemplary nature of this result.

The idea of ​​postmodernity as hyper-modernity is especially important for new political thinking. Humanity has come to a dangerous point beyond which there is nothing, the “end of history” - a nuclear outbreak and self-destruction. The only possible reasonable path is back to the “zero option”, the destruction and prohibition of atomic weapons. The ideal state is in the past, when the world did not know the means of suicide, the future is possible only as the past. Of course, this will not be a simple repetition; there will be modifications, first of all, a new understanding of the danger of uncontrolled

Consideration of postmodernism should begin with its origins and beginnings. Aristotle also expressed the idea that the key to understanding the essence of a thing lies in studying its origin.

One of the theorists of postmodernism, W. Eco, notes that the term itself explains a lot about the nature of this phenomenon. In his opinion, the limit comes when the avant-garde (modernism) has nowhere to go further, since it has developed a metalanguage that describes its own texts. Postmodernism is a response to modernism: since the past cannot be destroyed, because its destruction leads to muteness, it needs to be rethought, but ironically, without naivety. Postmodernists rethought not only modernism, but also the entire previous culture, and this applies to a greater extent to the literary and theoretical works of W. Eco himself, aimed at the interpretation of medieval culture. There appear to be multiple origins of postmodernism. Thus, the primary impulses of this trend should be sought in romanticism. Indeed, the inherent taste of romanticism for marginality, the periphery of the psychological and social, alogism, and the unconscious is a strong impulse adopted by postmodernism. Romanticism, like postmodernism, is also characterized by an acute confrontation between the individual, inspired by genius, and the mediocre crowd, “cohesive mediocrity*”. Romanticism arises as an active and meaningful confrontation between the extreme existence of a creative person and the faceless and insipid everyday life. Like romanticism, postmodernism is characterized by oppositionality, critical an attitude towards a traditional, “classical” view of things and phenomena. It seems that romanticism and postmodernism are consequences of similar social and mental processes, the cultural folds of which intersect and intertwine. The origins of Russian postmodernism can be found in the intellectual atmosphere of the Russian Silver Age, which created a stable interest in. philosophical and artistic thought to the “extinct cultures” of the past. In this sense, the “turning over” of cultural heritage, the compilation of an intercultural mosaic, characteristic of postmodernism, as well as the mythology of Russian symbolism, characteristic of the work of, for example, A. Bely and V. Ivanov, can be considered. as direct predecessors of postmodernism. An active interest in the mythological reveals an orientation this phenomenon on archaic forms of thinking and creativity. The philosophy and art of postmodernism are characterized by an appeal to the archaic, myth, i.e. to text in its original meaning, but also to the comprehension of epistemological phenomena and various types of mentality. At the same time, as one of the theorists of this direction, M. Foucault, postulates, in the culture of postmodernism, the “cultural unconscious” dominates the consciousness of an individual. This is especially evident in the work of many contemporary artists who carry out the task of deconstructing the epistemological picture of the world and reducing it to a mosaic interweaving of different meanings and values. With the help of myth, postmodern creations realize, in the words of R. Barth, “the possibility of trans-historical existence.” Involvement in myth creates conditions for entering the spheres of cultural archetypes and historical narratives, which, on the one hand, contradicts the theoretical principles of postmodernism, but on the other hand, corresponds to the general processes of the movement of modern culture. Postmodernism both destroys metanarratives and creates new ones using cultural mythologies.

There is no doubt about the closeness of postmodernism to the “philosophy of life” (Nietzsche, Bergson, Ortega y Gasset). Thus, J. Deleuze analyzed the philosophy of F. Nietzsche from the point of view of postmodern principles and noted the closeness of Nietzsche’s “universal” pluralism philosophical ideas of the late 20th century. Nietzsche sincerely wished to “give irresponsibility its positive meaning.” According to Deleuze, “irresponsibility is the noblest and most the most beautiful secret Nietzsche." Irresponsibility and amoralism, even some intellectual cynicism, become the basis for a revaluation of traditional values ​​and the development of a new view of reality - “pulling up to reality.”

One of the main tasks of postmodern theorists is to overcome traditional Eurocentrism, which has become an axiom of traditional European science. Thus, in postmodernism there is a search for other cultural traditions, based on the principle of complementarity of cultures developing along their own regional lines. This is especially true of the influence on European culture of the 20th century. classical traditions of the East, enrichment and change of traditional Eurocentric mentality. In cultural interconsciousness, there is an expansion of “vision and horizons” due to the inclusion of other points of view.

To indicate the specifics of postmodernism, a new feature of thinking in the culture of the 20th century, designated as “cyclicality,” should be formulated. This is a special principle for reading the historical process, antagonistic to the Enlightenment principle of progress. According to this principle, in its history, each culture sequentially goes through several stages. Incorporating itself into historical processes, each new culture is inevitably forced to repeat the logic of development of cultures approaching the end or already extinct. Therefore, repeating phases can be recorded in the development of each culture. The principle of mosaic and repeatability cultural development especially characteristic of the 20th century. In this regard, P. Sorokin noted the unusualness of modern culture, calling it “integral.” The accumulated “cultural material” of humanity is, as it were, mastered anew by thinkers of the 20th century, forming new associative connections and assessments, perhaps to intensify subsequent intensive development.

Researchers of the philosophical situation of the second half of the 20th century. rightly note “dialogue” as “ key concept postmodernism." The previous eras of avant-garde and modernism can be understood, with reservations, as monological. The pathos of their development lay in the monological impact of scientific concepts reflecting one of the aspects of reality. A deep understanding of postmodernism is possible only in the aspect of cultural interpretation dialogue as a clash of different points of view. Since dialogue by its nature is focused on at least two opinions, it reflects the debatable nature, or rather, the uncertainty of the intellectual atmosphere of a culture. The variability of opinions reflects the variable nature of the movement and development itself. It is no coincidence that the scientific relevance and popularity of M. Bakhtin’s ideas about the dialogical nature of culture date back precisely to the development of postmodernism.

Following M. Foucault, we can postulate that the subject, the personality in the modern sense, emerges only at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. as a result of the collapse of monologue culture and the emergence of dialogism. The phenomenon of dialogue (polylogue) is based on the polysemy and pluralism of values ​​mastered by postmodernism; it determines the situation of not only two, but many colliding points of view. The principled nature of dialogism presupposes the inevitable emergence of the Other as the bearer of a different point of view, different values ​​and way of life. Another may be a subject - a bearer of a different culture. Awareness of the value of the Other creates the opportunity to understand another culture, a different paradigm, but also a deeper and more comprehensive attitude towards one’s culture. A variant of this search was the appeal of European intellectuals to the cultures of the East.

The theoretical key with the help of which it is possible to understand many problems of postmodernism was synergetics. Synergetics as a methodology for studying such complex modern phenomena as postmodernism offers a range of intellectual recommendations:

The main premises of the synergetic vision of the world are the following theses: a) the almost unattainable strict conditioning and programming of trends in the evolution of complex systems; b) the creative potential of chaos is self-sufficient for the constitution of new organizational forms (any microfluctuations can give rise to macrostructures); c) any complex system is inherently inherent in alternative development scenarios; d) the whole and the sum of its parts are qualitatively different structures; e) instability is interpreted as one of the conditions and prerequisites for stable and dynamic development - only such systems are capable of self-organization; f) the world can be understood as a hierarchy of environments with different linearities.

Investigating physical and chemical processes, one of the theorists of synergetics, I. Prigogine, extended his conclusions to historical and cultural processes. He proposed to consider evolution as a process leading to greater complexity and diversity of biological and social structures through the emergence of new “dissipative” (scattering) formations of a higher order. A new “order arises from random fluctuations” (“order from chaos”). In this process special role is assigned to chance, which is considered as the most important condition for the formation and development of new structures. The combination of chance and necessity creates the opportunity to consider historical and cultural processes in a new aspect, which takes into account the meaning-forming role of chance and expands the boundaries of axiomatic patterns. According to Prigogine,

the laws of strict causation seem to us today to be limited cases applicable to highly idealized situations, almost caricatured descriptions of change... complexity science... leads to a completely different (opposite) point of view.

The subjunctive mood in the study of historical processes turns into the most important scientific discourse, expanding research perspectives. Research into the nonlinear development of systems can be productive when using nonlinear principles, for example, “leaking”. It becomes relevant to study the “leap” - a dialectical leap, in the form of which a system, as a result of internal changes, moves to a new level of complexity: “when a system “jumps” to a new level of complexity, it is impossible in principle to predict which of the many forms it will take.”

The more complex level to which the system moves as a result of changes cannot be reduced to a simple set of its components. These processes are amenable to research and scientific prediction only in a new system of coordinates and concepts, provided that accidents, fluctuations, and leaps in development are included, creating a heuristic situation of scientific search aimed at discovering the moving and uncertain phenomena of modern culture. Such an “expanded view” (a term from the Matyushin-Sterligov art system is used) makes possible a deeper understanding of the processes and creativity and some particular manifestations of modern artistic culture, such as performances, installations and improvisations. In postmodernism, to characterize these phenomena, the concepts of “rhizome” and “fold” are used, denoting the fundamental “non-structural and non-linear” organization of the object of study, capable of immanent and autochthonous mobility (Deleuze, Guattari). For a productive study of postmodernism, the synergetic method of analogy should be used, which acquires various modifications depending on the specifics of the conceptual field used as the starting point of the analogy. Thus, to study the culture of postmodernism as an open system, the analogy method is modified as a method of analogy with information exchange. Cultural processes are studied as complex systems, and therefore it is possible to use the fractal analogy method. If these processes are studied as nonlinearly developing systems, then the method of analogy with nonlinear development is used. In the processes of cultural research, which set the task of identifying the patterns of order formation processes, the method of analogy with growth points is used." Various aspects of the method of studying by analogy form the general methodological basis for the study of postmodern culture.

To characterize postmodernism, we should add the gaming principle, noted by many researchers. The emphatically ironic, playful mode of self-determination, characteristic of the postmodernist worldview, was reflected not only in the artistic practice of this movement, but also in the very style of philosophizing on this topic.

A game There is a way to violate any one-dimensional logic, to go beyond it.

The game is by its nature non-utilitarian, permeated with an aesthetic principle, self-valued and homemade. Indeed, the gaming principle, which has methodological significance for postmodernism, manifests itself in the sphere of existence of a work of art. The metasemantics characteristic of postmodern works is achieved using various connotative means. However, all these means can be described in just one word - game. In the multi-valued semantic space of an artistic performance, the viewer has the right to take risks, choosing his version from among possible interpretations. Then he considers the result of the spectacle as his own find, as the result of his own free choice.

Thanks to the play principle embedded in a postmodern work of art, “the work of releasing the symbolic energy” of the aesthetic object is carried out. J.-F. Lyotard assigns this role to language games. A playful experiment with reality is possible in the field of any textual space, be it artistic creativity or everyday behavior. Due to the implementation of the game principle, the free movement of meanings from text to context and vice versa increases. The game becomes a means of combining and shifting meanings. In a game situation, the “folding” of the semantic field clearly manifests itself - the ease of movement from one semantic plane to another, the conventionality of the boundaries of conceptual and living space. Narrative folds, naturally growing out of the ontological contiguity of postmodern values, create a ribbed, ironic atmosphere of the open.

Structuralism, which became one of the immediate forerunners of postmodernism, was characterized by R. Barth as follows: it “can be defined historically as a transition from symbolic consciousness to paradigmatic consciousness; there is a history of a sign, and this is the history of its “realizations”. Postmodernism is rightly viewed as a step in the interpretation of mental structures.

Dissatisfaction with the historical discourse, which discards individual details and processes and fixes attention on the main development, stimulated a turn to the analysis of structure, to the search for the atypical. This atypicality is reflected in formalism and, consequently, in the structure of the cultural text itself. The process of awareness of the world and man moved into the sphere of “designation” of objective and subjective realities with the aim of subsequent knowledge of the “signified” and “signifier”, as well as the study of the “designation” process itself. In postmodernism, a person is identified with a text, since the ontology of language and text thickens and crystallizes in the intellectual atmosphere.

One of the prominent representatives of postmodernism, I. Hassan, identified the characteristic features of this phenomenon. The philosopher noted the terminological ambiguity of postmodernism. According to him, the term “contains an objection to itself from within.” Being a product of modern culture, postmodernism, like a palimpsest, "absorbs many features of previous movements. Half-erased signs and texts of past cultures appear on the transparent fabric of modernity, making adjustments to it. Postmodernism combines diachronicity and synchronicity of theoretical thought. Being a theoretical justification for the second half of the 20th century c., postmodernism “has evoked two deities acting in two directions” - the Apollonian vision, general and rational, and the Dionysian feeling, aesthetic at its core, the aestheticization of being inherent in postmodernism makes one wonder whether this movement does not embody an exclusively artistic tendency of vision. world? Indeed, contemporary art is the most accurate identification of postmodernist quests.

Analyzing the “indeterminism” characteristic of postmodernism, Hassan notes that certain aspects of this concept can be isolated from the following words: openness, heresy, pluralism, eclecticism, random choice, rebellion, deformation. A number of terms characterizing incompleteness give an idea of ​​its other features: anti-creativity, difference, discreteness, disjunction, disappearance, decomposition, dedefinition, demystification, detotalization, delegitimization. Terminological specificity sets the researcher up for the fundamental “incompleteness”, the destruction of integrity, which characterize postmodernism as a living process of modern culture, which is in constant development and, apparently, has not yet reached its apogee. Due to terminological uncertainty, Deleuze argued that postmodernism uses concepts such as “black holes”, “blurred aggregates”, “zones of proximity”, “Riemannian spaces”, “bifurcations”, which can be used by philosophers, scientists and artists. Their apparent metaphorical nature is only visible. In fact, metaphor “captures” processes of reality that do not have stable scientific formulations. The use of metaphors and concepts from parallel activities should lead to unexpected coincidences, semantic similarities and heuristic findings.

A prominent researcher of postmodernism, I. Ilyin, rightly points out the existence of an interconnected complex - “poststructuralist, deconstructivist and postmodernist”, which has a unity of foundations and paradigms. In this unity, poststructuralism appears as a unique aesthetic concept, deconstructivism as a method of analytical procedures of artistic phenomena based on postmodern ideas, and postmodernism as a general mentality modern era, existing autonomously, but not without the participation of two other components of the specified complex.

Postmodernism is characterized by the use of purely technical techniques resulting from accidental “slip-of-slips”, gaps in the manuscript, stitches, lengths and voids in the text in the fundamental desire to “not put an end to it”, etc.

Through all these signs passes in a single impulse the will to incompleteness, affectation, body politics, knowledge of the body, eroticism of the body, affectation in everything related to the individual as the main goal of humanistic discourse in the West. Therefore we can call this tendency indeterminism, thus emphasizing its pluralistic character...

Turning to border areas testifies to the postmodern expansion of “mental space”, the desire to expand the “borders of the world”, and natural curiosity.

The plurality of differences in the themes and stylistics of postmodernism is united and converges in three main theses.

First, people do not have access to reality and therefore do not have the means to reach the truth. Secondly, reality is inaccessible because a person is a prisoner of language, which gives form to thoughts before there is an opportunity to think, and therefore there is no way for a person to adequately express what he is thinking about. Third, man creates reality through language, and therefore the nature of reality is determined by those who have the opportunity and power to shape language." These theses emphasize the importance of the media in shaping public opinion and influencing the image of reality.

I. Hassan notes the most characteristic differences identified in the work of postmodernist thinkers. He points to:

• ? intertextuality and semiotics (Y. Kristeva);
• ? hermeneutics of the suspect (P. Ricoeur);
• ? “critique of beatitude and pedagogy of ignorance” (R. Barth); schizoanalysis by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari;
• ? humanism of the unreal (M. Foucault);
• ? grammatology of differences (J. Derrida);
• ? the policy of delegitimization (J.-F. Lyotard);
• ? “paracriticism and parabiography” (I. Hassan);
• "deformity and mutations (L. Fiedler);
• ? “doubting imagination” (M. Galineski);
• ? “superfiction and supergame” (R. Federman);
• ? a new phase of psychoanalysis of intimacy (N. Holland);
• ? theater of the impossible (G. Blau).

Thus, all this confirms the diversity of indetermination, or decreativity, or, otherwise, the anonymous impulse of the present moment, leading us back to the middle of the century with its Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics and Gödel's incompleteness theorem in all logical systems...

Postmodernism is most manifested in modern artistic creativity, and its characteristics are directly related to artistic culture as a whole. The uniqueness of modern humanism is permeated by “ambiguity, indecision, dissipation and deconstruction in art and in its theories,” and “all ambiguity is liberal; it prepares us to accept the multiplicity of creativity and increases our tolerance for differences of all kinds.” The analysis made by I. Hassan and other researchers leads to the conclusion that art culture postmodernism is fundamentally heterogeneous and multiple in the forms and methods of its manifestations. From this also follows the problem unresolved by the thinker about the boundaries of postmodernism and the limits of its expansion. Indeterminism and uncertainty imply limitlessness, but postmodernism has boundaries. Apparently, the concept of boundaries in relation to a given cultural phenomenon also requires special understanding and definition and implies a diffusion of meanings. Perhaps it is the borderline forms of postmodernism that represent the most eloquent characteristic of this phenomenon.

R. Barth argues that structuralism as a movement in science acts as an “intellectual” objectification of human thinking and creativity. He writes that

There are writers, artists, musicians, in whose eyes the operation of structure... represents a special type of human practice, analysts and creators should be united under common sign, to whom one might give the name structural man; This person is determined... by the nature of his imagination, or, better to say, the ability to imagine...

A “structural person” is the owner of a special type of thinking; he is able to view reality as a structure. The study and mastery of this structure is possible through the mastery of cultural “texts” and the creation of new structures from them. Thus, the emphasis moves from reality to metareality. In fact, this is what happens in modern culture: cultural environment becomes the main human habitat. The second reality replaces the first. Postmodernism theoretically postulates these priorities.

Difficulties in assessing postmodernism stem from the incompleteness of the process of this phenomenon, from its intertwining with the ongoing processes of modern culture. Reflecting the transitional era, postmodernism is the elimination of the “logocentric cultural paradigm with its monotheism, the presumption of the Ought, the dictates of “legislative reason”. This trend expresses the painful, crisis state of modern philosophy. The entire postmodern game with meanings is carried out in the name of searching for new integrity, new attractors such integrity. However, this search is extremely difficult in the conditions of a consumer society, the values ​​of which are primitive, stable and enshrined in the mass consciousness. Postmodernist discourse reflects the consciousness of the intellectual elite, which does not accept the primitive values ​​of mass consciousness.

There were similar periods of crisis in the history of philosophy, when, for example, ancient sophistry, later medieval scholasticism and even later the Enlightenment turned to the search for truth with the help of linguistic constructive forms.

The significance of postmodernism lies in creating the preconditions for a new formulation of the problem of individual freedom and responsibility. The merit of postmodernism is the demonstration of a multimodal consideration of culture, as well as the self-sufficiency of creativity and creative personality.

The nature and problems of postmodernism lie in its fundamental dialogism, which is manifested in the installation of Western culture on the culture of the East. This orientation gives a chance for dialogic mutual understanding and complementation, as well as overcoming the self-isolation of Western and Eastern cultures.

Today, Western society is in a critical situation, moving between extreme states - the absolute dominance of the structures of capitalist production and market relations, reflected in social psychology and aesthetics, and the absolute dominance of the social way of labor. The modern historical mission of “post-capitalism” and “post-socialism” is the path of social, cultural, artistic development contained in the creation of a new type of mentality. This new mentality must unite two polar types with their internal dialectical-dialogical meaning.

Postmodernism, being the overcoming of modernism, which personifies the era of confrontation and mutual negation of not only styles of thinking and types of artistic creativity, but also social systems, becomes a reflection of the historical and cultural situation of social, scientific and artistic pluralism.

Elements included in big system human culture, are diverse and disparate both in nature and in origin, they develop according to autonomous laws, but within the general system strict diachrony is observed, ensuring mutual dialogical coexistence. Historical-cultural, social, socio-psychological, aesthetic and artistic dialogue is the dichotomy of elite and mass cultures, the differences between elite and mass consciousness. For the culture of the 20th century. characterized by a split into elite and mass. Such a split

"became especially dangerous in the conditions of the maturation of the revolution, when the mass became the main striking force in the destruction of the existing social order, because its activity is manifested precisely in destruction, and creation is the privilege of the spiritual elite - scientific, artistic, political, religious."

However, for the history of culture, the essence of the problem lies not in its very division into mass and elite, but in their relationship.

Thus, postmodernism “highlights” the problem of elite and mass consciousness and their interaction, conceptually but denoting the existing contradictions. The methodological “amalgam” of the problem is the postmodern concept of “fold”, used, for example, by M. Heidegger, Foucault and Deleuze. Thus, according to Deleuze, the “fold” is a difference, a fold that distinguishes and at the same time can itself be distinguished. The concept of “fold” directly refers to many communities of social life, separated by differences in values, interests, lifestyles, goals, etc. The concept of “fold” implies a variety of semantic modifications that accurately reproduce shades of meaning, speciation and variants of the relationship between elite and mass consciousness , also taken in heterogeneous combinations. Thus, the concepts of “folding”, “gyrus”, “bending”, “bending”, “bending”, “bending” reflect various sides and facets of social, cultural and artistic “spaces”, as well as the nuances of interactions. Also close to the concept of “fold” are the meanings of the phenomena of “doubleness”, “Other”, “reflection”, “interposition”.

Heidegger explored the fold in the aspect of the duality of the fold, which is reproduced along two distinguishable sides, but these sides also correlate with each other. For methodological accuracy, it seems necessary to imagine a cultural space that can be “bent” and consider its various planes, which have qualitative specificity and features. Thus, elitist and mass consciousness, while mating and being in mutual dependence and cultural proximity, are nevertheless of different qualities and opposite in many characteristics; they are located in different planes of the “folded surface.” It is clear that the “fold” is a figurative ideal model of the relationships between different but interrelated cultural phenomena. The figurative idea of ​​“folding”, “overlapping”, “bending-unbending”, “tearing”, “wrapping”, etc. creates the opportunity to analyze the diversity of modes of elite and mass consciousness in modern artistic culture.

Introduction

Object of study This topic is Postmodernism in the culture of the 20th century, which is not surprising because in our time there is no such frequently used and, at the same time, more vague concept than postmodernism. And the point is not only in its vastness, versatility and eclecticism - after all, postmodernism is associated with a wide range of phenomena in various fields of culture of the late twentieth century: art, philosophy, science, politics - which in itself creates difficulties in its interpretation. The main problem is the lack of a more or less clear idea of ​​the essence of postmodernism, of what is hidden behind this catchy and somewhat bewitching word, which can be heard so often on television and in films, and encountered in magazines and fiction.

The vast majority of those who use this term are unlikely to be able to properly explain its meaning, but at the same time, everyone tries to give it any meaning convenient for themselves. Meanwhile, problem postmodernism today is one of the most discussed in scientific circles for at least two decades, so it is extremely important to understand its essential characteristics, time of emergence and role in the formation of modern culture.

The relevance of research This topic is that postmodern culture is one of the manifestations of the post-industrial world, the life and history of which are largely determined by changes in technology, economics, society and culture. These changes matured and took place throughout the second half of the 20th century. and in many ways determined both the surrounding reality and the inner appearance of a person.

Main goal This work is an analysis of postmodernism of social life with its instability, unpredictability, risk of reversibility, and its influence on the development contemporary art mass

culture.

The set goal involves solving several tasks :

· Analyze the emergence and development of postmodernism in culture and art, identify the main features and characteristics of postmodernism.

· analysis of postmodern trends in art.

· analysis of postmodernism and mass culture.

· consider the artistic practice of postmodernism as

a specific indicator of the Russian cultural atmosphere

The structure of this work was determined in accordance with the need to achieve the goal of the work and solve the assigned problems. The work consists of an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

1. The emergence and development of postmodernism in culture and art.

Postmodernism is a collective designation of trends in the cultural identity of developed Western countries. Postmodernism (or “postmodern”) literally means that which is after “modernity,” or modernity.

Postmodernism is a relatively recent phenomenon: its age is about a quarter of a century. It is, first of all, the culture of a post-industrial, information society. At the same time, it goes beyond culture and, to one degree or another, manifests itself in all spheres of public life, including economics and politics. Because of this, society turns out to be not only post-industrial and informational, but also postmodern. Postmodernism manifested itself most clearly in art.

The etymology of the term "postmodern" dates back to 1917. It was first used by the German philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz in his work “The Crisis of European Culture.” It was about a new man called to overcome the decline. Postmodernism was seen as a way for European culture to emerge from the deep crisis into which modernism, stricken by the ulcers of nihilism and decadence, had led it. This was just a paraphrase of Nietzsche's idea of ​​the "superman".

The second time this term, independently of Pannwitz, is used by the Spanish critic F. de Onis. For him, postmodernity acts as an intermediate period (1905-1914) between the first stage of modernism (1896-1905) and the second, stronger stage - the stage of “ultramodernism” (1914-1932).

The third time this word appears in a one-volume presentation (1947) by the American philosopher D. Somerville of the multi-volume work of the English historian A. Toynbee “A Study in History.” Here, “postmodern” means the current, modern period of Western culture, which began as early as 1875.

However, all three cases mentioned are not directly related to the modern meaning of the term “postmodernism”. German philosopher V. Welsh, a recognized authority in the interpretation of postmodernism, calls them “premature.” In his opinion, the American literary critic M. Howe was the one who, in 1959, was the first to use the term “postmodern” in his modern meaning, launching a debate about postmodernity in American literary criticism that continues today.

To date, postmodernism has gone through all the main stages of its formation. At the end of the 50s. its first signs appeared in Italian architecture and American literary criticism. Then they appeared in the art of other European countries, the USA and Japan, and by the end of the 60s. spread to other areas of culture. In the 70s there is a final self-affirmation and recognition of postmodernism as a special phenomenon, and it appears as a kind of sensation. In the 80s postmodernism is spreading throughout the world and becoming an intellectual fashion, a kind of special sign of the times, a kind of pass to the circle of the chosen and initiated. If earlier you had to be a modernist and avant-garde, now it has become difficult not to be a postmodernist. In the early 90s. the excitement around postmodernism subsides, and it enters a period of calmer existence.

The English historian A. Toynbee took 1875 as the starting point of the postmodern era, linking it with the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics. For some, this era began immediately after the Second World War. Most authors place the beginning of postmodernism in the mid-70s, although opinions differ on the more precise date of its birth. In the 80s, postmodernism received the status of a concept, thanks, first of all, to the work of Lyotard, who extended the discussion about postmodernism to the field of philosophy.

Proponents of postmodernism believe that postmodernism is a special spiritual state and frame of mind that can and actually arose in a variety of eras at their final stages. Postmodernism in this sense is a transhistorical phenomenon; it passes through all or many historical eras, and it cannot be isolated into any separate and special era. In particular, this opinion is shared by the Italian postmodernist writer U. Eco. Lyotard is inclined to the same opinion, believing that Aristotle can be considered the first postmodernist. Canadian political scientists A. Croaker and D. Cook call Augustine the Blessed as such.

Others, on the contrary, define postmodernism precisely as a special era that began with the emergence of post-industrial civilization. This opinion is shared by H. Küng and W. Welsh and others. It seems that, despite all the differences, these two approaches can be reconciled. Indeed, postmodernism is, first of all, a state of mind. However, this state has been going on for quite a long time, which allows us to talk about an era, although this era will apparently become a transitional one.

2. The main features and characteristics of the culture of postmodernism.

The culture of postmodernism has ontological, epistemological, historical, cultural and aesthetic parameters. Ontologically, the phenomenon of postmodernism is associated with understanding the fact that an object resists human influence, responding to it with resistance: that the order of things “takes revenge” on our attempts to remake it, dooming any transformative projects to inevitable collapse.

Postmodernism arises as an awareness of the exhaustion of ontology, within the framework of which reality could be subject to violent transformation, transfer from an “unreasonable” state to a “reasonable” one. The qualification of such an ontology as “modernist” and historically exhausted is at the same time the proclamation of a new era - postmodernism.

Skeptical withdrawal from the goal of transforming the world entails a rejection of attempts to systematize it: the world not only does not lend itself to human efforts to remake it, but also does not fit into any theoretical schemes. The event always precedes the theory (Baudrillard).

Anti-systematicity as characteristic postmodernism does not come down to a simple rejection of claims to the integrity and completeness of the theoretical coverage of reality - it is associated with the formation of a non-classical “ontology of the mind”. The point is the objective impossibility of recording the presence of rigid, self-closed systems, be it in the sphere of economics, or politics, or art.

The immediate source of the postmodern shift in the epistemological plane was “deconstruction”, in which classical philosophy disavowed as “metaphysics of presence.” The main intuition of the latter is the absolute completeness of meaning, its total presence, which knows no voids or gaps.

Classical discourse therefore inevitably acts as a discourse of representation - the presentation of some original, primary semantic content in derivative, secondary, derivative forms. Every individual event receives meaning here only through participation in the absolute fullness of the original meaning; it is true only insofar as it can be raised to the original meaning as its source.

In the classical paradigm, all contents of thought are only representations of meaning as a fundamental principle - substance and source. All signs of culture are significant here only due to the primary meaning that appears through them - the “transcendental signified.” To deny this intuition the right to universality and to focus attention on the problems of continuum and absence means to stop looking at events as a reflection of the truth of being, and to turn to them in their self-sufficiency.

Thus, there is an exit from the linguistic plane to the plane of “eventfulness” and “corporality”. This comes in the form of the “philosophy of singularities” (Vire Ilio) and the “thinking of seduction” (Baudrillard), the “thinking of intensities” (Lyotard) and the “philosophy of Desire” (Deleuze and F. Guattari).

The confrontation between postmodernity and postmodernism (as the life and death of culture) is especially noticeable in philosophy, where it arose at the very Lately. The French were the first to say "e". François Llotard came up with the concept of postmodern knowledge. In a nutshell, its essence is “war

whole” (this is how his article “Answer to the question of what postmodernism is”) ends.

Hegel once proclaimed: truth is the whole. For postmodernists, the situation is the other way around: the whole is a dangerous delusion of thought, the idea of ​​totality leads to totalitarianism, and from there terror is just a stone's throw away. Truth is pluralistic.

A person is more often a case than a choice. This is already an attack against those varieties of individualism that rely on a free individual who consciously chooses his own destiny. In postmodernism, the concept of a subject endowed with conscious goal-setting and will disappears. The unconscious components of spiritual life come to the fore. Hence the keen interest in myth as a panacea for the rationalistic ills of our time. But myth is again seen as a form of affirmation of the unique, not as a way to unite people: monomythologism, according to Marquard, is just as harmful as monotheism. “Praise be to polytheism,” proclaims Marquardt.

An example of modern monomythologism is the “myth of the French Revolution” as the only possible option history of France; history is multivariate, and a view that asserts the opposite is dangerous. Marquardt advocates pluralism everywhere, especially in philosophy. He is an opponent of the “right-thinking monologue”, focused on the uniqueness of reason and the prohibition of everything else.

In postmodern philosophy, the most important category of new thinking - time - is ignored. That is why the attempt of postmodernists to rely on Heidegger, the “last of the Mohicans” of the great German philosophy, looks unsuccessful. He is great as a philosopher of culture, who foresaw the milestone that culture has now reached. The hand on the dial of history has approached the number 12, how to push it back! This image now dominates the minds of scientists and politicians. And the philosopher has long spoken about time as fulfilled, as a kind of integrity in which the future, present and past merge into one.

We are, of course, not talking about physical, but about socio-cultural time, about that time. This time, like space, can be covered with a single glance; one can “move” in it, using one or another experience accumulated by humanity.

Postmodernism, opposing the idea of ​​the whole, breaking the “connection of times,” is unable to penetrate to the essence of the problem, it simply ignores it. The concept of postmodernity as the highest type of modernity is designed to solve the problem. Modernity means opposition to the unmodern, outdated. The past is considered as a prerequisite for the present, as a lower stage, “removed” by subsequent development. Postmodernity differs from modernity in that it sees in the past not just a prerequisite, but its integral part; it is the merging of what is and what was. And another important point is the search in the past for what is lost in the present.

We are, of course, talking about cultural achievements. Postmodernity brings them together. The concept of modernity is the conquest of the New Time as an era that contrasted itself with previous periods of social development. It was then that historicism arose - the requirement to consider phenomena in the specific conditions of their occurrence and in the light of the general movement forward. Awareness of the present as postmodernity has arisen in our days; it does not imply the abolition, but the deepening of the principle of historicism. The causal explanation remains, but it is supplemented by a direct correlation of the result achieved in the past with the current situation, recognition of the reference, exemplary nature of this result.

The idea of ​​postmodernity as hyper-modernity is especially important for new political thinking. Humanity has come to a dangerous point beyond which there is nothing, the “end of history” - a nuclear outbreak and self-destruction. The only possible reasonable path is back to the “zero option”, to the destruction and prohibition of atomic weapons. The ideal state is in the past, when the world did not know the means of suicide, the future is possible only as the past.

3. Postmodernism and Mass culture

In cultural and aesthetic terms, postmodernism acts as the development of the experience of the artistic avant-garde (“modernism” as an aesthetic phenomenon). However, unlike the avant-garde, a number of movements of which did not break with the didactic-prophetic understanding of art characteristic of the classics, postmodernism completely erases the line between previously independent spheres of spiritual culture and levels of consciousness - between “scientific” and “everyday” consciousness, “high art” and "kitsch".

Postmodernism finally embraces the transition from “work” to “construction”, from art as an activity of creating works to activity regarding this activity. Postmodernism in this regard is a reaction to the changing place of culture in society.

The postmodernist attitude towards culture arises as a result of a violation of the “purity” of such a phenomenon as art. The condition for its possibility is the initial generation of meaning, going back to the creative principle (subject), the original creative act.

If these conditions are violated - and this is exactly what happens in post-industrial society with its endless possibilities of technical reproduction - then the existence of art in its previous (classical or modernist) forms is called into question.

Another side of the change in the status of culture is that today's artist never deals with “pure” material - the latter is always culturally mastered in one way or another. His “work” is never primary, existing only as a network of allusions to other works, and therefore as a collection of quotations.

Postmodernism consciously reorients aesthetic activity from “creativity” to compilation and citation, from the creation of “original works” to collage.

At the same time, the strategy of postmodernism is not to affirm destruction as opposed to creativity, manipulation and play with quotes - serious creation, but to distance itself from the oppositions themselves “destruction - creation”, “seriousness - play”.

A sign of the expressed cultural situation are quotation marks, which are placed every now and then as an indication of the non-conditionality of any significations.

Postmodernism owes its popularity not so much to the authors who actually inspired the corresponding shift in culture, but to the avalanche of critical literature that formed something like the ideology of postmodernism.

4. Postmodernism in art

In the seventies, new trends in architecture appeared. They even name the exact date - July 15, 1973. On this day, in the American city of St. Louis, a block of new comfortable houses was blown up, awarded in the fifties as an example of the embodiment of the most progressive building ideals, in which now no one wanted to live: it was too sterile and everything looked monotonous. A criminal element began to nest in the empty houses, and they decided to get rid of the “model” quarter.

An example of the latest architecture is the art gallery building in Stuttgart, designed by the English architect J. Stirling. It combines elements of a wide variety of architectural styles and eras. The facade is decorated with multi-colored lamps in the form of long pipes running along the entire contour of the building - an association arises with industrial construction, where the coloring of pipes pursues purely utilitarian purposes. Inside the building there are bright halls, glass and steel, and suddenly you come across columns, as if borrowed from an Egyptian temple. The courtyard is made to look like an “antique ruin”, covered with ivy; there are ancient statues here, and several slabs are piled on top of each other - like an “archaeological excavation”.

We usually call such architecture, which reflects dissatisfaction with faceless rationality and a craving for the past, for tradition, postmodernism. In this case, the translation of the term is inaccurate, because by the “modern” style we are accustomed to understand the architectural principles of the end of the past - the beginning of this century, when excessive pretentiousness of forms dominated.

These principles were overcome by “modern,” functionalist architecture, which exposed structures, eliminated “excesses,” and subordinated form to function.

Therefore, the newest architecture that has replaced it, designed to satisfy man’s craving for entertainment, is more appropriately called “post-modern.”

The book of the English architect Charles Jencks, “The Language of Postmodern Architecture,” contains a program for new architecture:

“The times of radical restructuring of urban structures have sunk into the past, the housing needs of the population have been fully satisfied, the city has long ceased to meet the needs of motor transport main goal city ​​planners. A period of reassessment of values ​​has begun: new urban architecture ceases to draw creative strength from futuristic visions. On the contrary, in her thoughts she turns to the eternal - to history.”

In modern Western painting and sculpture, a feeling of a dead end has also arisen (from which there is only one way - back), but unlike architecture, the situation here is bleak.

“For the first time, the concept of avant-garde has become useless,” stated the Dokvmenta-Press bulletin, published on international exhibition Fine Arts in Kassel (August 1987).

The philosophy of postmodernism is intended to substantiate postmodernist innovations in art, to justify its self-destruction, but is unable to interpret the more serious positive phenomena of current spiritual life, at least the same architecture. Postmodernism struggles with the whole, but for the architect his creation always appears as a whole. The pluralism advocated by postmodernism is good, but in moderation.

Here is a comprehensive description of postmodernism given by I. Hassan:

1. Uncertainty, the cult of ambiguities, errors, omissions.

2. Fragmentation and installation principle.

3. “Decanonization”, the fight against traditional value centers: the sacred in culture, man, ethnicity, logos, author’s priority.

4. “Everything happens on the surface” – without psychological

and symbolic depths, "we are left with the play of language, without the Ego."

5. Silence, refusal of mimesis and the pictorial principle.

6. Irony, and a positive one, affirming a pluralistic universe.

7. Mixing genres, high and low, stylistic syncretism.

8. Theatricality of modern culture, working for the public, mandatory consideration of the audience.

9. Immanence - the fusion of consciousness with the means of communication, the ability to adapt to their renewal and reflect on them.

Despite the eclecticism and sketchiness of this list, it somehow conveys the tense, contradictory spirit of the culture of postmodernism, its apocalyptic moods, the pathos of cheerful destruction, shocking character, and irony.

However, the concept of postmodernism has recently been interpreted so broadly that its boundaries have become extremely vague. Suffice it to recall the music of Schoenberg, abstract paintings Jackson Pollock, the novels of Claude Simon, in order to feel that in the culture of our century traditional ideas about harmony, artistic illusion, integrity, organicity and intelligibility of a work are losing force.

The matter does not come down to total denial - our time affirms the need for more complex forms of harmony and thinking, taking into account the increase in entropy.

We live in an era of coexistence of different political, economic, cultural systems, ways of thinking and life, but we feel like a single whole - humanity, solving the common task of survival for all.

5 . Postmodernism as an indicator of the Russian cultural atmosphere

The transformation of Russian society, caused by a series of events in the political and spiritual life of post-Soviet Russia, is non-linear, non-classical, with significant extraordinary consequences, which means that traditional methods of overcoming crisis situations could not be productive. They did not adequately reflect the degree of confusion and interdependence of social phenomena that actually existed in the constantly changing socio-political situation in Russia. Postmodernism is one of the brightest manifestations of the reaction of the Russian sociocultural space to the disruption of ideas about the cyclical nature of the development of society.

Postmodernism in Russia is due to the special difficulties that Russian society encountered during the transition to information civilization, as well as the fact that for Russia, unlike European and other countries, postmodernism has become not only a trend in philosophy, literature and art, but also destructuring in economic, political, technocratic terms, is reflected in the everyday life of Russian society.

In social terms, postmodernism in Russia manifested itself most clearly: the collapse of the ideological attitudes of the recent past, the departure from social regulation and control, the lifting of the ban on one’s own taste, the emergence of the possibility of personal choice of life position.

The severity and depth of sociocultural mutations in post-Soviet Russia determined those distinctive characteristics of domestic postmodernity,

which distinguish it from its foreign counterpart. This is the unconditional politicization of all social and cultural events, total pluralism, eclecticism, reflecting the real discreteness of the social life of the country in the transition period.

Russian postmodernism gave national and world culture new names and bright works, identified many problems and themes in art, proposed a new approach in the search for the meanings and principles of the future culture, and contributed to the development of a new holistic, polyphonic and pluralistic view of the world. You can treat this sociocultural phenomenon differently, but you cannot help but accept it, much less deny its existence and underestimate the impact it has on national culture. Postmodernism in Russia is not just a movement in art, literature, philosophy - it is, in our opinion, a worldview, a concept of creativity and a lifestyle.

The specificity of Russian postmodernism is due to the uncertainty of its status in domestic science, in particular in cultural studies, the dependence of its interpretation on the personal biases of academic researchers, often negative, while the essence, determinants, patterns, dynamics and trends in the development of postmodernism as a phenomenon of Russian culture have not yet been sufficiently studied.

The culturological approach we have specified to the structural and conceptual side of the studied phenomenon of Russian culture differs from the traditional critical approach, which was also the motivating reason for the research undertaken. The degree of scientific development of the problem.

Scientific research in the field of postmodern issues in Russia inevitably acquires a secondary character, since the phenomenon of postmodernism is still of “foreign” origin. In Russia, the study of postmodernism followed two paths: the publication of translated articles by Western authors and the reflection of domestic authors on this Western phenomenon, as well as a retrospective understanding of certain historical and cultural moments in Russian culture and some works of art that were considered possible to be called “postmodernist”. Thus, in many ways

We owe the spread of postmodernist ideas to the activities of translators, who are also philosophers, art critics, cultural experts, and literary critics. Among them V.V. Bibikhin, V.Ya. Ivbulis, N. B. Mankovskaya and others.

In Russia, the following scientists were engaged in postmodern philosophy: V.M. Dianova, I.P. Ilyin, A.A. Kostikova, V.V. Khalipov, A.E. Chuchin-Rusov, A.K. Yakimovich et al.

Conclusion

Main historical events, which should be considered the beginning of the formation of postmodern culture, are the changes that occurred in economically developed countries in the second half of the sixties, which in general can be characterized as the beginning of the transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial, or information society. It was then that the latest electronic technologies began to develop, which would later form the basis of postmodern culture. The advent of postmodernity is inextricably linked with the formation of a post-industrial or information society, the basis of the theory of which was laid in the 60-70s by D. Bell, D. Riesman, A. Toffler, Z. Brzezinski, J. Galbraith, A. Touraine and others

Postmodernism is a valuable segment of the cultural and historical process of the last third of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. It has unique specificity due to socio-political, economic, psychological and socio-cultural factors of development. The study of the sociocultural experience of postmodernity in the cultural space opens up new horizons of knowledge, new, non-trivial associations, and, consequently, new opportunities for contemplation and practice. Postmodern artistic practice is an indicator of a specific cultural atmosphere in society.

List of used literature.

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4. Gurevich P.S. Culturology. – M.: Project, 2003. – 336 p.

Gulyga A.V. What is postmodernity? // Questions of philosophy. – 1988. – No. 12.

Jenks C. A. The language of postmodern architecture. – M. 1985

Jenks C. A. The language of postmodern architecture. – M. 1985.

I. Hassan. Making sense: the trials of postmodern discourse.– "New literary history", vol. 18, #2, 1987.