Postmodernism

Primary Problem: Constructing Trajectories of History and Culture

Talking about "the postmodern" or "postmodernism" presupposes there is/was something known as "modernism" from which, or against which, something can be "post". For philosophers, historians, artists, and theorists who have developed arguments about these historical moments or movements, "Modernism/Modernity" and "Postmodernism" are all caught up in a web of discourses with assumptions and ideologies that need a self-reflexive critique.
Much of the debate presupposes the possibility of a critique of history, conceptualized as having a trajectory, goal, end (telos > teleology), which was, or was not, fulfilled in the modernist philosophies, hopes, and aspirations of the 1930s-1950s.
And since around 2000, a new debate on the "post-postmodern" has opened up. There is a shared sense in many areas of cultural practice and university research that many of the issues in postmodernism are over or assumed, and the we are now in a different global moment, however that it to define.

What was Modernism?

As we know, each discourse concerned with history constructs its own historical objects. Postmodern theory constructs an image of modernism. Was there ever a pre-postmodern consensus about history, identity, core cultural values?

Differentiations:

the idea of the postmodern or postmodernity as an historical condition or position (political/ economic/ social), an era we're still supposedly in regardless of anyone's state of awareness.

vs. an intentional movement in the arts, culture, philosophy, and politics that uses various strategies to subvert what is seen as dominant in modernism or modernity.