Postmodernism as a Political Wave of Thinking

Before a concept of the Postmodernism there was another so-called the Modernism. It came into existence to the modern period combined with industrialisation, market-oriented capitalist economies, new social classes, democracy, and Enlightenment valuest- ”reason and progress”. This controversial philosophy, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, it is possible that ”the establishment of objective facts and universal values.”(Heywood, 2012)

One of the most ambiguous terminology and exciting the period of Postmodernism is the term” Postmodernism” itself, critics and scholars disagree about it, of postmodernism; Due to the multiplicity of its concepts and its implications from critic to another. There are a lot of meanings that made the concept of Postmodernism contradictory with each other and different and overlapping knew Dictionary.com 2016 the term is: ”a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970 sin reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established Modernism, especially a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often play full illusion, decoration, and complexity.”(Dic, 2016) , and in Merriam-Webster is: ”of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to Modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature).”

Clearly, it has been shown that the ideas are relatively different between Postmodernism concepts and former Modernism. There are those who believe that the Postmodernism is radically totally different on Modernism ideas. Some of them believed it is possible to consider that the writers and artists in the premodern stage that they as the post-modernists, even though the concept was not formulated at the time, this is the closest to the controversy that sees Freuds theories of the unconscious that they are already present in the German romantic thought. The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas discussed: that Modernism project was never finished yet, as this project continues to seek to achieve its objectives. In this, he is intended to enlighten values of the mind and social justice. Whatever the use, it is clear that the theory of interpretation of social and cultural developments through the Metanarrative are no longer possible or acceptable, that it is no longer possible for ideas to be closely linked with historical reality. Everything is text and image.(Carter, 2012; Habermas, 2015)

Brian McHale, another important postmodern theorist differentiates modernism from postmodernism through the concept of the dominant. He states that the dominant of modernist fiction is epistemological, that is, modernist fiction foregrounds questions like: What is there to be known? Who knows it? How can I know this world of which I am a part? What are the limits of the knowable? And so on. Postmodernism, on the other hand, has an ontological dominant, therefore it foregrounds questions like: Which world is this? What is to be done? Which of my selves is going to do it? This shift of dominant, from epistemological to ontological is actually a shift from problems of knowing to problems of being.

The thinkers had been linked between the Postmodernism and societal transformations that taking place in the Post-industrial phase, or the so-called Information Society, as well as a Consumer Society. Thus, the new global conflicts have been associated with economic and political transformations of social and private cultural that characterise the new phase, which entered human after the fall of the Soviet Union. Among other things, this means transformation, abandoning traditional concepts and tools in the analysis of society and state relations, such as social class, ethnic and cultural conflict, or party representation and associative citizens within the state institutions and their access to civil rights, and relations with States regarding the foundations of dependency and control centers of power and their perimeters.

Postmodernism associated with the historic and contextual reference, and the evolution of Western capitalism postmodern socially, economically, politically, and culturally. Also, it has been closely associated with the development of the media. Postmodernism as it came as a reaction to structural linguistics, Western and central statements that refer to the hegemony, domination, exploitation and alienation. Also, Post-modernism had been targeted to undermine Western philosophy, and the erosion of capitalist institutions that control the World, a monopoly on the means of production, and it has the scientific knowledge. Postmodernism has also worked on criticism of the Logos and logic through questioning mechanisms, dispersion and disassembly. Postmodernism has appeared firstly in the field of painting, architecture and civil engineering, before moving to philosophy, literature, art, technology, and the rest of the humanities and knowledge. Postmodernism theory has invaded all the disciplines, such as literature, criticism, art, philosophy, ethics, education, sociology, anthropology, science and culture, economics, politics, and architecture. (Carter, 2012)

In general, the framework of Postmodernism consists of four perspectives toward it. Philosophical perspective that believes Postmodernism is an evidence of vacuum in the absence of modernity itself. The historical perspective that sees the postmodern turn away from the modernity movement, or of a rejection of some aspects. The political ideological perspective that sees the postmodern erosion of the illusions of Western ideology. The Strategic perspective who believes that the approach to the texts of Postmodernism does not comply with methodological standards, there is not a single reading, but in open and multiple reading. (Alruwaili, 2002) Politically, the concept of democracy is moving towards change as the Democratic majority is no longer required as urgent because of the features of the Postmodernism emphasis on the individual as a source of rights and duties, laws and therefore everyone has the right to be represented in power that govern, also has the right to reject any representation in this power, and this is what made the Postmodernism thinkers talking about the field of democracy and not about parliamentary democracy or a democratic majority. Since a decade ago, German writer wrote: ”I can not be beyond politics on the issue of post-modernist.” (Muller,1979) Years has shown that politics and Postmodernism have become inseparable and can not escape them. One of the reasons is that the arguments about the definition of Postmodernism and its evaluation has been by the language of mostly politically negative - and mainly mention the neo-conservative(Newman, 1984)and neo-Marxists.(Eagleton, 1985). There are others in the political left(Russell, 1985) saw their ability toa radical change, but they did not see the actual achievement, while some artists and activists resisted the inclusion of their work within the Postmodernism, fearing retention, and accompanying it disabled their political programs.

Democratically, legitimacy of interior has become insufficient alone to give legitimacy to the regime particularly in the regard to the Third World countries, as the organizations that are active in the field of human rights, election monitoring and the environment, etc. have become other major source of legitimacy through the so-called constitutional engineering that sponsored by the United Nations and that aim to move or shift to the democracy. It does not merely facilitate the peace process and rights activation, but it has become a frame of reference, which is measured on the basis of democracy, regardless of suitability or non-suitability of the environment where it is applied, according to thinkers the postmodernists: the democratic parliamentary representation in all political parties and periodic elections the parliament and councils parliamentary, which is what was produced by Modernism, as well as stemming from the central government that came from needs of the industrial society, and with the changes that are shaking the foundations of industrial society, parliamentary democracy loses its validity in most communities, but it created its own environment, currently subject to the decision of the requirements of diversity and variation process orientations of the people, and the shift from hierarchical organizational basis to networking organization, and the pursuit of great faith to the younger efficiently, which is more mobile and reconstruction according to changing circumstances as well as the trend of sharp focus to distribution and proliferation.(Sellers, 1996).