Explaining Post-Modernism with Cats
Now that we have discussed What Post-Modernism Is Not – it’s time to get our hands dirty and figure out what it is.
The definition of Post-modernism is as follows: Incredulity to all metanarratives.
This is already getting boring – I’m bringing in pictures of my cats so I don’t lose you.Desmond (left) and Molly (right) are going to help us.
But, what is a metanarrative and how can we be incredulous to them? Fortunately, metanarratives are not complicated, it’s just an obscure word and the concept can be explained by discussing two other simple things – narratives and social constructs. Here we go!
Narrative – The story of an individual thing, group, concept, etc. Your life has a narrative; so does your cat and your oven and that idea you had to start a business. Here are some examples.
Flabby, the goldfish, was taken from the pet store and placed in a glass bowl in a suburban home. He was flushed 6 months later.
The first line of iPhones was very popular but was discontinued when the next model was manufactured. Some people still have them.
So, a narrative is just a story. Easy .
Narrative – “Desmond spends a lot of time on our bed instead of the cat bed we bought for him.”Social Constructs – Concepts that we develop when we see what these narratives have in common.
Goldfish die easily.
iPhones are popular.
Nothing complicated. By looking around us we see themes in our social patterns that we are all familiar with. We may not appreciate these themes but they are part of our society. We all know tough guys who like to wear pink and construction workers who listen to Mozart – but these social constructs are the “norm” based on the majority of the things we see.
Social Construct – “There is always a cat on our bed.” Sheesh.
Metanarrative – The “over-arching story.” Combine these social constructs into a single account and you have a single narrative that tells the whole story.
Here’s the Wikipedia definition of a metanrrative:
encompassing and explaining other ‘little stories’ within totalizing schemes.
Of course, your view of this metanarrative will be different from that of a person in India or someone who is from the future. We develop our view of the metanarrative naturally without stopping to think about it. Uneducated people and scholars all hold to their own views of the over-arching story of mankind.
When Desmond realized that he was only hanging out on our bed because it was the way he had always done things, he opened his mind to new possibilities and started sleeping in the laundry basket. (It also made him more efficient in his task of ‘getting cat hair on clean clothes.’) The average person walks through life being inexplicably guided by their view of the metanarrative. We expect our neighbors to have two cars and our children to sell lemonade in the summer. We expect everyone to share our views about eternity.
As kittens, Molly would stand up and pose for a camera. However, as soon as he knew that he was simply following standard procedure, Desmond refused to comply to society’s expectations and only scowled at the camera. The post-modernist, however, is of a different sort. They recognize that they are walking on a path that society has made for them and consider how they can go their own way. When they realize that they are doing what is expected of them, they stop and re-consider the decision. ” Is this the right thing to do?” they might ask, “or is it just what I am expected to do?”
By questioning the metanarrative, women suffragists realized that they should be allowed to vote – even though most of society had unquestionably accepted the notion that they should not. In the same way, philosophers, like Plato, decided that beyond the physical world was a world we could not see that, unlike our world, is eternal. By giving important melody parts to the bass guitar, instead of the electric lead guitar, Paul McCartney stepped out of the framework of rock music and recorded the first bass guitar solo on “Paperback Writer.” (As you can see, post-modernism is not necessarily new.)
Since everyone knows that “cats don’t wear flannel,” Molly has decided to embrace post-modernism and put on one of my plaid shirts. Desmond has other plans and insists that wearing this shirt will not make her happy. Their existential struggle continues to this day. Next time, we will discuss how this interesting view is misused in our time and what its proper context might be. As always, discuss!
“Got it?”
(W0w, I just found out that Mental Floss, one of my favorite stops on the internet, has linked to this! Thanks, Miss C!)Related Posts
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Great blog post…can’t wait for the next installment.
Thanks. It took me forever to write this one.
That was an awesome post, and your usage of the cats was genius. I’m left feeling like I actually almost understand what a metanarrative is. (and that is SCARY) At the least, I have a better informed idea of what post-modernism is. Thanks.
Thanks. I’ve always said that explaining postmodernism is not hard – but getting past the word metanarrative is the real problem.
So, was modernism simply functioning within a metanarrative?
Well, Jared, that’s what I think. They were studying the heck out of the world, and doing a great job, but when that didn’t turn up any answers people started to disassemble the framework.
Is it possible to say that post-modernism has constrained itself within a metanarrative too? I know this might be tedious, but isn’t the “disassembling the framework of modernism” a metanarrative as well?
Anyway, it was really well explained. Like the post.
-Bill
Bill, that is a good point. A person utilizing a post-modern approach must constantly ask themselves if they are deconstructing the metanarrative – or of they are just creating a new one. Many young people are doing the latter while calling themselves “postmodern.” A good postmodernist simply tries to act outside of the influence of the metanarrative rather than insisting upon their own.
there is an idea floating around out there that this era could better be described as hyper modernity rather than post. It is defined as a tendency to distrust the meta narrative but also distrust the use of science (which was the main tool to test the meta narrative in the modern age.)The distrust of the meta narrative has always been the default mode of philosophers and thinkers though out the ages, even in the modern era. We (in this era)have slipped even deeper into questioning the world around us and no longer think it can be empirically measured to yield data that will help us to figure it out. Our eras definition is extended beyond modernity into hyper modernity because the basic idea of questioning the world around us is still relevant except we do not have the ‘magic’ of science to someday solve all the problems that questioning the meta narrative raises. What do you think of this idea?
Kristen, I think you are right! I meet many people who call themselves “postmodern” who are really just cynical toward establishments. Very few people that I know truly use the postmodern approach but many take the hypermodern approach. I think you’re absolutely correct.
I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, thank you, Jones. It was so easy to follow, and well-written. Please become a professor someday and (regardless of what you’re teaching) pull this out and keep the captioned cat photos, turned into a powerpoint, and explain this to your class full of naive college kids.
You’d be the cool prof that takes time to simply teach these things that we all hear about but don’t really get (or at least I didn’t because I wasn’t a philosophy major, so no one ever taught me), in a really amusing, intelligent way.
Thanks for taking the time it took to teach us something here…don’t you feel like someone should be paying you for this stuff? 😉
Also…I mostly get what your point was when you said:
“A good postmodernist simply tries to act outside of the influence of the metanarrative rather than insisting upon their own.”
But what is really the difference, when one looks at this closely? Or how can you tell?
I too, will look forward to your promised addition to this lesson.
That was simply brilliant. It lays a solid foundation of concepts for building an understanding of post-modernism. My cats enjoyed it too.
As a practitioner of narrative therapy, a form of psychology popular in the family therapy community, and steeped in post-modern terminology, I’ve read entirely too many impenetrable descriptions of post-modernism. They use the technique of deconstruction to shoot down other’s arguments only to construct their own.
I also appreciate how you avoid the trap of equating post modern philosophy with deconstructionism. Just as post-modernism is a viewpoint, deconstructionism is a tool.
Thanks, Mac! Those are some nice words.
Adam, you might wanna look up hyper-rationalism, especially in the context of Habermas or Derrida. Also, the metanarratives in modernity are generally camped according to their eschatologies, as either emancipatory or progressive. So classical liberalism with its faith in the progress of science and human societies is a great example of a progressive metanarrative while Marxism is the quintessential emancipatory one.