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With the frequent questions about what postmodernism is, I'm surprised to find that Wikipedia has a pretty straightfoward description, allegedly based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which reproduces a lot of the stereotypical answers:
>According to Brian Duignan of the Encyclopædia Britannica, many postmodern claims are a deliberate repudiation of certain 18th-century Enlightenment values. A postmodernist might believe that there is no objective natural reality, and that logic and reason are mere conceptual constructs that are not universally valid. Two other characteristic anti-Enlightenment postmodern practices are a denial that human nature exists, and a (sometimes moderate) skepticism toward claims that science and technology will change society for the better. Postmodernists also believe there are no objective moral values. Postmodern writings often focus on deconstructing the role that power and ideology play in shaping discourse and belief. Postmodern philosophy shares ontological similarities with classical skeptical and relativistic belief systems, and shares political similarities with modern identity politics.[1]
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy
What's wrong with this?
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Postmodernist thought is essential to a thorough and critical understanding of modernity and the contemporary world
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>>9451128
>What's wrong with this?
Nothing's wrong with postmodernism per se.
The reason /lit/ gets triggered by postmodernism is mostly literary rather than cultural in nature; i.e. being annoyed with lazy authors who write a load of hackneyed garbage and then try to justify it by calling it "postmodern", as if writing something bad but being self-aware that it's bad somehow erases its badness. Or to put it another way, "dude I was just pretending to be retarded: The Literary Principle".
This probably sounds like an oddly specific nitpick and not worth being angry about, unless you read a lot of contemporary non-genre fiction, in which case this trend is the bane of your existence because every halfway-intelligent recent uni grad who's just entering the world of publishing had the same idea at the same time to write like this as a crutch for not being able to come up with something that can stand on its own merit, so now whenever you pick up something new there's a 50:50 shot that it's going to be a dull slice-of-life novel with a zany magical realist twist that goes nowhere, and there's no character development or any tangible thematic depth or anything even halfway solid from a philosophical standpoint, and the conclusion will be "dude lol, nothing means anything, not even this novel you just read, story is an arbitrary construct so my story doesn't have any story in it lmao that's the point :^)"
/lit/ is an outlet to REE at this in private
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>>9451427
I feel like this is a huge reduction that does apply in some cases but relies on an ignorant generalisation. But that's just guessing, because
>who reads modern fiction lmao
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>>9451427
>dull slice-of-life novel with a zany magical realist twist that goes nowhere
why do i feel like i've come across this exact trope many times even though i don't read novels?
that's a postmodernist trope? and its point is what exactly?
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>>9451128
>What's wrong with this?
Are you asking if the definition is accurate or if postmodernism itself is wrong?
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>>9451575
the former
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