"Postmodern"

[Peter Farruggio]

I'm curious if anyone can explain when the word took on a political meaning
and became so popular in Academia.  I left university about 1970.  I had
been active in the broader Social Sciences milieu, especially among
leftists, and I had never heard the term used.    When i returned to grad
school in the mid-90's it was ubiquitous and seemed to mean a sort of
rejection of all "traditional" political tendencies (left as well as right)
and of the concept of historical progressivism (as popularized in the
Enlightenment and continued by marxism) and their replacement by a belief
in relativism and personal agency; although most of the postmodernists I've
seen and read seem to think of themselves as anti-establishment
leftists.  In the late 1960s the New Left was formed to reject the
stodginess of stalinism (as well as its anti-revolutionary practices), and
a romanticized sense of revolutionism became popular among the boomer
generation, but I never heard the term "postmodern" used in this connection
back then.

Just wondering how and when the jump was made from reaction against
modernism in Art to a more political tone for postmodernism.  It occured to
me that maybe the English majors and literary critics became interested in
politics.



At 05:06 AM 8/18/02, you wrote:
>Recently I published an article in AMERICAN SPEECH about the origins of
>the term "postmodern," pushing it back to 1929.  I have now found an
>earlier usage:
>
>1925 _N.Y. Times_ 4 May 17  Here was "post-modern" harmony for an age
>whose "Parsifal' and "Pelleas" are neo-classics.
>
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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