To what extent is the word postmodern an effective critical term for describing late twentieth-century literature and culture?

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To what extent is the word ‘postmodern’ an effective critical term for describing late twentieth-century literature and culture?

In her article ‘Postmodern Literature does not exist’, Lena Petrović claims that postmodernism, though a valid term in politics and society, is not the correct term to describe the literary and cultural movement of the late twentieth-century.

Postmodernism, in so far as it means an obliteration of this kind of the creative self, its dispersal, to use the current idiom, into a plurality of subject positions inscribed within language, is the negation of art. False and misleading in the literary debate, the term 'postmodern' has its legitimate uses elsewhere, of course. It is employed meaningfully to describe the massive material and political changes that have lead to the post-industrial, consumer, or mass media society, and to the re-colonization by that society of the rest of the not yet so postmodern world. It is valid, too, when applied to a mood or a state of mind accompanying or generated by these changes […] which pervade popular media culture and is endorsed and promoted, whether intentionally or not, by major postmodern theorists. (Petrović, p. 2)

I think this is an interesting statement, because I agree that postmodernism is a term that is rightfully used in political, philosophical and sociological theories. However, the problem with this term is that it is not relevant for literary critiques:

The literary techniques and devices usually singled out to distinguish the specifically postmodernist outlook are not decisive. For such deliberate interruptions of the processes of knowing, and of feeling, such a dispersal of experience and understanding into a meaningless kinetics of intellectual and aesthetic games at which formal literary devices like, say, heteroglossia, or heterotopia […] are, in fact, contrary to the purpose of art, which still is what it was for Conrad: 'to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions...and ... make you feel,... above all, make you see ...that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask'. There is no postmodern literature, there are only postmodern interpretations of literature. (Petrović, pp. 8-9 )

I think that, to discuss the word ‘postmodern’ as an effective term to describe late twentieth-century literature and culture, first we need to look at its meaning and compare postmodernism to modernism. Whether it is considered a reaction to Modernism, or a part of it, the Postmodern trend possesses specific qualities which can be followed  not only in the worldwide culture, but also in several aspects of life. Concepts as post industrialisation, cultural imperialism, post history are signs of a world that has experienced remarkable changes. Postmodernism can be seen as a cultural condition: living in an increasingly technologically orientated society, with lower levels of trust in authority and ‘truth’ than previously, where the meaning of things is unstable and open to interpretation.

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In ‘Toward a Concept of Postmodernism’, Ihab Hassan poses some questions in order to come to the concept or definition of postmodernism:

Can we really perceive a phenomenon, in Western societies generally and in their

literatures particularly, that needs to be distinguished from modernism, needs to be named? If so, will the provisional rubric “postmodernism” serve? Can we then—or even should we at this time—construct of this phenomenon some probative scheme, both chronological and typological, that may account for its various trends and counter-trends, its artistic, epistemic, and social character? And how would this phenomenon—let us call it postmodernism—relate ...

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