Post-Postmodernism Theories - Hypermodernity

So what exactly comes after postmodernism in cultural theory? Why post-postmodernism of course...
So out of three possible new ideas in which to explore, hypermodernity/supermodernity, performatism or new sincerity, I decided to choose the first one.
So what's it all about....

Key features/ideas:
- Hypermodernity explores a stage of society that reflects an intensification of modernity.
- It's a theory that's big on looking at the way we understand, control and manipulate the aspects of our existence.
- It's used to explain how we regard technology and biology as factors that contribute to the above.
- Hypermodernity places emphasis on how highly we value technology within society and the notion that 'yesterday's knowledge is always less than today's'.
- It differs from postmodernism that rejects the idea of 'reasonable change'. Hypermodernity is a term that relies on change, in a technological sense, in order to exist as a way of analysing how society has changed.

Key Theorists:
The main two that I could find and after numerous google searches kept popping up are:
- Sebastian Charles
- Gilles Lipovetsky

Reading List:
- 'Hypermodern Times' - S. Charles and G. Lipovetsky
- 'The Empire of Fashion: Dressing a Democracy' - G. Lipovetsky
- 'Development as Modernity, Modernity as Development' - L.S. Lushaba
- 'Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity' - G. Benko and U. Strohmayer

How it could be used:
I don't feel hypermodernity would be a theory that would really fit with the media text I've chosen for my research repost but I can see where the ideas behind the theory have come from. We appear to live in a very consumer driven society these days and
we go nuts for anything and everything technology. We can never seem to get enough of the stuff and are constantly developing it. When the term hypermodernity comes down to explaining our behaviour then I might be able to relate it to my media text. The way of thinking for one of my media text's, BBC drama 'Small Island', character's isn't really postmodern as that's a theory that isn't big on the whole idea that society can actually change but a truly hypermodern way of thinking for the era the drama's set in. In a time where different ethnicities weren't treated equally, the character dismisses her societies values and believes we are all the same no matter the colour of your skin and that societies way of thinking really can change.

'Postmodernism And 'The Other side' - Dick Hebdige

This week's reading, by Dick Hebdige, looks at the term 'postmodernism' and what exactly the term means. Hebdige applies postmodernism to several different cultural aspects, including different cultural events, as examples to reinforce the points he makes about postmodernism. The main point Hebdige makes is that the term is had to define or pinpoint because used in the many different contexts that are described as 'postmodern' it means different things.

To try and put some of the various ways postmodernism is used to describe things, to put it in context, he relates it to people describing the decor of a room, the design of a building, an arts documentary, a TV commercial etc. In a cultural context, as in society, these types of things can be described as postmodern.

Hebdige explains that no matter what perspective you view postmodernism, it's hard to deny that it doesn't carry some remnants of Marxist ideas. Postmodernism is sort of 'follow on' or progression of earlier, more dominant theories. Hebdige says that you can't 'move back from or go beyond' modernity as the terms of postmodernism are too generally defined, the meaning just isn't specific enough.

I agree with Hebdige because from first studying Postmodernism at college and now re-visiting it at University, it still doesn't seem clear what exactly Postmodernism is. It's a very ambiguous term, with no clear definition, what's postmodern to one person isn't postmodern to another. Postmodernism and our understanding of it is different to everyone.

Useful Quotes and Their Meanings:

'It becomes more and more difficult as the 1980s wear on to specify exactly what it is that 'postmodernism' is supposed to refer to as the term gets stretched in all directions across different debates, different disciplinary and discursive boundaries, as different fractions seek to make it their own, using it to designate a plethora of incom-measurable objects, tendencies, emergencies'. - Postmodernism is such an ambiguous term and applies to a wide variety of different things, it's hard to define.

'A Marxism of whatever kind could never move back from or go beyond 'modernity' in the very general terms in which it is defined with the Post, which is not to say that Marxism is necessarily bound to a 'dynamic' and destructive model of technological 'advance'. - Postmodernism has been built on Marxist ideas and is one of the theories that has evolved against Marxism as times have progressed, but the ideas are still there, and it wouldn't be right to say that Marxism was totally against advances in society, culturally, in terms of technology which we see as a very postmodern thing, but is it really?