'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?