Modernism and Weird

So, as you all can probably tell, I'm a little bit behind on the posts. Here is the post concerning the reading notes for last Tuesday (I apologize about that).

So last week in class, we discussed this idea of Modernism and post-Modernism and what the differences are. For instance, we (as a class) decided that Modernism would encompass individuals such as Wright and Taylor (in the grid and the network piece). But somewhere in th mid-20th century (give or take) a new genre gave way, that of post-Modernism. In our reading, it seems as though post-Modernism is a type of movement away from the absolute truth (maybe to get away from the horrors of what happened previously?) For a post-Modernist, things just aren't black and white, there is a bit of a grey area.

Thus, in terms of Modernism, we decided that language can perfectly account for the world as we see it. A post-Modernist, on the other hand, would state that language cannot perfectly account for the world as we see it. We are using something man-made to explain things that are beyond ourselves-something that a simple word like "sky" can't begin to account for. But, the post-Modernist would also agree that language, even with its short-comings, is all we have and we develop such meaning through language.

I think that the discussion of such terms was one that was incredibly interesting. Although I mostly think about it in terms of art and artistic movements, the concepts of Modernism and post-Modernism mean something more and can have a greater meaning within our lifetime. Such concepts coincide with political movements and socialist movements. It links with the idea of anti-foundationalism and sets the stage for issues of identity and difference. I think we will definitely see more ideas of post-Modernism and how it relates to the world on a larger scale, not just one of art.