Postmodernity, architecture, society and religion

"a heap of broken images" or "a change of heart"

Michael York

pp. 48-63

in: Kieran Flanagan, Peter C. Jupp (eds), Postmodernity, sociology and religion, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Postmodernity/postmodernism has become the catchword of the late 1980s/ early 1990s. But the very term "post-modern" sounds like a contradiction of meanings. If "modernism" refers to something which is peculiar to or characteristic of modern, contemporary times, anything which is "after" or "post" these implies the futuristic. But modernism itself suggests the futuristic, and therefore by postmodern we tend to comprehend something which is "after the future". We might easily ask, "how is this possible? How can something come after the future?" But this type of perplexity seems to be very much what the paradox, parody and playfulness of the postmodern concept centrally entail.