1. Postmodernism became an issue sometime in the late 1970s, and the end of modernity was declared. Modernism was forced always to project a next stage, for it was built on the theme of progress. Postmodernism has been portrayed as a matter of fragmentation. In this postmodern world, many of the verities no longer apply, and some of the centerpieces of Western Civilization have disappeared. We can see this politically with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the subsequent fragmentation that has taken place because we no longer are certain what our politics are about--there is no clear enemy except perhaps ourselves. One of the markers of postmodernism seems to be a certain sense of nostalgia, a belief that things were much better in the past and that perhaps that can be recaptured by turning backward. the loss of the sense of steady progress that marked modernism has been a devastating loss, for without progress we lack goals and a sense of accomplishment.
Marx in particular seems to have fallen by the wayside precisely because of his insistence on a certain type of progress that has been discredited by the fall of the Soviet bloc and the economic failure of pockets of Marxist thought such as Cuba. Yet the underlying forces about which Marx talked remain, and though we may not see these forces as tending inevitably toward positive change and social evolution, we have to understand how those forces interact and affect people and their thought processes. Marx may be applicable only in a more narrow realm, such as in the development of the Third World, where ore primitive social and economic forces hold sway. Marx erred in believing that there was no possible accommodation between the capitalist class and the working class, when in fact in the West such an accommodation has been made in varying degrees.
Huyssen states that postmodernism differs from both modernism and avantgardism in that it raises the question of cul...