Ned Lukacher on Post Modernism

the dilemma of the postmodern world is...

'to recognize that "mourning is in error2 but to be nevertheless condemned to mourn; to be unable to remember the transcendental gorund that would once again give meaning to human language and experience but also unable to stop mourning the puxtative loss of an originary memory and presence that doubtless never existed'

Originary memory - quest for the moment of orgin

Anthony Giddens and Identity

Modernity and Self identity:

• everyday questions about clothing, appearance and leisure
• high-impact decisions about relationships, beliefs and occupations
• earlier societies with a social order based firmly in tradition
• post-traditional societies we have to work out our roles for ourselves
• 'What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity - and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour.'
• connections between the most 'micro' aspects of society - individuals' internal sense of self and identity - and the big 'macro' picture of the state, multinational capitalist corporations, and globalisation
• Social change such as in relationships bought about my decline in religion and rise of rationality - changes in how individuals view life
• Institutions typically thought to want people to have stable monogamous family life
• mix of macro elements like law change and micro elements of how people live lives - change stemming from mesh of both
• media also influencing views of things like relationships
• need for 'good stories' would always support an emphasis on change in relationships
• inevitably receive a message that monogamous heterosexual stability is, at best, a rare 'ideal', which few can expect to achieve
• encouraged to reflect on our relationships in magazines and self-help books (explicitly), and in movies, comedy and drama (implicitly)
• Information and research is then 'reappropriated' by ordinary people, often lending support to non-traditional models of living
• Information and ideas from the media do not merely reflect the social world, then, but contribute to its shape, and are central to modern reflexivity

Read more:
http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens4.htm
Gauntlett, David (2002), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, Routledge, London and New York