1. The target has disappeared. In the post-modern cultural atmosphere, traditional values and hierarchical concepts have been subverted, the individuality and style in modernism have been completely eliminated, and the subject has become a broken illusion.
2. The depth disappears. Modernist art always takes the pursuit of utopian ideals and the expression of ultimate truth as its theme, while post-modernist art abandons the deep mode of the work itself, no longer has thoughts, no longer provides explanations, refuses to explore any meaning, and only pursues language pleasure.
3. The sense of history has disappeared. History is always something in memory, and memory always has the feelings and experiences of the memory subject. Modernist art is addicted to historical consciousness because of its pursuit of depth, while in post-modern art, history only means nostalgia and appears as an image catering to commercial purposes.
4. The distance has disappeared. In the view of modernist art, distance is not only the boundary between art and life, but also the boundary between creative subject and object. It is a conscious means of control to make readers think about their works. In post-modern art, because of the disappearance of the subject, the work loses its depth and sense of history, and only stimulates the human senses, without any inspiration or encouragement. In other words, it only emphasizes the desire itself.
It should be noted that due to political and cultural reasons, the influence of post-modernism on eastern culture is more of an enlightenment of ideas.
Postmodern culture, as a literary narrative discourse and style, is characterized by no selective skills, no central meaning and no complete structure. The narrative process is divergent, and the center of meaning is dissolved and scattered to the edge of the text.
Influenced by it are not only the new realistic novels represented by Sun Ganlu, but also the consumer literature and its representative "Wang Shuo phenomenon".
At present, it is still too early to judge whether postmodernism can become the mainstream of oriental culture, but it should be noted that it has gradually become a fashion to completely cancel the spiritual measurement index and existence dimension and dispel historical consciousness.
Exclude several impossible definitions of post-modernism. First of all, postmodernism is not a concept of style. The view that postmodernism is a style cannot be established, because no matter what style terms are used to define modernism and postmodernism, it is difficult for people to distinguish them, or the latter is just the strengthening or modulation of some existing styles of the former. It has long been pointed out that Hassan's distinctive features of postmodernism (such as "uncertainty" and "immanence") simply cannot be established. Defining postmodernism by style or language will also lead to the absurd conclusion that some parts of a work are modernism and some parts are postmodernism (for example, the stream of consciousness of Ulysses is modernism and its parody or parody is postmodernism, or Peter eisenmann's architectural language is modernism, but its space is postmodernism, etc.). ). As C. B. Chabot said: "Our lack of fully and universally accepted understanding of modernism makes many arguments of postmodernism specious, and many things called postmodernism come directly from early [modernist] writers." 1)
Second, postmodernism is not a concept of a period or an artistic movement. Because, first, it mistakenly regards modernism as a timely art movement (for example, from 1860 to 1960), and it will come to the absurd conclusion that "all" art after 1960 is regarded as postmodernism; Secondly, it is either based on a vulgar social determinism (as in the case of Fredric Jameson) or an apocalyptic dogmatism (as in Baudrillard and most low-level postmodern theorists) that asserts that "we have entered postmodernism". As Xia Bo said, "People even think that we live in a post-modern society. A certain number of people obviously believe that the cultural rupture has appeared at a certain moment, and its signs can be detected from the whole range of our cultural activities. However, it seems that few people have reached a * * * understanding of its fundamental nature and hypothetical rest time, and even fewer people have the same opinion on how to best describe its impact on our cultural products. " 2) This dogmatism is not only untenable, but also contradicts its prophetic tone. Sental pointed out: "Postmodernism has actually become an unofficial state religion, a new salvation myth, which has universal validity and must be observed by every good citizen. In fact, people who do not follow this freedom have committed treason. In the name of radical hermeneutics, deconstruction, neo-pragmatism or post-modernism, the modern world (1600- 1945) taught by current orthodoxy has passed away forever with the disintegration of God and objective science. It should be replaced by a more fluid world of amorphous processes, so it needs a more radical explanation model. It insists that everything is just a metaphor or symbol of reality, and reality does not exist. Everything is a function of history; All cultures and religions are only temporary, temporary and fictional. It is not the word of God that creates the world, but hermeneutics-the midway and the ending are no exception. " 3)
Thirdly, postmodernism is not the reality of western contemporary art, it is only a conceptual form, a critical concept or an aesthetic concept. This is particularly worth mentioning. Some naive postmodernists believe that we have "entered" an epoch-making period in which everything is "postmodern". In China, due to the specious introduction of some naive post-modern scholars and the initial "post-modern theoretical research", people have "the West has entered the post-modern, what should we do?" Type of unprovoked anxiety, or "we should bypass the modern directly into the post-modern" utopian fantasy. In fact, postmodernism is by no means a social reality in the West, or even an ideological reality. It is not a social reality because, as Berger pointed out sharply, "Although compared with the second half of19th century, profound changes have taken place in economy, technology and society, the dominant mode of production remains the same: private capital exploits the surplus value of collective production. Social democracy in western Europe has fully realized that although the significance of government intervention in economic affairs is increasing, the pursuit of profit maximization is still the driving force of social production. Therefore, we must be cautious when explaining the current changes, and we cannot naively evaluate them as a sign of epoch-making changes. " 4) Postmodernism is not even an ideological fact, because it has been criticized and refuted by people of insight in the West since its birth. In other words, postmodernism has never existed as an "ideological reality" for a day, but has always existed as a "problem". As Chabot said: "They (postmodernists) assume that we are actually witnessing the emergence of a real postmodern culture, and I want to question this assumption. In my opinion, what is called postmodernism is actually the recent development or evolution within modernism itself, which is at least as credible. I put forward some arguments to support my argument: (1) There is no satisfactory and generally accepted postmodern explanation; (2) Many so-called post-modernism things actually come directly from modernism; (3) Most of the arguments about its existence are mainly based on summarizing the exhaustion of modernism, especially ignoring its nature as a secondary concept, to obtain its initial speciousness. " 5)
Finally, postmodernism is not a concept of media or artistic style. Therefore, for example, it cannot be said that easel painting is modernism, while installation art, video art and so on are postmodern. Because, fundamentally speaking, the difference between modernism and postmodernism is not the difference between media or materials, nor the difference between specific styles, but the difference between ideas. This question is somewhat complicated. We have to make a slight detour.