Yoni Goldstein: Postmodernism is coming to a natural end

People post in front of Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" presented by Perrotin Gallery and on view at Art Basel Miami 2019 at Miami Beach Convention Center on Dec. 6, 2019 in Miami Beach, Florida. Two of the three editions of the piece, which feature a banana duct-taped to a wall, have reportedly sold for $120,000. Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images

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There is no specific date on which to pin the advent of the postmodern age. The term was coined in reference to painting in 1870, and first cited as a descriptor for contemporary social and cultural thought in 1939. In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published “The End of Ideology,” heralding a “post-industrial society” and laying the groundwork for postmodern thought as a guiding light in academia. Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault followed from the mid-’60s, cementing the philosophical base for postmodernism and popular derivatives like Edward Said’s postcolonial theory.

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However you want to define its origins, it’s safe to say that by the 1990s postmodernism was the dominant school of thought on Western university campuses, and that by the 2000s, its students had made their way into all aspects of society, bringing postmodernism’s dogmas along with them. Between then and now, those ideas and ideologies have come to dominate our culture in virtually every aspect, from art and architecture to politics and popular culture.

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But philosophies and ideologies have shelf lives. Nothing lasts forever, and while it is not an exact science, the histories of previous ages of thought suggest that postmodernism has already passed its best-before date. The Enlightenment ran for around 200 to 250 years; Romanticism took the next 100 or so years; Modernism dominated for about 70 years. In all cases, dominant social and cultural ideas were borne out of a crisis of confidence in the school of thought that immediately preceded it. The same will happen to postmodernism, too. It is inevitable.

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One might convincingly argue that it is already happening. Postmodernism is so entrenched in our lives today that its origins — no matter whether we date it to 60 or 80 or 150 years ago — are becoming less and less visible. Its foundations are no longer debated in popular culture and academia; they are seen simply as common sense. Postmodern innovation and institutionalization are far behind us, and it is hard to see how our culture could become any more saturated in its ideals.

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Intellectual movements are successful because they solve problems created by previous frameworks. They flounder as new questions emerge, and ultimately give way to something new when they can no longer explain the world we are living in. Whatever ideas we do retain — and there are always a few — are folded into the successor. The Enlightenment destabilized the medieval period by rejecting inherited authority, divine order and the primacy of institutions, while holding onto the basic notion that the meaning of life is intertwined with larger moral and spiritual orders. Romanticism preserved the Enlightenment’s ideas of individual dignity and its focus on freedom and creativity, but rejected an excessive fealty to calculation and rationalism.

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On the timeline of popular thought, we are nearing, or have already reached, the next inflection point, the moment when the transition truly begins — when exhaustion with current dogma gives way to dissatisfaction and ultimately something new. That change is always motivated by technology, from the invention of the printing press to the atom bomb to the Internet. The rise of AI and tech-aided misinformation may very well be the next stimulant of intellectual evolution.