Richard Pennycuick on post-modernism: >... I keep seeing the word used as if it's taken for granted that >everybody knows what it means. I once spent some time on the web in >search of an explanation until I admitted defeat. Enlightenment, someone, >please! Post-modernism is a term used not only about fine arts but also a term used in a more philosophical context. The term is often used in many different ways but some common themes can be found. 1.. The central role of the discourse - the constitutive character of the language is emphasised and "natural" objects is said to be created by/within the discourse. Every man is born into discourses which have a material and active appearance. The sense of the world is structured by these discourses which provide patterns of social identity. 2.. Fragmented identities - subjectivity becomes a process and the idea of an autonomous and self determinating individual with a confident identity as a centre in the social world is rejected; the self is currently created. 3.. Critique of the philosophy of presence and representation - the focus is on the uncertaintes of the language instead of the language as a reflector of reality and transmitter of meaning. 4.. Loss of foundation and great storys - its a question of plurality of voices and local politics rather than theoretical frames and huge political projects. Standpoints have traditionally drawn there power from either metaphysical foundations - the outer world for the empiricist - or narrative foundations - the class struggle for the marxist. Some post-modernists asserts that the legitimating storys per se is a fraud. Other establish that the distrust in big storys and the growing political cynism amongst the public creates distrust towards different kinds of legitimating. 5.. Connection between power and knowledge whereby knowledge loses its innocence and neutrality. Power is lying in the demarcations and the discource systems that upholds them including material arrangements as selection procedures, office arrangements and structures of awarding and control. 6.. Science within the post modern paradigm is aiming at resistance and indetermination - irony and play rather than rationality, predictability and order. I am not certain that this effort to explain the concept of post-modernism is adequate to the context of this list or to the request of Mr Pennycuick but maybe have I been able to shed some light over the, in my opinion, interesting word. Patrick