Defining Postmodernism

Have at it. I'll be back later. I don't know if it's appropriate to begin a thread, but since I appreciate the invite from Uk, why not begin with some definitions?

Modernism is the emerging world of Industrial Society and finding more in literature than a plot with a beginning, climax, and conclusion - it incorporated real life and real thought. Postmodernism is the overwhelming chaos of a world emerging from two World Wars and the innovation of unity, individuality, technology, ambiguity, the tangible, communication, and information. Incorporated, the world is a mess - the literature of Postmodernism picks apart that mess. Postmodernism exploits the human desire for simplicity, morals, and control - it exploits this by revealing our own hypocrisies of paranoia, fear, apathy, and selfishness. In all, I think Postmodernism is the human condition in the modern setting still attempting to form a mold in a world that overwhelms us as well as excites us.

Postmodernism is not escapism when confronted. It is that thing that when read you find words joined together to find something so terribly sad you cannot help but laugh because, my god, it's so funny.

Thoughts?

Nothing new of significance to literature in modern or postmodern other than some fresh faces

Post-Modernism is the conspicuous relevance of the medium in which a story is told to the story itself. The packaging is part of the content. Suspension of disbelief is not essential. Unreality is the essence of fiction, so breaking the "fourth wall" and referring directly to the characters as characters (just as an example) can only make the fiction more fictitious. It means not hiding the strings.

I worked a while ago on a definition of postmodernism, and what seemed to stick out the most was the concept of fragmentation and recombination--that every work of literature or art is just a breaking up and scattering of what's come before, and then gathering it into a new configuration, with or without sense.

An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory by Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle does a really good job of breaking Postmodernism down into its parts and defining each one of them. Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation also examines what exactly postmodernism is...