pomo

[Terrance]

The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as
the basic ideas of
humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these
ideas or premises (on
p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.

This is simply not true. 

Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a
binary opposition between
"order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the
superiority of "order." But to do
this, they have to have things that represent
"disorder"--modern societies thus
continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western
culture, this disorder
becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary
oppositions. Thus anything
non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic,
non-rational, (etc.) becomes
part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the
ordered, rational modern
society.

Sounds like cultural fascism, not Modernism. 

Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same
ideas, rejecting
boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting
rigid genre distinctions,
emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and
playfulness. Postmodern art
(and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness,
fragmentation and
discontinuity (especially in narrative structures),
ambiguity, simultaneity, and an
emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized
subject.

So what's the difference? 

But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in
these ways, it
differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these
trends. 


OOOOOOOOH, attitude! 

Mary Klages has not defined Postmodernism. 

This is a Sophist's trick. 

Postmodernism can't be defined. 

It refuses to be defined.

It resists all attempts to define it. 

An essential constituent or characteristic or intrinsic
characteristic of Postmodernism is its resistance to all
attempts to say what it is. 


But, it is clearly not Modernism

Postmodernism defines Modernism: Basically vague, humanist
ideals, enlightened superiority, elimination of non-white,
non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational ETC.,
ETC., ETC.....

This is propaganda, not education. BTW, don't you find the
misapplication of Lyotard, Derriada, Jameson offensive?