Convention

“Challenge convention.”

A protagonist on a journey?

A climax?

Closure?

Introduction

Postmodernism aims to challenge fundamental conventions and values. It is important to note that both Modernism and Postmodernism reject all boundaries and recognise the existence of disorder and fragmentation. However, while a Modernist would see this disorder and fragmentation in a negative light as chaotic and tragic, a Postmodernist would embrace such qualities and play with their meaning. Examples of the challenging of fundamental conventions and values are below. Note that this is not a definitive list and that more specific examples are explored in their respective areas.

Questioning Truth and Conventional Beliefs

  • There is no necessary “message” from the work created. It is up to the responder to create their own meaning rather than the composer. (Read about Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' essay)
  • The traditional values such as the role of men and women in society or the foundations of science are challenged. Science in particular, has been an area challenged by many postmodern critics and theorists. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) argued that science was a discontinuous series of past sciences subject to paradigm shifts, funding and peer groups, rather than an accumulation of scientific knowledge.

Challenging Conventional Constructions

The construction of the text refers to the way in which words are used together and arranged to form meaning. Self-conscious constructed forms are a defining characteristic of Postmodernism. Below is a summary of trends evident in most, if not all, areas. You can also read about the challenging of conventions in art, architecture, literature and music.

Modern Approach

Read about the modern approach here. Conventionally, authority is situated in the author, rather than the reader.

Postmodern Approach

Foregrounding of self-conscious constructed forms - When authors remind us that we are reading a text (Italo Calvino's 'If on a winter's night a traveller'), or characters on TV talk to the screen (Kenneth Branagh as Iago in the 1995 film 'Othello' seen right), or actors talk to the audience in theatre, we are made aware of the constructed nature of the medium. Although this technique can be found in nineteenth and twentieth century literature, Postmodernism takes it much further by employing it in a playful form, often interrupting the reader.

Through foregrounding this nature of the text, postmodern composers often play with the conventions of the genre.
• Meaning is continuously shifting - there is no fixed or authoritative reading.
• Based on Poststructuralism - The interpretations of texts are endless.
• Pastiche - With the purpose of satirical intent or creating irony and closely associated with appropriation, pastiche challenges the convention of a truly original work.

Intertextuality, Appropriation and Playfulness

Reappropriating existing ideas, texts and mediums is a signature characteristic of Postmodernism. Intertextuality illustrates the erosion of 'originality', it is impossible to achieve absolute originality. Thus, composers deliberately challenge our assumption about their authority over their text. This affirms Roland Barthes‘ claim that a text is not the “message of the Author-God” but rather, a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.

“It reminds the reader how the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them.”
The Death of the Author (Barthes, 1967)

For a Postmodernist, intertextuality always exists in literature as texts always contain fragments or ideas of other texts - no text is self-contained.