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Any discussion on postmodernism can hardly command validity if it fails to identify its proponents, particularly those whose theoretical standpoints have provided it with a worthy identity. Although the list is by no means exhaustive, two household names stand out: Jean - Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) and Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007). Lyotard and Braudrillard are prominent postmodern thinkers particularly on account of their hostility to the ‗grand‘ narrative and Platonic questioning of the reality of the world respectively (Brooker, 1992; Selden &

Widdowson, 1993; Bertens, 1995; O‘Day, 2001; Easthope, 2001; Spencer, 2001). Jean-Francois Lyotard, a ―leading figure‖ in postmodern debate, is a French professor of philosophy who

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‗derailed‘ from orthodox marxism to begin an extensive inquiry and questioning of it. This is perhaps to express his disenchantment at the pro-establishment lining of the French Communist Party (Selden & Widdowson, 1993; Sim, 2001; Butler, 2002). Eschewing a philosophy greatly indebted to Nietzsche and Heidegger, Lyotard rejects the quest for legitimate and absolute knowledge which inform scientific analysis in the Enlightenment period. Science prides itself in its ability to promote and sustain a laid-down rule or standard which explains and justifies human liberation and emancipation from primordial tradition and superstition. This is embedded in its

‗metanarratives‘ that are given credence by the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, which attempts to legitimise it, in line with the avant-garde tradition.

While presenting his ‗report on knowledge‘ in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1996), Lyotard identifies two types of knowledge that are no longer credible in contemporary society: the narrative and scientific knowledge. Narrative knowledge ‗‗does not require any proof‖ but derives its validity from its ―internal consistency and rules of procedure‘‘.

On the other hand, scientific knowledge lays claim to universality and objectivity, thus sets out to ridicule the former. Since Lyotard does not see the relevance of these forms of knowledge in the contemporary world, he seeks an outright disclaimer of scientific articulation of progressive match of history and quest for political emancipation. With Lyotard, gone are the days when the legitimacy of historical truth can be found in ―the realm of narrative‖ of scientific knowledge which seeks credibility in ―a metadiscourse that makes an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth‖ (Bertens, 1995:125). With postmodern philosophy, science goofed if it thinks it has discovered a narrative that shows the progressive direction of the world and possesses the means for total freedom. It merely succeeded in creating a repressive barrier which requires the adoption of ―mininarratives‖ to surmount. No wonder Grant (2001) submits that Lyotard‘s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge offers the most significant analysis which situates ―meta-or grand narratives‖ in the right perspective:

While grand narratives such as the Enlightenment narrative of infinite progress in knowledge and liberty, or the Marxist narrative of progressive emancipation of labouring humanity from the shackles imposed upon it by industrial capitalism, have played a crucial role in anchoring knowledge and politics in modernity, postmodernity has entailed a crisis of confidence in them. One reason for this

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crisis is the rise of critical philosophy, begun, ironically, with the Enlightenment (29).

Lyotard‘s argument takes off on the ground that knowledge is no longer the same in the contemporary society. Its status has been radically altered to incorporate its manipulation only by those who have access to it because it has been ‗commodified‘ and can be stored for commercial purposes in our ―knowledge driven economy‖. Henceforth, its control lies in whosoever can make it functional, for its totality is now a mirage. With computer technologies, enhanced by multinational corporations, it can no longer produce absolute truth. In fact, it has lost its value: it is no longer an end but a means to an end (Bertens, 1995; Landry, 2000; Easthope, 2001; Malpas, 2005). Sim (2001) argues that to enhance credibility, integrity and liberation, Lyotard calls for petit recite or ‗‗mininarratives‘‘ which are situational, tentative and relative. With the post World War 11realities, no one can lay claim to objective truth any longer:

Lyotard considers that little narratives are the most inventive way of disseminating, and creating, knowledge, and that they help to break down the monopoly traditionally exercised by grand narratives. In science, for example, they are now to be regarded as the primary means of enquiry.

Postmodern science, Lyotard informs us, is a search for paradoxes, instabilities and the unknown, rather than an attempt to construct yet another grand narrative that would apply over the entire scientific community _(9).

Lyotard posits that the totalising claim of science is illegitimate, bankrupt and without grounds.

With warfare, disasters, earthquakes, nuclear threat and ecological crisis rampant in the contemporary post-industrial world of computerised technologies, the recourse to science for analysis of the society is no longer credible. On account of his ―incredulity towards grand narrative,‖ Landry (2000:85) argues that the flagrant rebuttal of Enlightenment‘s claim to universal perfection stands Lyotard‘s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge out as a strong ―aversion against the universal‖. So germane to the understanding of postmodern thinking is Lyotard‘s perspective that Easthope (2001:18) concludes that he is ―the first, important advocate of postmodernism in philosophy and culture‖, the leading exponent of postmodernism. Also, Grant (2001:25) submits that Lyotard‘s postulation provides an apposite benchmark to articulate

―a definitive character‖ for postmodernism, so much that the core assumption of his work ―is generally replicated in all the European theorists who supply the resources for postmodern theory‖! His postmodern philosophy is a determined attempt to promote ―the telling of numerous,

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varied and localised 'little' narratives‖ to signal the demise of grand narratives or, at least, debunk the claim that the grand recite of science is legitimate even in the post-industrial age (Wilson, 2004:427). No wonder his effort is ―widely regarded as the most powerful theoretical expression of postmodernism‖. But for his philosophical postulation and that of other postmodern theorists, Sim (2001) believes it would have been inconceivable to articulate a dissentient opinion on the impossibility of absolute knowledge in the world:

There is no longer any point engaging in debate with, for example, Marxism, the argument goes; rather we should ignore it as an irrelevance to our lives. Postmodern philosophy provides us with the arguments and techniques to make that gesture of dissent, as well as how to make value judgements in the absence of such overall authorities (3).

Therefore, these positions from Landry, Easthope, Grant, Wilson and Sim, among others, justify Lyotard‘s argument as quintessentially postmodern.

Lyotard‘s treatise is premised on the assumption that certain ―historical contradictions‖ do not give credence to the indispensability of scientific truth as the catalyst for social engineering, thus ―local narrative with its emphasis on diversity and heterogeneity‖ is required in the contemporary world (Sheehan, 2004:29). For instance, if science is infallible, why did it become an instrument of terror employed for the destruction of the Jews especially during the World War 11? In a similar vein, if communism is the benchmark for measuring progress in man‘s quest for utopia, has the time not come for its critics to seek for an alternative against the backdrop of the fact that its basic assumptions have been discredited with the atrocities perpetrated by Josef Stalin?

Also with the free-market economy which perpetually alienates the proletariat, has the Enlightenment‘s claim to advance man‘s development and emancipation not been made nonsense of? Thus, in line with Lyotard‘s postulation, postmodern thinking disavows the possibility of order in the society. An attempt to create order can only lead to the ‗institutionalisation‘ of disharmony in the world for, as Hegel claims, contradiction is an inherent feature of life.

Jean Baudrillard is another French sociologist and cultural critic whose controversial analysis of contemporary society of improved communication technology helps in promoting the ideals of postmodernism. So influential is Baudrillard‘s argument to the articulation of postmodern ideals that Grant (2001:28) refers to him as ―the high priest of postmodernism‖ while Sim (2001:11) submits that his works is an ―important expression of postmodern philosophy‖. In Baudrillard‘s view, the image of the society has blurred the reality in the society as the

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advancement in communication technologies gives rise to ‗‗self-generating, self-mirroring images and experience‘‘. The postmodern world is ―a world of simulacra, where we could no longer differentiate between reality and simulation. Simulacra represented nothing but themselves: there was no other reality to which they referred‖. What emerges is the loss of the real for it has been replaced by its copy. Thus, nothing exists to differentiate between reality and its illusion. The world of simulation and hyperreality has therefore evolved (Baudrillard, 1992; Brooker, 1992;

Haralambo et al, 1995; Ritzer, 1996; Sim, 2001; Wilson, 2004; Malpas, 2005).

The kernel of Baudrillard‘s argument as adduced in his ―Simulacra and Simulations‖

(1992) is that in contemporary postmodern world, the ‗distance‘ between reality and its model has completely collapsed. Although the model is produced to have insight into, or a full grasp of, the real, it actually succeeded in replacing the real, becoming more real than the reality it mirrors initially. In this world of the hyperreal, no one can decipher reality because its model has been

‗transformed‘. Man is now ―lost in the realm of hyperreality that refuses us the distance to stand back from our experiences and question them‖ (Malpas, 2005:94). In Baudrillard's world of signs and images, no one can comprehend reality for it has lost its meaning. What we now refer to as reality is nothing but ―an endless circulation of signs from which any sense of reality has fallen away, a world in which there are simulations and only simulations‖ (Easthope, 2001:20). The world is merely an image dominated by signs of another world that has never existed. Such signs become self-referential for we can only see the representation of simulated reality and not reality per se. The sign of reality which ―initially referring to a material reality beyond itself, the sign then distorts, disguises, and finally replaces that reality‖ (Sheehan, 2004:31). What we used to perceive as reality has been so ‗corrupted‘ that it now has several interpretations. This notion of the hyperreal presents a world where reason can no longer be adduced to justify the existence of any reality. What we now have is a ―transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing‖ (Baudrillard, 1992:153).

The decisive turning point for Baudrillard‘s world of hyperreality is the post World War 11 era of unprecedented advancement in mass media communication technologies. In the name of advertisement and television commercials, the world now witnesses a wholesale alteration of reality through media technology that produces its image, having supplanted reality. With television technology designed by the Western media establishments and multinationals, the message becomes ubiquitous with the intention to completely annihilate reality in the quest to

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achieve a commercial end and further strengthen capitalism (Sheehan, 2004; Malpas, 2005).

Gibbins & Reimer (1999) do not mince word before attributing this development to

―communication technology‖:

By this, Baudrillard means that computerization, communication technology and the media together frame human experience by producing images and models of reality that are increasingly supplanting reality itself as the gauge of what reality ‗is‘. How do we know what is real? We watch television and we read newspapers and books, and the models of reality presented in these media are the ones we use to gain an impression of reality (50).

In the same vein, Marc O‘Day (2001:112) reiterates the looming place of television in articulating postmodern discourse. He submits that whenever discussion centres on ―postmodernism, postmodernization, postmodernity or just the postmodern in general,‖ television is an indispensable ―postmodern medium par excellence‖. His position is anchored on the premise that even if Baudrillard ―overstates‖ his rhetoric on simulation, it is doubtless that television can distort reality:

Baudrillard overstates his case, yet there are indeed numerous examples where the reality of television problematizes or even replaces everyday reality. For instance, while many studies have shown that people are perfectly capable of distinguishing between soap-opera reality and real life, this doesn't stop a few of them from abusing the real-life actor or actress who plays the role of a currently unpopular character _(113).

A good example can be deduced from television commercials and advertisement where, through embellishment and distortion, reality is replaced by its copy or image and such copy or image appears to be more real than the reality it mirrors. Also, people are so influenced by television programmes so much that they forget their ‗unreal‘ nature. For instance, Storey (2001) is awestruck how television viewers in the West empathise with characters in soap opera to the extent of writing letters seeking or offering them assistance! He argues that television viewers in Europe and America relate with characters in soap opera as if they are real:

For example, we in the West live in a world in which people write letters addressed to characters in soap operas, making them offers of marriage, sympathizing with their current difficulties, offering them new accommodation, or just writing to ask how they are coping with life. Television

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villains are regularly confronted in the street and warned about the possible future consequences of not altering their behaviour. Television doctors, television lawyers and television detectives regularly receive requests for advice and help (149).

Which better evidence can buttress Baudrillard‘s concept of hyperreality! He even claimed the Gulf war did not take place! What we have is a televised, sign or copy war! Media technology has a profound but pervasive influence on the contemporary society.

Baudrillard‘s treatise on the ‗unreal‘ nature of the Gulf war centres on the inability to account for the real events and realities of the war, all of which have been simulated to achieve a commercial end, with the television assuming the status of ‗‗a gigantic simulator‘‘. In the

‗scrambling‘ for the latest events, stories and photographs of the war by the Western media organisations, proliferation of signs ensued. This led to diverse signs of the hyperreal devoid of the actual carnage and wanton destruction of lives and properties. Thus, the representation of the war became a strategy aimed at justifying Western might as people were ‗fed‘ with information which assisted tremendously to sustain Western hegemony. The truth of the war was largely suppressed (Selden & Widdowson, 1993; Baudrillard, 1995). Therefore, even if Baudrillard ―overstates‖ or

―overgeneralised‖ his controversial perception of reality in the contemporary media-saturated world, no one can deny the influential role of television to simulate reality. Despite some misgivings, O‘Day (2001) cannot agree less:

Again the case is overgeneralized - and again there is an unwillingness to discuss television overtly in any detail - but there is no doubt that from this rather reductive perspective commercial TV is, and always has been, ruled by the economic necessity to sell audiences to advertisers. We are all, in a sense, working for capital when we watch television.

Some people joke that advertisements are the 'real' programmes - and often the best (114).

The television has continued to play a pivotal role in shaping people‘s mindset to achieve commercial end at the detriment of reality. In the contemporary postmodern world, advertisements and commercials on television are particularly driven by the desire to attain enviable economic height. Having succeeded in influencing audience choices, further wealth is amassed for the sustenance of capitalist nations and organisations.

Heavily influenced by semiology, Baudrillard's argument to justify the unreal nature of the world is presented in four stages. In the first stage, the sign reflects the real or original world. It

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later goes on to mask, distort or pervert the reflected reality in the second stage. Also at the third stage, the sign completely replaces the reality to the extent that the latter is no longer visible.

Finally, the sign begins to exist independently of the reality such that no resemblance between the two can be seen. No corresponding relationship is evident at this stage. The signifier has

‗overthrown‘ the signified (Selden & Widdowson, 1993; Barry, 1995; Haralambos et al, 1995;

Cahoone, 1996; Watson, 2001). Besides the obvious influence of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Bataille, Baudrillard is tremendously indebted to Plato. In The Republic (1979), Plato does not have a place for artists. Since the world is ‗unreal‘ but only an imitation of another world, any work of art in such a ‗non-existing world‘ is twice removed from reality. This position apparently influences Baudrillard.

Postmodernism can only serve as a useful critique of contemporary culture if it incorporates the ideals and contradictions of modernism, whose tenets it seeks to undermine. If the

‗post‘ marks a period of succession, a time after a unique event, we can then safely conclude that the world is transitory in nature, with the transition from pre-enlightened or medieval period, through the modern or industrialized period, to the contemporary postmodern era (Calinescu, 1987; Feher, 1990; Sheppard, 1993; Fekete, 2001). Therefore, Susan Wilson (2004:410) argues that for postmodern thinkers to ‗‗account for their own philosophical premises,‘‘ they have to come to terms with the core tenets of modernism, ‗‗the period that they claimed to supersede‘‘.

Since the prefix ‗post‘ barely elicits the indispensability of modernism before a credible discussion of postmodernism can be done, we aver that the identity of the latter cannot be divorced from its source, otherwise it loses its meaning. Whenever critics argue that modern assumptions have been jettisoned or completely eroded especially owing to post World War 11 disillusionment, they should be reminded that these realities inform postmodern tendencies in its entirety. Therefore postmodernism is meaningless unless it recognises modernism as its origin or source from where its argument starts, and its critique begins, else its discourse cannot take off (Hutcheon, 1988;

Krammer, 1997; Malpas, 2005). If it is meaningful at all, ―it is as it differs from modernism‖.

Doing otherwise, perhaps on the lame excuse that modernism has been superseded, jettisoned or discredited is to leave postmodernism idle with nothing to condemn, nothing to undermine, nothing to replace, hence its argument turns to a charade. Thus, an exposé on modernism is germane to any credible discussion of postmodernism, for the latter is a development arising from the former.

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It is difficult, if not impossible, to ascribe an all-embracing definition to postmodernism.

Even among its core proponents, consensus still remains an uphill task, and this may continue for sometimes owing to its hydra-headed peculiarity which makes an authoritative definition elusive and open to challenge and repudiation. The reason for this is not far-fetched: postmodern criticism exists in several disciplines, academic and non-academic alike; hence it is open to diverse meanings and interpretations (Calinescu, 1987; Hutcheon, 1988; Bertens, 1995; Marsh, 1996;

Ritzer, 1996; Gibbins & Reimer, 1999; Sim, 2001; Connor, 2004; Hutcheon, 2004; Hart, 2006;

Childs & Fowler, 2006). Its multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional implications tremendously influenced disciplines like philosophy, archaeology, history, sociology, theology, journalism, music, literature and cultural studies hence an all-encompassing definition becomes intractable.

The best we can have is ―a profusion of definitions and redefinitions‖ (Spencer, 2001; Scott, 2001;

Heise, 2004; Pilcher and Whelehan, 2004). Hence, Awosika (1999:24) argues that the central ideal of postmodernism, its tenacious disposition to interpret post World War is nothing but an exercise in futility.

Despite the heterogeneous nature that foregrounds its amorphous complexity, postmodern critics have not abandoned the quest for its origin and meanings in all facets of human endeavour.

According to Cahoone (1996), its early origin can be traced to the works of Rudolf Pannwitz (a philosopher), Federico de Onis (a literary critic), Bernard Iddings Bell (a theologian) and Arnold Toynbee (an historian). There is also evidence of its occurrence in journalism, music, painting, social sciences and the natural sciences. As a reaction to modern architectural quest for perfection, it gained pre-eminence with the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe and the construction of Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles in 1972, and blossomed in literary studies (Ray, 1990;

Jameson, 1991; Smart, 1992; Haralambos et al, 1995; Cahoone, 1996; Jencks, 1996; Curl, 1999;

Gabardi, 2001; Grant, 2001; Easthope, 2001; Watson, 2001; Connor, 2004). Thus, Peter Brooker (1992) describes it as having

an amoebic range of attributions and meanings, in academic debate and in journalism. In general terms it can be said to describe a mood or condition of radical indeterminacy, and a tone of self-conscious, parodic skepticism towards previous certainties in personal, intellectual and political life (175).

This ambivalence accounts for diverse interpretations of postmodern thinking, a feature which underscores the need for critics to access it from an eclectic perspective. Hutcheon

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(1998:3) calls it ‗‗a contradictory phenomenon,‘‘ Lash (1999:56) submits that it is

‗‗ubiquitous‘‘, Morris (1988:242) refers to it as a ‗‗big speculation‘‘, Spencer (2001:158) calls it ―a paradox and a provocation‖, while Bertens (1995:3) describes it as ‗‗an exasperating term‘‘ which can be applied to ‗‗a wide range of objects and phenomena‘‘ and useful for ‗‗diametrically opposed practices in different artistic disciplines‘‘. Nevertheless, Watson (2001) posits that twentieth century postmodern theorists are united under the general skepticism over modernist ―grand narratives‖ which attempt to situate cultural worldviews under a solitary ―metanarrative‖:

The key thinkers have all identified a common theme in the scepticism of the twentieth century towards the once great certainties of history and society. We no longer unquestioningly accept the universal claims to knowledge and truth of the great stories which have organized our culture. These include religion, the progress of modernism, the progress of science, and absolute political theories like Marxism _(158).

Therefore even if the attempt aimed at achieving an all-encompassing definition of postmodernism is futile, its proponents have succeeded in identifying its inherent features, a kind of commonality, which can provide it with, at least, a definitive character. Simon Malpas‘ (2005) comprehensive but inexhaustive list of diverse critical opinions on postmodernism is representative enough:

As a means of thinking about the contemporary world, the postmodern has been defined in a huge variety of different ways: as a new aesthetic formation (Hassan, 1982, 1987), a condition (Lyotard, 1984; Harvey, 1990), a culture (Connor,1997), a cultural dominant (Jameson,1991), a set of artistic movements employing a parodic mode of selfconscious representation (Hutcheon, 1988, 2002), an ethical or political imperative (Bauman, 1993, 1995), a period in which we have reached the ‗end of history‘

(Baudrillard, 1994; Fukuyama, 1992; Vattimo, 1988), a‗new horizon of our cultural, philosophical and political experience‘ (Laclau, 1988), an ‗illusion‘ (Eagleton, 1996), a reactionary political formation (Callinicos, 1989), or even just a rather unfortunate mistake (Norris, 1990, 1993). It evokes ideas of irony, disruption, difference, discontinuity, playfulness, parody, hyper-reality and simulation (6-7).

Postmodernism is a late twentieth century style, period or movement that reacts against modern style or ‗‗the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century‘‘ (Heise, 2004:137), hence Storey (2001:147) describes it as ―a populist attack on the elitism of modernism‖, while