The postmodern era could be seen to have begun with the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Postmodernism is a term used to denote a set of contemporary literary and cultural movements which consciously define themselves in opposition to earlier modernist movements. Postmodernism has emerged as the direct result of the collapse of the divisions between an elite high culture and the mass culture produced by the emergence of the mass media of television, radio, cinema, paperback journalism, journalism, and so on. However, while postmodernism quotes and criticises from within mass culture it is not a popular culture unto itself, but rather an extension of high culture reflecting mass culture. Campbell's soup cans are indeed a mass commodity, whereas Andy Warhol's prints of Campbell's soup cans are not. Likewise, anyone can afford a comic book, but only the very rich can afford picture of Roy Lichtenstein's comic book styled art. Thus rather than existing as a critique of modernity, postmodernism exists as a deeply derivative relation to high modernism. Postmodernism does not appear to understand itself in terms of itself, but rather in terms of what it has come after. This in turn draws the resultant comparisoms with post structuralism. Whilst post structuralism is also dictated by what it follows, the two are by no means synonymous. Post structuralism tends to align itself with modernity more than with postmodernity. Barthes's writerly texts and Kristeva's interpretations of poetry are described as more modernism than post modernism. However, the two theories share their critical basis and their concepts of truth. Modernism reduces culture to a simple single message. Postmodernism critiques the structure of culture in Western society as a single entity and suggests many perspectives of culture within society. Likewise, Derrida suggested that according to structuralism, Western thought exists as a relentless uniform totality, a monolithic structure. Poststructuralism takes culture beyond the limitations of the structuralists through the realisation of heterogeneity, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the multiple, conflicting and contesting meanings and values. Post structuralism and postmodernism also share similar concepts of truth. The post structuralists believe that due to the play of signs, there is no finite truth within a text. Likewise, the post modernists do not believe in one given truth.
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