In focusing attention on the postmodern one of the central concerns has
been to raise the questions ‘Why this question?’ and ‘Why and how has
postmodernism become a central issue in cultural life today?’ If postmodernism
is from the point of view of modernism a sign and symptom of cultural
disorder, then modernism, with its increasingly popular associated
term modernity, is from the perspective of postmodernism a constant
which highlights images of order, unity and coherence. Both terms feed off
each other and often seem propelled by a binary logic of opposition which
sharpens the differentiation as the process of conceptualization runs ahead
of social and cultural realities. It has been argued that many of the characteristic
features listed under postmodernism can be found within the modern,
and indeed the premodern. The aestheticization of everyday life, the
tendency for a figural culture of shifting images and the controlled or playful
de-control of the emotions have all been discussed as examples. Given
this, how far can it be argued that what is labelled the postmodern’ has
always existed. and it is only now that we are granting it significance? And
if this is the case how far can we attempt to understand the social process
which led to this particular conceptional frame (1) becoming adopted
within particular institutional practices and by particular sets of cultural
specialists and (2) being proliferated and accepted by particular audiences
and publics?