I always believed that postmodernism referred to the era after a community or environment was established. For some reason this is was the definition I stuck to. Chances are that I took the word literally opposed to actually finding out the definition. It wasn't until last week in class that I learned the real meaning of this term; I was embarassed to be quite honest after realizing how wrong I was.
Dictionary.com defines postmodernism as: any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism, especially a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often playful illusion, decoration, and complexity.
Upon reading this definition, I was still a tad bit confused. The only basic understanding of postmodernism, even after learning about it in class, was an idea or something that cannot be fully grasped or explained as a whole. Regardless of the many examples presented in class, my mind was still jumbled up. I was starting to think that the process of studying postmodernism is postmodernism; I simply cannot grasp the concept as a whole.
Although I still have little understanding of what postmodernism actually is, with the little knowledge I have grasped, the meaning of postmodernism has taken a 180 flip. Because understanding postmodernism is so difficult for me, I am sure I will have many "changes of mind" towards this concept. If my definition of postmodernism went from interpreting it through a literal perspective to a completely different understanding, the more we focus on postmodernism, the more my perspectives will alter-continuously.
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