Rise of Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a broad movement in art, architecture, literature and philosophy which questions the confidence in reason, progress and universal truth that marked modernism. The term was used in various fields from the mid-twentieth century, and the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard defined it in 1979 as incredulity toward grand narratives. In architecture, figures such as Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks rejected plain modernist boxes in favour of playful historical quotation. In literature it is linked to writers like Thomas Pynchon and Jorge Luis Borges, and in philosophy to thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. Its meaning is contested, and critics have accused it of relativism.

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