Understanding Post-Postmodern Societies: New Theories And Conceptual Approaches
Dijital Toplumda İletişim Çalışmaları Yeni Kavramlar ve Yeni Kavramlar, Doç. Dr. Birol Demircan, Editör, Vizetek Yayıncılık, Ankara, ss.121-166, 2026
- Yayın Türü: Kitapta Bölüm / Araştırma Kitabı
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.54637/vizetek.9786253823047
- Yayınevi: Vizetek Yayıncılık
- Basıldığı Şehir: Ankara
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.121-166
- Editörler: Doç. Dr. Birol Demircan, Editör
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- İstanbul Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
From the final quarter of the twentieth century onward -and increasingly throughout the period extending into the 2010’s- the notion that postmodernism’s cultural, aesthetic, and social explanatory power had gradually weakened gained widespread traction with growing intensity. As the postmodern framework entered a theoretical crisis and digitalization became increasingly pervasive, a succession of new theoretical initiatives began to emerge around the turn of the millennium to understand, define, and explain
the novel social processes being experienced. The postmodern paradigm, which approached the grand narratives of modernism with skepticism, rejected them, and conceptualized reality as fragmented, relative, languagedependent, and constructed, gradually assumed a form that was no longer capable of maintaining its former inclusiveness as the millennium approached. The intensification of globalization brought with it heightened cultural mobility and hybridity, while the collapse of the Soviet Union generated an ideological vacuum. Confronted with profound transformations such as the existential crisis triggered by the September 11 attacks, the subject’s renewed
search for meaning, the global 2008 financial crisis, global warming and climate-related emergencies, and the digital revolution initiated through Web 2.0, the postmodern framework became increasingly diluted and largely lost its explanatory function. In response to this vacuum -and particularly to conceptualize the historical condition experienced after the millennium- a range of theoretical propositions marked by differing emphases and orientations began to emerge. Theorists seeking to construct a framework for the post-postmodern condition produced a series of studies aimed at establishing a shared conceptual vocabulary and an overarching theoretical paradigm.
Linda Hutcheon’s diagnosis in 1989 emerges as a crucial turning point in efforts to define the post-postmodern condition. According to Hutcheon, once postmodernism ceased to function as an avant-garde discourse and transformed into a mainstream intellectual camp, many of its defining qualities -especially its critical and inclusive dimensions- became blunted and compromised. Although she did not explicitly proclaim the death of postmodernism, Hutcheon argued that once postmodernism became institutionalized and consolidated into a dominant intellectual formation, it had effectively ‘passed’ and come to an end. Much like modernism, which continues to appear in certain everyday practices and artistic frameworks despite having lost its dominant position, postmodernism likewise remains ‘here’ (Hutcheon, 2009, p. 1); however, something considerably newer and stranger (Searle, 2009) has begun to take its place.
Theoretical attempts to conceptualize the post-postmodern condition—and particularly the period following the turn of the millennium—approach contemporary transformations, innovations, and ruptures from a variety of cultural, aesthetic, social, and technological perspectives, each shaped by distinct emphases and concerns. Bourriaud, for instance, develops altermodernism through the lenses of globalization and cultural mobility; Samuels formulates automodernism by foregrounding the tension between autonomy and technological automation; Eshelman advances performatism through a focus on aesthetic belief and framing; Kirby proposes pseudomodernism/digimodernism on the premise that digital technology fundamentally transforms the structure of the text; Vermeulen and van den Akker articulate metamodernism through the dynamic of oscillation between
modernism and postmodernism; Lipovetsky characterizes hypermodernism as an age defined by intensified consumption and acceleration that pushes modernity to its limits; and Childish and Thomson formulate remodernism as an effort to reclaim the spiritual dimension of art (Bourriaud, 2009; Samuels, 2008; Eshelman, 2008; Kirby, 2009; Vermeulen & Akker, 2010; Childish & Thomson, 2000). This study approaches the contemporary digital era and the theoretical frameworks that have emerged in an effort to make sense of it as intellectual responses developed to understand and explain post-postmodern societies. Accordingly, each of these theoretical paradigms is examined in detail with respect to its historical and intellectual origins, developmental trajectory, core conceptual vocabulary and analytical categories, as well as its priorities, potentials, and limitations. These theoretical propositions are further interpreted through their respective relationships to postmodernism and evaluated in terms of how they conceptualize society, subjectivity, and culture in the period following the turn of the millennium.