So, What is Hypermodernity?

Hypermodernity (Academic Definition)
There can be a profound lack of integration between the past and the present since:
1. What happened necessarily took place under "lesser" circumstances than now, which generates a fundamentally separate context.
2. Artefacts from the past superabundantly clutter the cultural landscape and are seamlessly reused to generate an even greater superabundance from which individuals are unable to discern original intent or meaning.
Hypermodernity (also called "Super modernity") differs from Modernity in that it has even more commitment to reason and to an ability to improve individual choice and freedom. Modernity merely held out the hope of reasonable change while continuing to deal with a historical set of issues and concerns; hypermodernity posits that things are changing so quickly that history is not a reliable guide. The positive changes of hypermodernity are supposedly witnessed through rapidly expanding wealth, better living standards, medical advances, and so forth. Individuals and cultures that benefit directly from these things can feel that they are pulling away from natural limits that have always constrained life on Earth. But the negative effects also can be seen as leading to a soulless homogeneity as well as to accelerated discrepancies between different classes and groups.
Post modernity differs here in that it rejects the idea of "reasonable change" while at the same time accepting that the past and its artefacts have as much value as the present. The value is primarily expressed through provisional constructs that have no lasting meaning; we cannot discern truth but we can play with the nonsense. Post modernity is meant to describe a condition of total emergence from Modernity and its faith in progress and improvement in empowering the individual.
Key Features:
Key features include the belief that every aspect of the human experience, can be controlled and manipulated by humanity’s ability to understand through science, knowledge, technology and biology.
It is the step beyond post - post modernism.
Key Theorists:
Gilles Lipovestsky and Sebastian Charles appear to be the main theorists developing the idea.
How could you use these in ideas?
It could easily be used in analysis of texts from a scholarly approach. As post modernism is such a broad subject, exploring other categories could be of valuable insight.
Reading list:
Works by Gilles Lipovestsky and Sebastian Charles

‘The Mistakes of the Past’? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration By David Parker and Paul Long

The reading uses historiography to discuss the changes in Birmingham’s architecture. Analysing in detail the alterations made in post war Britain, the piece reflects on buildings as ways of symbolisations and planned developments.

Not knowing Birmingham that well, I found the reading really insightful, because as an outsider when I think of Birmingham city centre, I visualise concrete jungle style office blocks, bypasses and flyovers – spaghetti junction – and the bubbly Selfridges building! (How uncultured of me?!)

A main focus is the discussion of the Rotunda building as an iconic image of Birmingham’s skyline.

The architecture of England’s second city is criticised rather than praised, and there is an underlying bitter impression of the lost bid for the ‘Capital of Culture’ title.

The future of the city is that of a personal preference – you love it or hate it by either ‘promoting it – or resisting the change’ even for its inhabitants. The city centre is bustling with modern buildings, Brindley Place and the developments around the canal side featuring popular shops and restaurants that accommodate the hoard of yuppies and tourists whom frequent the area.

Advert campaigns have been designed specifically for its target audience­­ - The Bull Ring endorsements are described as follows – “By way of contrast, the officially endorsed imagery of the coming, reinvigorated Bull Ring is presented in a gloriously vibrant colour. One series of images – readily available on the websites, around the city and on printed promotional literature – features a stylishly dressed and choreographed model. A key banner presents an extreme close-up of the model’s mini-skirted thighs as she purposefully strides past the photographer’s lens (see Figure 4).She is, no doubt, on her way to shop. The emphasis here is upon youth and beauty and – as befits the stereotypical associations of retail and consumption– on femininity”.

A useful piece of writing which provides insightful information, which could also be adapted to talk about the architecture of every city.

Postmodernism and 'The other side' By Dick Hebdige

Well, after reading this, I think I'm even more confused than I was before to what postmodernism actually is. Hebdige discusses how postmordernism is a term that is used nowadays frequently and widely in our society. Why then is there no exact determination for what is and what is not postmodern, because to me, it seems it is down to the own individual interpretation, which defines it's true meaning.

Hebdige argues too that postmodernism is referred to as the 'buzzword', because it has so many distinctions. One point he does make is that there are three negotiations, which are as follows -

1. Against Totalisation
2. Against Teleology
3. Against Utopia

His point being that postmodernism applies to several different cultural aspects. Marxism still plays a valid role, in what Hebdige describes as 'explicit renunciation of marxism. Power and structure, and a hierarchical command are present in postmodernism, the guidelines are there, and there are certain rules to follow, yet there is still a sense of ambiguity and inconclusivenss. Which can be slightly unhelpful/ confusing when analysing media texts, yet, bearing that in mind, aren't all media theories just that, theories? Left wide open for discussion and arguement?

"Within this model, there is no 'science' to be opposed to the monolith of ideology, only prescience: an alertness to possibility and emergence - that and the always imperfect, risky, undecidable 'science' of strategy".


"To say 'post' is to say 'past', hence questions of periodisation are inevitably raised. There is, however, little agreement as to what it is we are alleged to have surpassed, when that passage is supposed to have ocurred and what effects it is supposed to have had".

'Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture' Pierre Bourdieu

What is the Topic and Issue of the chapter?
This was a very in depth piece of writing, and I found it quite difficult to stay focused as Bourdieu was quite repetitive in this chapter. However the main issue here is that our own culture can be determined by many factors, like our family, our education and what we are exposed to, like longer schooling - visiting theatres and museums for a few examples.
What is the autor arguing? what is his point?
As a consumer, we must possess cultural competancy - that is to say if the working class audience refuses any sort of formal experimentation, will distance them as a spectator, which will prevent them from getting involoved and fully identifying the characters and the situation.
What method does the author use to make his case?
I would of thought guessing from his findings Bourdieu would have conducted visual ethnography along with interviews and historiography to accumulate his findings.
What suggestions/ conclusions does the author make?
He concludes with his theory of 'The Aesthetic Disposition' where who judges art and where the only socially accepted 'right' way of approaching the object. He continues to discuss whether it is refusal or privatisation which distances us, that through
deciphering and decoding even the 'ordinary people' adopt the negative conception of ordinary vision which is the basis of every 'high' aesthetic.
Do you agree/disagree with the author?
I strongly agree that what we surround ourselves with, in turn opitimises what our own culture is, however why do we have to understand something to appreciate its cultural value. Who is to say that Museum visits and Ballet trips enrich us as human beings, and why is this categorized as high culture?

"Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by thier classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or portrayed."

"The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile - in a word, natural - enjoyment which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the subliminated, refined, disintersted, gratuitous distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function and legitmating social differences."

"There is an economy of cultural goods, but it has specific logic. Sociology endeavours to establish the conditions in which the consumers of cultural goods, and their taste for them, are produced, at the same time to describe different ways pf appropriating such of these subjects as are regarded at a particular moment as works of art, and the social conditions of the consitution of the mode of appropriation that is considered legitimate."

Notes on deconstructing 'The Popular' Stuart Hall

What is the topic and issue of the chapter?
Hall discusses popular culture, what he believes it to be, and how it has developed and altered over the years. He has pinpointed precise periods in our history, paying attention in detail to the late 19th centuary (more specifically the 1880-1920's) and the 1930's. The issues he addresses are that of change and restricition, dilemmas and struggle.
what is the author arguing?
A main arguement I sense when reading Hall's work is the issue of class combined with culture, and such a place where socialism might be constructed. Tradition is a vital element in culture is also a key point made by Hall.
What method does the author use to make his case?
Histroriography - it has clear he has researched the past in order to assess culture in today's society.
What suggestions/conclusions does the author make?
That capital is the driving force behind culture, and that the terrain of national-popular culture and tradition is a battlefield. Also that 'popular' can have a number of different meanings.
Do you agree or disagree with the author and why?
When reading this, I felt like Hall is one of the first theorists to actually give the power to the people, I think it's not such a bad thing to be part of the masses like other theorists believe, the minority isn't necessarily the elite either, why can't you be apart of the masses yet still be individual. Most annoyingly - why is there this continuous war between 'class against class'? I like his concept and beliefs in the people, however, in reality - i'm not sure this is really the case.

"I have as many problems with 'popular' as i do with 'culture'. When you put the two terms together the difficulties can be pretty horrendous"

"Culture struggle, of course, takes may forms: incorporation, distortion, resistance, negotiation. Raymond Williams has done us a great deal of service by outlining some of these processes, with his distinction between emergent, residual and incorporated moments. We need to expand and develop rudimentary schema. The important thing is to look at it dynamically: as an historical process."

"The term 'popular' has very complex relations to the term 'class'. We know this but are often at pains to forget it. We speak ot particular forms of working class culture, but we use the more inculsive term 'popular culture' to refer to the general field of enquiry."

Dance: Standard

When I think of The Frankfurt School, I imagine stuffy professors with tweed jackets and a pessimistic view of the rest of the world. I shall attempt to critique in the style of my object of study this week, The Frankfurt School, with my chosen cultural industry of the arts – Dance.
When I think of Dance, I think of highly skilled human beings who can make their bodies move in beautiful, miraculous ways. They condition and train their bodies to be strong and precise, and it is a craft which takes years to develop, grow and nurture – and only the elite few make it to a professional level.
Years ago, being a dancer was only a dream for a few people, not your average family could afford to send their sons and daughters to dance school, or pay for weekly tuition, nowadays it’s readily accessible, with an array of new wacky and wonderful genres, and with a different reality dance show popping up on channels almost as fast as you can blink.
To me this once enchanting art form has been standardized without recognition. It isn’t even as individual as it thinks it is, hybrid genres of dance have evolved over the years. For example, dance used to mean performing Swan Lake in front of The Queen, now you can run across the room, move your head to the left and turn on a light switch and it’s classed as ‘contemporary dance’. (No, it really is!)
Dance has been integrated and standardised into our society, and there is no going back, if I wasn’t discussing this in a Frankfurt school perspective, I would say times have changed for the better and that dance should be accessible and enjoyed by everyone, but a part of me agrees that the skill and commitment that once was given to this art, has not gone just yet – but it is certainly beginning to diminish.