Abstract

What is postmodernity? — not simply postmodernism as a set of theories, but also postmodernity, as a set of cultural circumstances. Above all, it means the obliteration of boundaries, the confusion of categories. In the postmodern times in which we live, there is no longer any easy distinction to be made between nature and culture, private interior and public exterior, hierarchical summit and material depth; nor between idea and thing, message and means, production and exchange, product and delivery, the state and the market, humans and animals, humans and machines, image and reality — nor beginning, middle and end. Everything is made to run into everything else; everything gets blended, undone and then re-blended. There are no longer any clear centres of control, and this means that new weight is given to plurality and the proliferation of difference. However, none of these differences ever assumes the status of a distinct essence: rather they are temporary events, destined to vanish and be displaced