You Don't Talk About Postmodernism

What is postmodernism? This is a question that I found myself pondering my junior year of highschool. The class had just begun discussing the book "Fight Club" The highly aclaimed book famous for the fact that "you can't talk about it". The teacher began the class by introducing the book and calling it a "postmodern" novel. Know what could this possibly mean? We are modern right now aren't we? Is this book somehow in the future? Are we primitives unable to understand the deeper meaning of the novel? So I asked my professor," Mrs. Prochnow, What is Postmodernism?" and she replied with some long answer with the actual meaning of the word and what it meant etc. 

However, today I cannot for the life of me recall what she said. This leads me to the reading for this weeks blog post. The reading is by Walter Truett Anderson, and is called “Welcome to the postmodern world” in Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be. Anderson's article Having read the reading, Anderson defines postmodernism really as this idea of what if everything that we know is a social construct. This is a very appalling idea to me because being a college student, I have dished out how many thousands of dollars in some attempt at successfully or not successfully obtaining knowledge with the long term goal of using said knowledge to obtain wealth and be successful, eventually settle down and have a nice house with a two car garage, a beautiful wife, a nice dog, above average children and overall a very nice and secure life. This idea of postmodernism is one that  is quite disturbing to me as it would completely irradicate any need for my education, for which I have paid dearly. 

Now for an actual application of postmodernism. In the film "Fight Club" the theme of postmodernism runs rampant. Throughout the film the director goes back and forth in time to create this feeling of not knowing what is actually happening. This gives the film a postmodern feel as the idea of postmodernism is that everything that we know that is so is only so because of culture. Having read the book and watched some of the film, I left feeling quite confused about what postmodernism is and what good does postmodernism actually provide. I personally find that the theory of postmodernism was created by a professor for the sole purpose of acquiring tenure and keeping a well-paying job for the rest of their life. I found Anderson's article to be interesting and a valiant attempt at trying to place a finger on what postmodernism is. However, I am not personally a fan of a theory which discredits every single other theory on the face of the planet.