Postmodernity

Shore reads structuralism as the final big school to try standing in for God; with postmodernism the attempt is simply given up.

Postmodernity, Shore says, is often defined through its fervent anti-Hegelianism: against Hegel's "the true is the whole," it denies any whole, order, stable meaning, subject or direction.

Put simply Shore: postmodernity is often defined by its fierce rejection of Hegel. Hegel said "the true is the whole"; postmodern thought denies there is any whole, order, stable meaning, self or direction.

Foucault, in Shore's placement, sits on the threshold: no longer quite a structuralist, but not as radically post-structuralist as Derrida.

Shore reads postmodernism as a late answer to the century's mass killing: a vow of never again that reexamines the revolutionary tradition and concedes something in it went wrong.

Marx wrote "all that is solid melts into air" somewhat before its time: false in 1848, it describes what postmodernism brings about.

Postmodernity, which Bauman names liquid modernity, abandons the search for sturdier solids altogether and welcomes what is fluid, slippery and short-lived instead.

Put simply Bauman calls postmodernity "liquid modernity": people stop trying to replace old foundations with firmer ones and embrace what is fluid, slippery and short-lived instead.