Academics wage fierce debates about what post this and that means and cool hispsters and trendy art students say things like "Oh yaa, my latest installation man - its totally - like - er postmodern?" So... What is postmodern?

Sometimes postmodernity is a term used to describe the era through which we are living now. One of rampant commercialism, media saturation, virtual reality and the mixing-up of "high-culture" and "low-culture" in a ecclectic mix. Some see this as a new form of exciting multi-culturalism. Others see it as a the sickening logic of late capitalism - an agenda that attempts to reduce all notions of constructive political action to a mush.

Of course there are countless inbetween states and conceptions. It is unlikely that postmodernity is the same everywhere. Postmodernity for a starving beggar in Delhi, is probably quite different than for a middle aged American academic. It was probably different for a inhabitant of Baghdad during the Gulf War than it was the philosopher Baudrillard.

I would argue that what postmodernism is- is: how the term is used. By this I mean that it can be defined positively, negatively or just 'matter-of-factly' or as a state within which things can be positive or negative or indifferent or a mixture. Confused? Good. That is the first step towards understanding postmodernism.

It is often argued that the postmodern is what has tended to come after the modern. Jean-Francois Lyotard said "Simplifying to the extreme I define postmodern, as incredulity towards metanarratives". Postmodern theorists move away from the notions of the Enlightenment which believed that the world and the self were somehow "whole" and graspable through the excercise of reason. Such reasoning is often now seen as naive when undertaken without a problematic consciousness of the excercise.

As a result, irony and game playing tend to dominate postmodern art forms as does a fascination with artifice. Some of these trends are visible in Midnight's Children which could be described as of the postmodern age. It is also described as a post-colonial work which is a related concept but quite different (some would say in opposition) to concepts of the postmodern.

Postmodern novels are often constructs which reveal the instability of language, where values and the meanings of words and events are temporary - merely constructions, and there are multiple narrative possibilies without one absolute metanarrative drawing them together. I would argue that Midnight's Children and the works of art and literature that are of value from this "postmodern age" are those which don't throw everything to the four winds of total relativism.

Midnight's Children is a novel that is concerned with itself as an artifice - a conjuring trick - but Rushdie does not seem prepared to just sit back and say 'Well... that's okay then. It's all just a game'. On some levels the book is a game - but that game can be very serious (even if it is in an ironic frame). The description of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre for example, despite Aadam Aziz's comic, life saving, sneeze, is still harrowing and moving. It begs the question - how can this sort of atrocity be avoided? The question however is not asked simplistically - it is not reactionary moral outrage but a statement of the complexity of the event - of history - of the difficulties of notions of cause and effect.

I'll finish with a truism - which while, admittedly being pretty empty has helped me reconcile myself to the notion of living in what has been defined by others as the postmodern age: Postmodernism is why/how/where you find it. (Sorry I couldn't be more concrete!)

Also - note that postmodern, postmodernism, and postmodernity are different terms with different meanings (adding further complexity to the whole situation). To find out more about them all go to the Links page before my brain explodes.