The Concept of Postmodernism

This study explores the concept of postmodernism in literature. There are many ideas which have conflicted with each other, but now postmodernism is real concept. We cannot deny. By researching papers of Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan etc. we find out many characteristics of postmodernism. From that, we propose a conceptual understanding of postmodern literature as follows: Starting from the late 1910s with the poetry of Dadaism (1916), Franz Kafka's prose (Metamorphosis 1915) and drama by Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot 1953), postmodern literature coexists with modern literature and is a thriving form from 1960 on. Postmodernism is opposed to modernism in nature in that it accepts nothingness, chaos, games and intertextuality. It tries to solve some difficult problems of modernism making use of science to free people from a life of darkness and dogma. Postmodernism is associated with the information technology revolution, an economic, scientific and technological boom and rapid urbanization.