ABSTRACT
To begin writing about postmodernity and health is no easy task, if only because the terms are so difficult to define. ‘Postmodernity’ like ‘postmodernism’ or even ‘postmodern society’ can mean almost anything the author likes. Likewise, the term ‘health’ conveys a number of positive and negative values, depending on the context and purpose of use. For some, especially those already sympathetic to the idea that we live in postmodern times, this definitional problem is moot; for ‘signification’ is now only loosely connected with that being signified. ‘It all depends’ becomes the cliché of our period. Indeed, clichés become the meeting point between modernity and postmodernity, as context and function supersede shared meanings (Zijderfeld 1979). ‘Postmodernity’ and ‘postmodernism’ end up being applied to all and sundry phenomena.
