ABSTRACT
The question of ‘what comes after postmodernism?’ has an intriguing and empowering tone because it gives us the delusion that we are in control [if not control, at least sense of foreknow] of the next, upcoming stage in philosophy. It gives us the phantasy that the owl of Minerva isn’t spreading its wings only with the falling of the dusk anymore. But we should really think about to what extent our role and power have an effect in shaping this next stage. ‘Perhaps we overestimate the role to be played by such an examination of the world, and what we ourselves contribute to it, by holding it to be the work of our representing, and by remaining insensitive to that which touches us inconspicuously’ (Heidegger, 2010, p. 105). The question is not ‘what came after postmodernism?’ [which would be both easy and impossible to answer because of several reasons, still there are some answers around accordingly] but ‘what comes after postmodernism?’, so it can be said that even from the beginning the question itself implicitly says that we are in a transition. This transition sounds like there’s an ongoing fadlessness in philosophy and it needs and waits for some kind of new fashion and movement. This idea [the idea that something else would come eventually] might be problematic in its own way, but still it pinpoints towards what must be thought. Really, what will come next? I don’t have the answer. And once I heard that the one who doesn’t have the answer hardly believes that someone else has it. Let’s be honest to ourselves, it is true that we have theories, possibilities, suggestions and they are all partially [and in their own context] right but it is also true that they are nowhere near to the scale of movements like romanticism, modernism and even if it’s rather small when compared to these, postmodernism. So, I think we have better chances in pursuing and asking properly the opposite question: ‘What doesn’t come after postmodernism?’
