ABSTRACT
Debate continues about the origins of the term postmodernity. The arts are seen as the progenitors of postmodern sensibilities and aesthetics—beating out philosophy, literature, history, and the social sciences. To map out this territory of postmodernity accurately one must start at modernity which postmodernity supposedly rejects, including its notion of the importance of empirical science, and its concept of universal truth and all that goes along with it. Modernity and postmodernity are most often used as categories that distinguish particular cultures or ways of life associated with periods of time from the aesthetics of those eras. At the same time, much like modernity, postmodernity is an historical and cultural condition that houses within itself oppositional cultural practices and strategies. Fredric Jameson always speaks of postmodernity in cultural or aesthetic terms, as a hysterical sublime, a derealization of the surrounding world and every day reality.
