Postmodernism and Postmodernity

"As we try to understand our contemporary world, it is necessary, I believe, to distinguish between postmodernism and postmodernity. The former is the intellectual formulation of postmodern ideas on the high end of culture. It is their expression in architecture, in literary theory, philosophy, and so on. Postmodernity, by contrast, I am taking as the popular, social expression of the same assumptions but in ways that may be unselfconscious and often not intellectual at all, making this a diffuse, unshaped kind of expression. If the one is found in books and art, if it is debated on campuses and in the academy, the other is found in rock music, in the malls, on television, and in the workplace."

— David Wells in Above All Earthly Pow'rs (p64)

From my perspective this is a helpful and workable distinction. Even in academic circles, postmodernism as a philosophy seems passe. Few everyday individuals have a clue or care about the formulations of Lyotard and others. There are also many distinctions that can be made between the two (postmodernism and postmodernity). The main concern of the average citizen is how their own thinking and living patterns are intensely personal and real to them, but not to be imposed on others. Our concern as Christians in this age is how the Gospel comes to bear upon the individual in his own life, not how it may be used to fight against a formulation that may have been extrapolated and modified more or less until it comes to assume the shape of the individual's thought. Is it interesting to understand how things got to be the way they are today? Absolutely! But it is of much more value for us to understand the times themselves than what a philosopher may have said about the way he would like things to be. This is particularly true in dealing with people who think within the basic mental framework that most individuals live with today— that there is no absolute truth. (Maybe more on this one later.)