Class and Culture: How the Post-Modern Movement Came to be.
Article for Design Culture & Theory, BDES 1201. Week 9: March 11th, 2021. Total word count: 533
This week’s readings written by Charles Jencks and Jonathan Woodham outline how the shift from modernism to post-modernism came to be and how this affected various aspects of art and design.
Charles Jencks’s work titled “The Post-Modern Information World and the Rise of the Cognitariat” explains how the rise in fast global communication is what brought about the ‘post-modern condition’. Jencks explains that cultural boundaries began to disappear as an increase in global trade and tourism peaked. This allowed for an environment to thrive on the blending and merging of design principles from across the globe. Because there is no one set of principles for this movement, this has allowed for many avant-garde and eclectic styles in interior design, architecture and fashion to flourish. This is what created the distinctly undistinct style of design known as post-modernism.
In Jonathan Woodham’s chapter from Twentieth Century Design, titled “Pop to Post-Modernism: Changing Values”, Woodham goes into detail on how the shift in production and consumption after the war helped the post-modern movement flourish. He explains how the Fordist production model of mass marketing which previously dominated the market would not cater to the modernist aesthetic. He explains that this is because consumers were presenting with increasingly varied tastes due to the emergence of cultural representation in the media. Woodham explores the post-modern movement across the globe and synthesizes this vast movement into a few characteristics: eclecticism, ornamentation, kitsch, wit and irony.
Although both authors agree that global communication and representation in the media played a large role in inspiring the post-modern movement, Jencks goes into greater detail on how class structures played a role in the emergence of post-modern principles. He notes that in the ‘cognitariat class’ (those with high academic training who receive a low salary) there is more mobility and frequent job changes than in the past. Because of this, Jencks states that “social distinctions dissolve and cultural identifiers- accent, dress, social attitudes and values- become fuzzy.” I believe this to be one of the greatest catalysts of the post-modern movement. The destruction of out-dated worldviews and the ability to experience a large variety of cultures allowed for individuals to experience new things aesthetically and culturally in order to form their own post-modernism principles.
One of the challenges that designers still face from the post-modern era is navigating the boundaries of cultural appropriation versus appreciation. It can be extremely easy for designers who do not fall into certain cultural categories to see something in the media or via other designers and want to take inspiration from it. Although there is inherently nothing wrong with that, most do so in a way that does not honour the culture from whom they are taking from. More often than not these individuals are completely ignorant of the history of what they are ‘borrowing’ or the culture in which it comes from. This can be extremely harmful to that community and we must actively work against those appropriating other cultures. For example, those at Victoria's Secret have been called out numerous times for appropriating African, Asian and Indigenous culture, as recently as 2018.
We must continue to call out those disrespecting minority cultures and those appropriating what is not theirs.
Do you believe the ‘Cognitariat Class’ still exists to this day? If so, does this class continue to influence our modern way of life? How can we as designers borrow aspects from other cultures while simultaneously honouring them and their history?