First Take: A term used to characterize a wide range of cultural theories, styles and practices in the arts, in Philosophy, and–to a more limited degree–in experimental journalism, particularly following the influence of the New Journalism. Considered a way to mark an historical break with European and American modernism, postmodernism has challenged received or inherited notions that the world we inhabit can be transparently represented by language or explained by singular or unifying theory or narrative.
Deeper: In the arts (including architecture, so vital to Joan Didion’s work), postmodern work is often associated with collage or pastiche or parody; with mixing radically different styles (a classical arch might be put on a skyscraper)—even a mixing of media forms themselves (a snippet of poetry in a news report, a movie clip superimposed on an immersion narrative such as Michael Herr’s Dispatches). Instead of favoring the detached, “fourth wall” of high modernism, a postmodern journalist might display, open up, his or her own subjectivity and subject position.
In some quarters, postmodernism is often seen as a challenge to the very idea of neutral or objective thinking–since, in the postmodern view, identity itself is typically seen as fragmentary, criss-crossed by unstable and self-reflexive language categories, and by incomplete or outdated systems of thought–and thus, a direct challenge to conventional ideas of journalistic authority and verification. As a result, postmodernism and/or postmodern thinking is not uncommonly greeted with much suspicion in mainstream journalism. Indeed, public conversation within the trade–and especially in the various fact-fiction debates (see entry)–is typically marred by critiques that see postmodern approaches as only producing self-referential narcissism, and thus a flight from the rigorous obligations of the journalism profession itself. The New Journalism has itself, almost from the start, been greeted in much the same way (resulting in even famous journalists not wanting to be labeled as such).
Still, as is explored in Chapters 4 and 5, several important examples of contemporary reportage have been touched by postmodern thinking and styles, both in its story-forms and its critique of philosophical notions of objectivity. And, in truth, nonfiction writers have been mixing modes for a long time (one thinks of Jacob Riis and photography; Stephen Crane and impressionist painting; Margaret Randall and oral history)–in this sense, the “postmodern” is actually returning some branches of narrative journalism to its roots.