Postmodernism questions notions of identity, subjectivity and the self. It rejects the idea of a fixed or essential self, viewing identity as socially constructed. Issues explored include how identity is formed, the influence of images and media on identity construction, and the idea that identities are multiple and mutable rather than fixed. Postmodern art reflects these ideas by depicting shallow or fragmented identities influenced by consumerism and popular culture. Artists like Sherman, Kruger and McCarthy critique consumerism and the constructed nature of modern identities.

1. Introduction to
Postmodernism:
Subjectivity and
Identity – Self
Awareness
deborah.jackson@ed.ac.uk

2. Issues of identity are crucial to
postmodernism
• What is the ‘self’?
•How is it formed, does it emerge?
•What is ‘identity’?
• How is it formed?
•How does the self inform identity?
•How does identity influence the ‘self’?

3. Subjectivity and Identity – The male gaze
“Art has inserted itself in
Western culture as a way
of thinking about certain
issues, particularly
individuality, identity, and
space.”
Ernst van Alphen, Art in Mind: How
Contemporary Images Shape
Thought, Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2005.

4. Subjectivity and Identity – The male gaze
Postmodernism rejects
naturalism (realism)
Postmodernism
rewrites naturalism
and exposes it as
naturalized

5. Postmodernism as a theoretical approach to
understanding identity construction
All identities, whether based on class, gender or ethnicity are social
constructions. And there is no doubt that identity-construction is increasingly
dependent on images.

6. Cindy Sherman and the
mediation of subjectivity
in postmodern culture
For many postmodernists
we live in the society of the
image, primarily concerned
with the production and
consumption of mere
‘simulacra’
Cindy Sherman
Untitled (As Marilyn Monroe) 1982

7. “…with that pure random play of signifiers which we
call postmodernism, which no longer produces
monumental works of the modernist type, but
ceaselessly reshuffles the fragmentation of pre-
existent texts, the building blocks of older cultural
and social production…”
Jameson, Postmodernism in the Video Text (1987)

8. Marks of
Identity
In the 1960s and 1970s a
number of different thinkers
started to question the
validity of the human
Subject.
Jenny Holzer
Abuse of power comes as no
surprise (1983)

9. Barbara Kruger
"Untitled
(I shop,
therefore I am)”
(1987)

10. Parody and Pastiche
• Parody aims to mock an original in a critical way
• The postmodern theorist Frederic Jameson states that ‘The art of parody
depends on the tension between the known original and its parody twin.’
• A parody must transform the original, altering it to give new meaning
and in the process create a new work
• Pastiche is merely a stylistic mask
• Pastiche is prominent in popular culture
•Fredric Jameson has examined the functions of postmodern pastiche. He
describes pastiche as ‘the random cannibalisation of all the styles of the
past, the play of stylistic allusion

11. In 1969, the
postmodern architect
Robert Venturi
published a book
called Learning from
Las Vegas. Rather than
criticising the city he
argued that architects
should study it
because it is
representative of the
postmodern age.

12. Contemporary Visual Culture and the
Acceleration of Identity

13. Sherman’s photographs explore female
identity, representation and
transformation yet if we ask the
question “Who is Sherman?” her
photographs reveal nothing of her
subjectivity. This is because her
photographs are about no one in
particular but about the constructed
nature of identity and images of ‘the
Lois Lane in the 1950's television real’ and popular culture.
program Superman
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21

14. In this postmodern culture of television,
advertising and media manipulation,
Sherman is exploring how “reality itself
has become a manufactured image” and
how the self has thus lost depth, being
simply a “shallow artefact of cultural
production,” with self- discovery and self
emancipation becoming only a delusion.

15. CINDY SHERMAN
(Untitled
Film Still #13)
(Untitled Film Still #7)
(Untitled Film Still #3),

16. Malleable/constructed and multiple identities
Postmodernism doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation or
incoherence, but rather celebrates that.
Postmodern historians and philosophers question the
representation of history and cultural identities
Sense of fragmentation and de-centered self; multiple,
conflicting identities
Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful
than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As
seen on TV” is more powerful than unmediated experience

17. Not only have subjects
become shallow
images that are copies
of copies, but we have
also become subjects
of consumerism, no
longer individuals but
targets for
consumption.
Duane Hanson
Supermarket Shopper (1970)

18. Duane Hanson said: ‘I like the
physical burdens this woman
carries. She is weighted down by
all of her shopping bags and
purchases, and she has become
almost a bag herself. She carries
physical burdens – the burdens of
life, of everyday living. But
initially, it’s quite a funny
sculpture’.
Duane Hanson
Young Shopper (1973)

19. "Advertising becomes
information when there
is no longer anything to
choose from, when the
recognition of brand
names has taken the
place of choice."
(Adorno, 1991, 73)

20. Kruger’s work
provokes a
critique of “the
relations between
commercial
design and the
way a culture
designs peoples
lives”
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Your Body is a
Battleground) (1989)

21. Power is embedded in
the signs and icons of
culture, media, adverti
sement. Kruger
supplies the resistance.
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (You Are Not Yourself)
1981

22. Both Kruger and Baudrillard also
discuss consumption and
commodification in their work.
Baudrillard states, "Today
consumption...defines precisely the
stage where the commodity is
immediately produced as a sign, as a
sign value, and where signs (culture)
are produced as commodities
Barbara Kruger
"Untitled (When I hear the world culture, I take
out my checkbook)"
1985

23. Much of Paul McCarthy's works
took the glitz and glam of
Hollywood and the western
consumer society and brought out
the darker side of it. The idea for
Caribbean Pirates came from the
Pirates of the Caribbean
movies, and the Disney Land
attraction. The difference being
that the movies and Disney Land
attraction are about fun and
entertainment. McCarthy takes it to
the extreme of gore and obscenity.
Paul McCarthy
Caribbean Pirates 2001-2005

24. Fredric Jameson’s concept of "pastiche”
According to Jameson we approach "the 'past' through stylistic
connotation, conveying 'pastness' by the glossy qualities of the image,
by the attributes of fashion"
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #54,
1980

25. The notion that an individual might gain a sense of authenticity and
connection with the self in and through the body is profoundly disturbed by
the unstable appropriations and ideological representations of the body
throughout the history of Western culture, and within an increasingly
mediatized and technologically driven world.

26. References
Farrell, Frank B. “Subjectivity, Realism, And Postmodernism- The
Recovery of the World,” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1994.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.
Venturi, Robert. Learning from Las Vegas, 1969
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism in the Video Text (1987)