Postmodern thought challenges many of the core assumptions and ideologies of modernist thought developed during the Enlightenment period. It questions the notion of the individual, linear logic, and stable foundations. The cornerstone of postmodernism is that it rejects the idea of a universal truth and the quest for certainty.
According to Social Justice: Theories, Issues, and Movements (Capeheart & Milovanovic, 2007), postmodernists argue that there is no absolute truth or one single collective universe; rather there exists a multitude of diverse people, each with their nuanced ways of being and becoming. The thinking behind this is that reality is subjective, and that one's interpretation of an experience is unique/different from another’s. Therefore attempts at unification through finding conceptual truth or absolute truth, and using the rational of a few to solve society’s problems, is rejected.
Finally, postmodernists rely on the concept of active justice. Traditionally modernists have relied on the concept of passive justice where people are not seen as having any duties to care for others outside of civil justice issues. Active justice argues that people do have a responsibility, and a duty, to help and provide care for others.
How Postmodernism is Applied
Postmodernism is applied by putting in action several of the principles presented by Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon (2010). Based on these principles, a postmodernist will...
...resist certainty and resolution.
...reject fixed notions of reality, knowledge, or method.
...accept complexity and lack of clarity.
...acknowledge subjectivity, irony, contradiction, and differing perspectives.
...irreverance for traditions of morality and philosophy.
...deliberately try to change assumptions and accepted norms.
...refuse to accept limiting boundaries.
...attempt to deconstruct limiting infrastructures as they exist.
...disrupt definitions of things as "either/or."
