Uses of the term "postmodern"

1. after modernism (subsumes, assumes, extends the modern or tendencies already present in modernism, not necessarily in strict chronological succession)

2. contra modernism (subverting, resisting, opposing, or countering features of modernism)

3. equivalent to "late capitalism" (post-industrial, consumerist, and multi- and trans-national capitalism)

4. the historical era following the modern (an historical time-period marker)

5. artistic and stylistic ecclecticism (hybridization of forms and genres, mixing styles of different cultures or time periods, de- and re-contextualizing styles in architecture, visual arts, literature)

6. "global village" phenomena: globalization of cultures, races, images, capital, products ("information age" redefinition of nation-state identities, which were the foundation of the modern era; dissemination of images and information across national boundaries, a sense of erosion or breakdown of national, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identities; a sense of a global mixing of cultures on a scale unknown to pre-information era societies)

Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard:
Postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition" based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives, a crisis in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (see The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge)

Frederic Jameson:
Postmodernism as a movement in arts and culture corresponding to a new configuration of politics and economics, "late capitalism": transnational consumer economies based on global scope of capitalism. (See Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism)