ASSIGNMENT

Structuralism: is a mode of knowledge of nature and human life that is interested in relationships rather than individual objects or, alternatively, where objects are defined by the set of relationships of which they are part and not by the qualities possessed by them taken in isolation. 

(1) Structuralism attempts to analyze world as a production of ideas. (2) It assumes that the world has a logical pattern. (3) There is death of the subject, that is, the individual in structural analyses is dead. It was focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection. An example of structuralism is describing an apple. An apple is crisp, sweet, juicy, round, and hard. Another example of structuralism is describing your experience at the ocean by saying it is windy, salty, and cold. 

Post-structuralism: is an intellectual movement that emerged in philosophy and the humanities in the 1960s and 1970s. It challenged the tenets of structuralism, which had previously held sway over the interpretation of language and texts in the humanities and the study of economies and cultures in the social sciences. It rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text. For eg. they think truth is up for debate: your truth and my truth may be completely different. To use a simple example: a Hindu and a Christian have fundamentally different ideas about whose god is real. These two people have different ideas about the 'truth'.

Modernism: refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life and a movement in the arts in the first half of the twentieth century that rejected traditional values and techniques, and emphasized the importance of individual experience. It also allowed writers to express themselves in more experimental ways than in the past. Modernist works often contain non-linear narratives and free-flowing interior monologues that emphasize the experiences and emotions of the individual. Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, and divisionist painting. Modernism has contributed to the way people think today. Today's society has been influenced by modernism since in that era people began to have a voice and express their perspectives on current topics. Also, the way people dressed, and the evolution between individuals changed.

Postmodernism: a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power. It is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. postmodernism was in vogue in the academic settings of our country and in the Western world. It's not necessarily that way today. You still find it in literary departments. You still find it, unfortunately, sometimes in theology departments. Connor argues that pop music is perhaps 'the most representative of postmodern cultural forms'. Jameson distinguishes between modernist and postmodern pop music, making the argument that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones represent a modernist moment, against which punk rock and new wave can be seen as postmodernism.

Zeitgeist: In 18th and 19th century German philosophy, Zeigiest is an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. Now, the term is usually associated with Georg W. F. Hegel, contrasting with Hegel's use of Volksgeist "national spirit" and Weltgeist "world-spirit". Its coinage and popularization precedes Hegel, and is mostly due to Herder and Goethe. Other philosophers who were associated with such concepts include Spencer and Voltaire. Contemporary use of the term sometimes, more colloquially, refers to a schema of fashions or fads that prescribes what is considered to be acceptable or tasteful for an era like in the field of architecture.

 It is often used in observations about cultural trends and in statements about media that are said to have captured the overall feeling of an era.