ABSTRACT Postmodernism, as a philosophical and cultural movement, is defined by its contradictions: it rejects foundational truths yet seeks definition, celebrates difference yet risks repetition and dismantles modernity while covertly relying on its frameworks. This essay examines postmodernism's inherent paradoxes through the lenses of key theorists such as Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard and Ziauddin Sardar. It explores the movement's cultural amnesia, its deliberate detachment from modernist roots and its obsession with hyperreality, where the visible eclipses the sublime. Baudrillard's critique of anti‐aesthetics and the disappearing body in postmodernity reveals a crisis of meaning, while Deleuze and Spinoza's counterarguments highlight the body's enduring agency. Ultimately, postmodernism's apocalyptic undertones, its erasure of depth, history and materiality raise urgent questions about its legacy.
Goodarzi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.