Modernism doubted Being’s stability while postmodernism abandoned Being altogether

Evidence

All this seems to me to change with what is called modernism, where the experience of real social change in industrialism now inspires serious doubts as to the stability of being and equally serious premonitions of the constructed or demiurgic nature of the social; while, that process having been completed in the postmodern, the artists of this final period can scarcely be bothered with Being itself at all in their conviction as to the weightlessness and textualization of multiple social realities. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the ontological commitments of realism, modernism, and postmodernism — a three-stage periodization central to the reader’s goal.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay applying each ontological stage to contemporary novels or films to test whether the periodization holds or fails.
• XREF: connects to: The Davos debate was perceived as a generational rupture between Enlightenment and existentialism — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 243; Postmodernist thinkers rejected existentialism as outdated and overly human-centered — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 916; Commodified modernism collapses the distinction between real and imaginary negation.