The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers

Evidence

Since the modern — aesthetic or historical — is always in principle what might be called a present-absolute, it creates a peculiar difficulty for the definition of any period beyond it, that would convert it to a relative past. In this sense, the makeshift of a simple prefix — denoting what comes after — is virtually inherent in the concept itself, one that could be more or less counted on in advance to recur wherever a stray need for a marker of temporal difference might be felt. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely structural insight: the prefix ‘post-’ is not accidental but intrinsic to the concept of the modern as a present-absolute, explaining why the term keeps re-emerging. This is the kind of causal mechanism that anchors the whole periodization debate.
• DEFINE: Explains the genealogy of the term theoretically rather than just chronologically.
• XREF: connects to: Realist and modernist traces persist within postmodern culture.; Studying the postmodern inadvertently reveals more about the modern than about postmodernism; Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic #exemplifies (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216
• Realist and modernist traces persist within postmodern culture. #corroborates (0.75)
• Defining Postmodernism as internal to Modernism abandons its periodizing claim #qualifies (0.75)
• Postmodernism replaced temporality with space and rejected phenomenological perception #contradicts (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 331
• Studying the postmodern inadvertently reveals more about the modern than about postmodernism #expands (0.70)