Short answers, pulled from the story.
Postmodernism is a broad artistic, cultural, and philosophical movement that emerged in the mid-20th century as a skeptical response to modernism. Scholar Hans Bertens identifies its common denominator as "a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense." It emphasizes the instability of meaning, rejection of universal truths, and critique of grand narratives.
Artist John Watkins Chapman first used the term in 1870 to describe a departure from French Impressionism. Episcopal priest and St. Stephen's College president Bernard Iddings Bell was the first to use it to name a full historical period following modernity, in his 1926 book Postmodernism and Other Essays.
In his 1979 work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard defined postmodern as "incredulity towards metanarratives." He meant the rejection of large overarching frameworks such as those offered by Christianity, Hegel, and Marx that organize people's sense of place and meaning in the world.
Physicist Alan Sokal submitted a deliberately nonsensical paper to a postmodernist journal, which accepted and published it in 1996. The hoax amplified public perception of a high-stakes intellectual conflict between science and postmodern theory, though by the late 1990s the debate had largely subsided after observers recognized it had been staged between strawman versions of both sides.
Baudrillard argued that modern social production had shifted from creating real objects to producing signs and symbols, constituting a system he called hyperreality. In this condition, the domain of reality becomes so saturated with signs that reality itself becomes inaccessible, leaving only simulacra: images that refer to nothing outside themselves.
Jencks coined the concept of "double coding" to describe postmodern architecture: the combination of modern techniques with something else, usually traditional building, so that structures could communicate with both the general public and specialist architects. He marked the death of modern architecture at the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe scheme in St. Louis, Missouri, on the 15th of July 1972 at 3:32 p.m.