Bring Them Home - Catholic Schools in Ireland Today

A photographer from the magazine Galway Now recently stopped my sister Cristina on Quay Street. In addition to taking her pic ture, he wanted Cristina to explain how she had put her outfit together; where she had picked up the various items she was wear ing and how she had arranged them the classic denim jeans, Catalan espadrilles, a vintage lace top layered underneath with t-shirts of various colours, and a Vera Neumann scarf made from parachute silk that belonged to our grandmother. Cristina's eclec tic fashion, the photographer explained, is the epitome of post modernism the context of our generation. The central feature of postmodern cultural expression is plural ism. In celebration of this pluralism, postmodern artists deliber ately juxtapose seemingly contrasting styles derived from vastly different sources.1 The 'bricolage' approach of postmodernism is in pointed defiance of the traditional attempt to coordinate indi vidual pieces, in this case of clothing, in a unified look. When postmodernism is expressed through architecture or art, theatre or literature, this juxtaposition of the traditionally incompatible is not merely random. It is calculated to produce an ironic effect, to parody the tight norms of tradition, to escape the restricting authority of any discipline and instead embrace the blurring of boundaries. In a postmodern world, knowledge is replaced with interpreta tion and one widely held world view is eschewed in favour of a multiplicity of views. Further, postmodernism holds a community understanding of truth; whatever we accept as truth and the way we envision truth depends on the community in which we partic ipate. In other words, in the postmodern paradigm, there is no absolute truth; rather, truth is relative to the community or culture