M asked:

Does Postmodernism mean the end of the self?

I am researching the above question can you help?

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In Analytic as well as Continental philosophy, there has been a shift away from the first-person
approach to epistemology and the philosophy of mind (which one finds, for example, in the
philosophy of Descartes) and towards a third-person view. Talk of the 'end of the self' is just an
extreme expression of this shift. In the Analytic tradition, the British philosopher Derek Parfit argues in
his book Reasons and Personsthat the notion of personal identity cannot be logically defended, and
that we should therefore place far less importance on the notion of a person. 'My' past and future
'selves' ought to be of no greater concern to me than all the other selves who might be affected by my
actions. This quickly leads to a Utilitarian moral philosophy of the 'greatest happiness for the greatest
number'.

Insofar as postmodernism is seen as embodying the 'deconstructionism' of philosophers like Derrida,
it does mean that we should no longer consider the author's view of his/her writing or artwork as
having any privileged role in unravelling the meaning of their production. But now comes the twist:
The view I have just characterised may be correct or incorrect, IT DOESN'T MATTER. Because if an
artist or writer sets about their project with the idea that their conception of what they are doing has
no decisive role, that they as individual selves should be invisible in their work, then the works that
are produced as a result will simply confirm the idea of the 'end of the self'.

Geoffrey Klempner