Postmodernism and stuff...
tak
In article
<Pine.OSF.3.96.98061...@ionium.it.miami.edu>,
zral...@umsis.miami.edu says...
>
>Post-Modern: Marked by the propensity to either self-reference or lay
its
>device bare, thus acknowledging the presence of the medium in the work
>itself.
>
>That's the best I can do :)
As far as post-modernism in literary criticism goes (it actually started
in architecture), that's about as consice and clear a definition as you
could hope for. Of course, because of the inherent complexity of the
subject,.your definition fails to encompass many of the devices of
post-modernism, such as pan-stylism, systemic/metanarrative relativism,
and deconstruction.
>But I do agree, people use the term way too much. "Blazing Saddles" was
a
>dictionary definition of post-modern when it broke the fourth wall to
have
>the actors talking about the film they were in, and then going off the
>Western set to Hollywood.
Hey Zach! Ever seen Hellzapoppin'?
>-zach
>"All work and no play makes Zach a dull boy."
I took the liberty of cutting and pasting this discussion of
post-modernism from a website that I can no longer locate. The author's
name wasn't included, but I don't think he'd be TOO upset if I post it
here, seeing as he offered it up for free himself. This is edited for
length. If anyone out there wants the full monty, just e-mail me and
I'll send it to you.
Mt
"When people talk about postmodernism, the problem is that they are
referring to something very
elusive and slippery. In the academic world, it is best understood as a
new Weltanschaung - a
new organizing principle in thought, action, and reflection, connected
to many changing factors in
modern society. The term postmodern was first applied, around 1971, to a
new architectural style
which combined old, classical forms with modern pragmatism and
scientific engineering. Since
then, the postmodernist advocates have used the term to describe their
movement as a reaction to
the wholesale failure of modernity - the betrayals of the modernist
movement in the arts, primarily,
but also modernity understood as a social process - industrialization,
urbanization, centralization,
and 'progress' and 'civilization' as those terms are often used
popularly. This movement is not
called 'antimodernism' because it is not a rejection of modernity in
toto , but as its advocates claim,
an effort to combine the best of the modern world with the best elements
of the traditions of the
past, in an organic way that eliminates the worst parts of both.
Critics of postmodernism come mainly from the Marxist camp. They feel
that postmodernism is a
diversionary tactic, the last ditch of a late capitalism in the process
of dying. They dislike fervently
the way that postmodern aesthetics rejects socialist realism - and, for
that matter, epistemological
realism. They often point out how semiotics and the postmodern idea that
everything is image and
nothing is substance are used cynically by advertising agencies - which,
unable to sell us real goods
of real production, can now only sell us images of satisfaction and
packaged happiness. Marxists
also dislike postmodernism's relativist treatment of science, since as
they see 'criticism' (the critical
method) and science as being identical. And they are not all too pleased
by postmodernism's
rejection of the proletariat and industrialism as liberators, nor its
insistence (dating from the
Situationists) that liberation of leisure may be more important than
liberation of work... the way
postmodernism intertwines with Nietzschean thought, deep ecology,
mysticism, and libertarian
individualism makes many Marxists view it as right-wing, reactionary,
perhaps even fascist!
Non-Marxist critics of postmodernism abound, too. The right wing foams
at the mouth at the way
it dovetails with multiculturalism, feminism, 'direct democracy,' the
"communitarian" movement, and
some concerns they see as left-wing. The right-wingers feel that
postmodernism is the last-ditch
effort of a dying left wing... that left-wing academics, disappointed
with Papa Joe Stalin and Pol
Pot, have found a new weapon with which to smash Western civilization
and rationalism. Other
critics of postmodernism feel it is trying to have its cake and eat it
too. From the modern world, it
wants to take McLuhan's electronic technology and the 'global village'
it allows while ditching other
parts of modernity; without acknowledging that, sans modernity, such
communication would not be
possible. From the premodern world, it wants to recover the 'religious
sensibility' and 'traditional
values' of the past while jettisoning the intolerance and fundamentalism
of religion or the "crushing
weight" of tradition upon free thought. The postmodernists, their
critics claim, do not see that both
tradition and religion can be both liberating and stultifying, but you
cannot "pick and choose" from
both and claim to be doing anything but generating fictions.
Poststructuralism in aesthetic appreciation and creation
The postmodernist movement in the arts has resulted in a new standard of
aesthetic appreciation,
and new forms of aesthetic creation - 'performance art' - etc. It is not
entirely clear whether the
new modes of criticism generated the new forms of creation, or if it was
the other way around, but
as with everything in postmodernity, it is likely that it was an
organic, mutual process. The key
concept of modern aesthetic appreciation was that intentionality did not
matter and that
representation had nothing to do with resemblance. In literature, this
meant the "New Criticism"
and "the Death of the Author," where critics would deal strictly with
what was on the page, as an
autonomous structure of schemas, devices, and tropes. Modernist poets
eagerly experimented
with various schemes of abandoning canonical schemes of rhyme, meter,
and metaphor and
metonymy. In the plastic arts, it meant "art for its own sake," and each
painting or piece of
sculpture was to be appreciated for its purely aesthetic features
(curves, lines) and its geometric
structure and not for "resemblance" to anything else. Hence cubism,
abstraction, Action Painting,
expressionism, futurism, surrealism, and Mondrianism.
Postmodern art takes the daring experimentation of modernism, but passes
over its hesitant
boundaries. It questions the boundaries between the process of creation
and the completed act,
between the creator/presenter/provider and the
audience/appreciator/receiver, and between the
private museum or gallery and the place of 'public exhibition.'.
Postmodern art is about
appropriation, about the Dadaists taking their urinals and putting them
on display, about Warhol
taking a Campbell soup can or Marilyn Monroe's lips, about Man Ray
borrowing eyelashes and
fingers from other photographs, about rap artists 'sampling' 1940s show
tunes and turning them
into bass rhythms, or Klein taking anything and making it his art by
painting it with International
Klein Blue. It is about John Cage sitting down at his piano for roughly
five minutes, without
touching a key, and receiving applause. Not because he has played a
single sound, but because he
is John Cage. For the postmodernists, intention is everything, and
reception is everything, but
content is nothing. For most modern artists, this makes postmodern art
one big fraud.
If postmodernity means the abandonment of structure and content in the
plastic arts, many
anti-deconstructionists feel it is the abandonment of meaning and theme
altogether in literature.
Utilizing the ideas of Piercean semiotics, Sassurian linguistics, and
Heidegger's philosophy, Derrida
delivered the crushing blow to literary structuralism at Johns Hopkins
in 1968. Henceforth, in the
wake of poststructuralism, many literary critics have turned to other
theories, such as Fish's
reader-response criticism, Searle's speech-act theory, or Derrida's own
offering, deconstruction.
The key concept in postmodern literary criticism seems to be that any
text contains additional
meanings beyond what the author could have 'structured' into it, and
that literary criticism is a
process of creating meaning, not discovering it. As postmodernism is
about breaking down
boundaries, many critics feel that Derridean criticism will destroy the
'literary canon' and put Tom
Clancy and the great works of Western civilization on the same level,
and destroy the critical
differentiation between 'high' art (which endures) and 'low' art (which
does not.)
In other art areas - music, architecture (where it all started),
sculpture, etc. - aestheticism is being
challenged by postmodern critics. "Great" art's greatness, they say,
does not adhere entirely within
the work of art autonomously: it has something to do with the relation
that exists between artist and
art appreciator, a relation that exists within the field that we call
"culture." For this reason, much of
the new postmodern academic criticism is going on in 'cultural studies'
departments, which do not
agree with the modernist dictum that art is a mirror that dimly reflects
society. The cultural studies
profs feel that art - broadly defined - is strongly patterned by
culture, and can and must shape it in
turn. Poststructuralism, some modernist critics feel, has resulted in a
proliferation of subjectivist
positions, and hence an abdandonment of objective standards and
universal criteria in artistic
appreciation. This, they also argue, allows postmodern art creators to
"get away with anything" -
including canning shit and putting it in on display. But some
postmodernist critics feel modern art
was a betrayal because it did not admit its own dependence on context
and situation."
Padraig L Henry
And a post-modern Amen to that. Thanks tak.
Padraig
naveen viswanatha
Padraig L Henry (path...@iol.ie) wrote:
: And a post-modern Amen to that. Thanks tak.
: Padraig
--
explain to me what postmodernism really means.
.viswanth.
Geoffrey Alexander
naveen viswanatha <visw...@staff.uiuc.edu> wrote in article
<6n0kq6$9mq$1...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>...
One brief definition might be: an instance where the thing >itself<
functions as its explanation.
Confusing? Confusion is a method.
g.
Padraig L Henry
On 26 Jun 1998 21:47:00 GMT, "Geoffrey Alexander"
<geof...@iavalley.cc.ia.us> wrote:
>naveen viswanatha <visw...@staff.uiuc.edu> wrote in article
>> Padraig L Henry (path...@iol.ie) wrote:
>> : And a post-modern Amen to that. Thanks tak.
>> explain to me what postmodernism really means.
>>
>> .viswanth.
>One brief definition might be: an instance where the thing >itself<
>functions as its explanation.
>
>Confusing? Confusion is a method.
Yes, that postmodern icon of the tripped-out thing-in-itself `sixties,
the Monolith in 2001. Or should I really be saying Post-Monolith? I`m
mean really really postmonolith.
Padraig
The monologues at AMK are postmodern dialogues in the flushed-out
thing-for-itself `nineties. That is, according to the postmonolith
Method of premodern Confusion.
Rod Munday
> >
> > --
> > explain to me what postmodernism really means.
> >
> > .viswanth.
> >
>
> One brief definition might be: an instance where the thing >itself<
> functions as its explanation.
>
> Confusing? Confusion is a method.
>
A plastic bottle of orange juice in in a self service restaurant
labelled as "freshly squeezed". What's that about, eh? Did they
squeeze the oranges five minutes before you picked the bottle off the
shelf? How exactly is "fresh" defined here? If you left milk out at the
same time as these oranges were squeezed would it now be a rank smelling
solid? Perhaps they ought to label orange juice as "slightly stale".
And why do they make such a big deal of claiming that the wild
blueberrys in the muffins are "real wild blueberrys"?
If you want to know what postmodernism really means go to a motorway
service station at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Rod
john melville
Rod Munday wrote:
And all this time I was looking for it in all-night porn shops.
john
nospamb Will Good
OOPS!