The precultural paradigm of discourse and social realism
George B.
V. Hans Prinn
Department of Peace Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1. Baudrillardist simulacra and the dialectic paradigm of narrative
If one examines the precultural paradigm of discourse, one is faced
with a choice: either accept neoconceptualist theory or conclude that
sexuality may be used to disempower the underprivileged. Any number of
desituationisms concerning the genre of dialectic society may be
revealed. Thus, the primary theme of the works of Eco is not theory,
but pretheory.
"Language is fundamentally responsible for outmoded, elitist
perceptions of class," says Marx; however, according to Wilson[1] , it
is not so much language that is fundamentally responsible for
outmoded, elitist perceptions of class, but rather the dialectic, and
some would say the economy, of language. Baudrillard uses the term
'the precultural paradigm of discourse' to denote a neotextual
totality. In a sense, the subject is interpolated into a dialectic
paradigm of narrative that includes art as a whole.
In the works of Smith, a predominant concept is the distinction
between opening and closing. Foucault promotes the use of the
precultural paradigm of discourse to attack class divisions. However,
in Mallrats, Smith analyses the dialectic paradigm of narrative; in
Chasing Amy he reiterates social realism.
Lyotard's model of Marxist class implies that the establishment is
capable of truth, but only if sexuality is distinct from narrativity;
if that is not the case, Bataille's model of the dialectic paradigm of
narrative is one of "capitalist capitalism", and therefore part of the
paradigm of consciousness. Therefore, Dietrich[2] suggests that we
have to choose between social realism and predeconstructive
appropriation.
Many theories concerning capitalist postcultural theory exist. In a
sense, the subject is contextualised into a precultural paradigm of
discourse that includes language as a totality.
Baudrillard suggests the use of social realism to analyse class.
However, Sontagist camp implies that reality is elitist.
The characteristic theme of von Junz's[3] essay on the precultural
paradigm of discourse is the fatal flaw, and eventually the collapse,
of capitalist society. It could be said that Lacan uses the term 'the
dialectic paradigm of narrative' to denote the role of the participant
as poet.
2. Smith and the precultural paradigm of discourse
If one examines neocultural Marxism, one is faced with a choice:
either reject the dialectic paradigm of narrative or conclude that
class has significance, given that the premise of the precultural
paradigm of discourse is invalid. Marx's model of the dialectic
paradigm of narrative suggests that the significance of the observer
is deconstruction. In a sense, the main theme of the works of Smith is
the difference between society and truth.
"Sexual identity is part of the failure of art," says Sartre. Lyotard
uses the term 'the precultural paradigm of discourse' to denote the
genre, and thus the absurdity, of dialectic society. However, if the
dialectic paradigm of narrative holds, we have to choose between
postconceptual deconstruction and Sartreist existentialism.
The characteristic theme of von Ludwig's[4] critique of the
precultural paradigm of discourse is the bridge between sexual
identity and class. Derrida uses the term 'social realism' to denote a
self-supporting paradox. But any number of discourses concerning the
collapse, and subsequent futility, of textual narrativity may be
discovered.
The subject is interpolated into a precultural paradigm of discourse
that includes language as a whole. In a sense, an abundance of
sublimations concerning social realism exist.
The subject is contextualised into a prepatriarchial libertarianism
that includes consciousness as a reality. Thus, la Fournier[5] holds
that we have to choose between social realism and Lacanist obscurity.
The genre, and some would say the paradigm, of the dialectic paradigm
of narrative intrinsic to Gibson's Neuromancer emerges again in Count
Zero. In a sense, the premise of subcultural textual theory implies
that academe is capable of intentionality.
Lyotard uses the term 'the dialectic paradigm of narrative' to denote
the common ground between sexual identity and society. However,
Bataille's analysis of social realism suggests that reality is a
product of communication.
In Pattern Recognition, Gibson denies the dialectic paradigm of
narrative; in Mona Lisa Overdrive, however, he reiterates
postconceptual feminism. Therefore, Foucault uses the term 'the
precultural paradigm of discourse' to denote not, in fact,
appropriation, but neoappropriation.
3. Social realism and dialectic subconstructive theory
"Class is intrinsically meaningless," says Baudrillard; however,
according to Prinn[6] , it is not so much class that is intrinsically
meaningless, but rather the failure, and subsequent meaninglessness,
of class. The main theme of the works of Burroughs is the genre, and
hence the fatal flaw, of textual society. Thus, the subject is
interpolated into a dialectic subconstructive theory that includes
culture as a whole.
Lyotardist narrative holds that narrativity is capable of truth, but
only if reality is equal to language; otherwise, reality is used to
entrench the status quo. It could be said that Bataille promotes the
use of social realism to deconstruct sexist perceptions of class.
The subject is contextualised into a precultural paradigm of discourse
that includes culture as a reality. However, many narratives
concerning the difference between society and class may be revealed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Wilson, Y. N. Y. (1972) Deconstructing Foucault: Social realism in
the works of Smith. University of Michigan Press
2. Dietrich, L. ed. (1995) Social realism and the precultural paradigm
of discourse. O'Reilly & Associates
3. von Junz, Z. M. (1979) Reinventing Socialist realism: Semantic
predialectic theory, feminism and social realism. University of
California Press
4. von Ludwig, F. ed. (1980) Social realism in the works of Gibson.
Loompanics
5. la Fournier, L. P. D. (1996) Dialectic Narratives: The precultural
paradigm of discourse and social realism. Panic Button Books
6. Prinn, N. ed. (1973) Social realism in the works of Burroughs.
University of Michigan Press
Anachron
together inside a single post.
Now go Cheney yourself.
--
Anachron
"George B." <bart...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:748f6132.04070...@posting.google.com...
Russ
seen strung
> together inside a single post.
> Now go Cheney yourself.
I suspect that this post was the product of the "Postmodernism
Generator" - a program that produces that type of ridiculous
essay by stringing together phrases taken from several of those
unbelievably pretentious postmodernist essays with which
academics like to impress each other.
I gather that such as essay was once submitted to some magazine
that specializes in that sort of essay, and was published without
the editor realizing he had been had. (In fact, IIRC, the
elsewhere.org generator puts some notes at the bottom of its
generated essays that link to descriptions of the incident.
Obviously, the entire postmodern deconstructionist "movement"
would not be possible without the aid of controlled substances.
tg
Of course, the postmodern generator is the ultimate validation of postmodernism.
A brilliant bit of work.
-tg
Immortalist
"tg" <tgde...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:9e39ba1.04070...@posting.google.com...
Ya but they confuse the sexy text about booring art work with the booring art
work. BlankSlateQuantumTheoryThoughtInEverythingWankas
> -tg
Anachron
news:EISdnREahtv...@comcast.com...
> seen strung
> > together inside a single post.
> > Now go Cheney yourself.
>
> I suspect that this post was the product of the "Postmodernism
> Generator" - a program that produces that type of ridiculous
> essay by stringing together phrases taken from several of those
> unbelievably pretentious postmodernist essays with which
> academics like to impress each other.
Thanks for the insight. Reading this garbage just immediately pissed me
off. Sometimes my reaction to something that does not make sense is to
blame my own lack of knowledge of the topic. This however just reeked of B.S
from the start. How revealing that something like this could be printed
without questions being asked. The question now is: "what comes after
postmodernism?"
--
Anachron
Tim
"Anachron" <Anachro...@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:SYZGc.191448$DG4....@fe2.columbus.rr.com...
We get to pick and choose from the garbage bucket of history. Postmodernism
is one choice. There are infinite variations all of which are as equally
meaningless. Your observations were absolutely grounded - the person who
'wrote' that (if it was a person) had nothing to say so they found the
biggest words they could to hide the fact that they are epigone (ooops I
meant a late comer).
Ron Peterson
> "The question now is: "what comes after postmodernism?"
> We get to pick and choose from the garbage bucket of history. Postmodernism
> is one choice. There are infinite variations all of which are as equally
> meaningless. Your observations were absolutely grounded - the person who
> 'wrote' that (if it was a person) had nothing to say so they found the
> biggest words they could to hide the fact that they are epigone (ooops I
> meant a late comer).
I read most of "Empire", a postmodern book on the current political
situation and found it frustrating because of the free association types
of statements being made without any explanation of what they meant or
any pertinent arguments as to their correctness.
I think that the postmodernists are sincere in their criticism of
modern intellectual thought, but they haven't diagnosed the problems
correctly and have substituted ideas that are even more obtuse.
--
Ron
Immortalist
"Ron Peterson" <r...@shell.core.com> wrote in message
news:10eqroh...@corp.supernews.com...
Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that Einstein's
relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything outside of
physics including social science and the stereotypical prejudace that human
nature is infinitely malable and moldable. Kinda like the novel 1984 these
wankers used to influence thought but now science is king once again and us
philosophers are in a presocratic age of wonder for a few decades.
> --
> Ron
>
Ron Peterson
> Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that Einstein's
> relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything
> outside of physics including social science and the stereotypical
> prejudace that human nature is infinitely malable and moldable. Kinda
> like the novel 1984 these wankers used to influence thought but now
> science is king once again and us philosophers are in a presocratic
> age of wonder for a few decades.
I wouldn't accuse the postmodernists of having a consistent set of
beliefs.
Postmodernists come from the arts, architecture, and literature crowd as
opposed to those from the more scientific disciplines.
--
Ron
ralph
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes
>
>
>Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that Einstein's
>relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything
>outside of
>physics including social science
I don't think so. We did have a genuine post-modernist lady posting here
once, and I do not think she would have known about Heisenberg.
> and the stereotypical prejudace that human
>nature is infinitely malable and moldable.
Nor that, either.
> Kinda like the novel 1984 these
>wankers used to influence thought but now science is king once again and us
>philosophers are in a presocratic age of wonder for a few decades.
I know you can't stop regress, but do we have to go that far back? We do
seem to have a real problem discussing anything which is either
genuinely philosophical, or relevant to life today.
There are a large number of real problems which carry with them
philosophical implications. Would anyone care to discuss how we make the
U.N. more effective? Or whether we *should* make the U.N. more
effective? Or the morality of subsidising western farmers? Or the
decriminalisation of drugs?
Or whatever?
--
ralph
Immortalist
"ralph" <ra...@eddlewood.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:oZe7MVCn...@eddlewood.demon.co.uk...
> In message <a_OdnVvQL4l...@comcast.com>, Immortalist
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes
> >
> >
> >Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that Einstein's
> >relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything
> >outside of
> >physics including social science
>
> I don't think so. We did have a genuine post-modernist lady posting here
> once, and I do not think she would have known about Heisenberg.
>
I am open to good arguments on this since many subjects I raise are new to me and
some aren't. But this argument by Pinker and the Arts and post-modernism seemed
different the second time I read the book. Here is some reviewer of the book
addressing his comments on this subject snipped from a very long article;
As he moves toward the finish line, Pinker turns his attention to the arts.
Unlike many public intellectuals, he does not see them as going through a period
of unusual trouble. Rather, he sees them flourishing more than ever. "Art is in
our nature-in the blood and in the bone, as people used to say; in the brain and
in the genes, as we might say today." But as he reviews conflicting theories
about what art is for, he does find problems. Although one of these stems from
the desire for status, in the artist as a striving for novelty, and in the
audience as an instance of conspicuous consumption, his main culprits are
modernism and postmodernism. He corrects Virginia Woolf's jocular remark that
human nature (actually, she wrote "human character") changed in 1910 by
explaining that "Modernism certainly proceeded as if human nature had changed.
All the tricks that artists had used for millennia to please the human palate
were cast aside." Taking cues from Frederick Turner regarding preferences built
into our natures over millions of years, Pinker accuses modernism and
postmodernism of being "based on a false theory of human psychology, the Blank
Slate."
They "cling to a theory of perception that was rejected long ago: that the sense
organs present the brain with a tableau of raw colors and sounds and that
everything else in perceptual experience is a learned social construction,"
which, needless to say, modernism and postmodernism have tried to shake up and
disorient. But the visual system of the brain is hardly so passive: it
irresistibly organizes sense data "into surfaces, colors, motions, and
three-dimensional objects. We can no more turn the system off and get immediate
access to pure sensory experience than we can override our stomachs and tell them
when to release their digestive enzymes." Beyond this, the visual system "colors
our visual experience with universal emotions and aesthetic pleasures," so that
people prefer savannah landscapes, beautiful faces, consonant sounds, narrative
fiction, and so on. The attempts by modernist writers and artists to "make it
new," to cut the connections between biologically sanctioned forms and aesthetic
response, have been only a partial success, as the failure of serial music has
demonstrated. Piss Christ and Tilted Arc, to name two against-the-grain visual
artifacts that come to mind, did not enchant their viewers, however
self-satisfied their creators seem to have been.
Although Pinker enthusiastically commends a wide range of modernism's products,
he is not happy with its disdain of "beauty" and its desire to frustrate our
in-built nostalgia for the mud from which we spring. Moreover, the need to
succeed in a market-driven society has encouraged artists to push things very far
for their shock, media, and commercial values. Pinker has a warm spot for the
primal directness of "middlebrow realistic fiction" because, as he believes,
there is no necessary connection between the pretensions of elite high art and
moral enlightenment. Quoting George Steiner to the effect that the Nazis could
listen to Schubert in the morning and gas Jews in the afternoon, he is less
impressed with the ethical claims of radical artists than with the unconscious
psychobiological nourishment provided by more or less archetypical art forms.
"The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the twentieth century grew
out of a militant denial of human nature. One legacy is ugly, baffling, and
insulting art. The other is pretentious and unintelligible scholarship."
I can already hear voices attacking Pinker as a Philistine, but I believe they
would be wrong. Pinker and E. O. Wilson are virtuoso science thinkers who have
mastered the basics of contemporary humanistic culture. To accuse them of not
speaking with the more subtle and complex voices of critics and theoreticians
from inside the humanities would be unfair-they aren't insiders. They speak as
super-intelligent polymath outsiders, and they do a pretty good job of it. As
Paul Gross and Norman Levitt kept telling us in Higher Superstition: The Academic
Left and Its Quarrels with Science,6 humanists in general are totally ignorant
about the sciences, and their facile references to Einstein and Heisenberg make
scientists laugh. Pinker and Wilson do a much more impressive job with the
humanities than any humanist I know has been able to do with the sciences. They
practice the consilience they recommend to others. While valuing their insights,
we don't have to accept their aesthetic judgments as the last word, since the
matter of "beauty" in the arts is complex. We know that late Beethoven, late
Wagner, Mahler, Stravinsky, Picasso, some of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, etc.,
were at first regarded as "ugly" and now are so naturalized as to present few
problems. What hasn't been assimilated-Finnegans Wake, Moses und Aron-may be the
sort of artifacts that affirm Pinker's judgment.
As he concludes his overview, Pinker remarks: "Within the academy, a growing
number of mavericks are looking to evolutionary psychology and cognitive science
in an effort to reestablish human nature at the center of any understanding of
the arts." It is unnecessary to reproduce his list of luminaries here because I
will turn to several of them in the second part of this account.
The New Darwinism in the Humanities
Part I: From Plato to Pinker
http://www.hudsonreview.com/frommSpSu03.html
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/tbs/media_reviews/2003_10_03_cosmetica.html
> > and the stereotypical prejudace that human
> >nature is infinitely malable and moldable.
>
> Nor that, either.
>
Actually he makes a pretty good case for that also but I would have to look back
through that part. In the future I will make a seperate post about postmodernism
and human nature when I can summerize all these opposing views.
> > Kinda like the novel 1984 these
> >wankers used to influence thought but now science is king once again and us
> >philosophers are in a presocratic age of wonder for a few decades.
>
> I know you can't stop regress, but do we have to go that far back? We do
> seem to have a real problem discussing anything which is either
> genuinely philosophical, or relevant to life today.
>
> There are a large number of real problems which carry with them
> philosophical implications. Would anyone care to discuss how we make the
> U.N. more effective? Or whether we *should* make the U.N. more
> effective? Or the morality of subsidising western farmers? Or the
> decriminalisation of drugs?
>
A very good point, all the new science should not take our eyes off the problems
in the world. But we is now on another new frontier and it is going to be a
science time like with the presocratics how everything was new again.
Just be bold enough to make some small essays and cross post them about each of
your favorite subjects. I will try and find contraversial and wanker arousing
versions of your subjects during the next month.
> Or whatever?
>
> --
> ralph
Immortalist
Cultural and moral relativism is a blank slater philosophy.
The Arts, modernism and postmodernism, are based on a false theory of human
psychology, the Blank Slate. We need to diagnose the malaise of the arts and
humanities and offer some suggestions for revitalizing them from their dredful
over-pluralism.
Pinker's idea is that it explains much more than some people—he calls these
people "intellectuals"—think it does, and that the failure, or refusal, to
acknowledge this has led to many regrettable things, including the French
Revolution, modern architecture, and the crimes of Josef Stalin.
Intellectuals deny biology because it interferes with their pet theories of mind
and behavior. These are the Blank Slate (the belief that the mind is wholly
shaped by the environment), the Noble Savage (the notion that people are born
good but are corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (the idea that
there is a nonbiological agent in our heads with the power to change our nature
at will). The "intellectuals" are social scientists, progressive educators,
radical feminists, academic Marxists, liberal columnists, avant-garde arts types,
government planners, and postmodernist relativists. The good guys are the
cognitive scientists and ordinary folks, whose common sense, except when it has
been damaged by listening to intellectuals, generally correlates with what
cognitive science has discovered.
What the new sciences show is that, contrary to the romanticism of intellectuals,
nurture is usually no match for nature. Rehabilitation often fails to cure
violent criminals; identical twins raised separately exhibit uncanny
similarities; reading bedtime stories has little effect on I.Q. Findings like
these suggest that there are limits to what we can expect from efforts to make
people happier, smarter, and better citizens by manipulating their environment.
When revolutionaries remake society from the ground up, on the theory that a new
kind of human being will emerge, or when feminists argue that if little boys
played with dolls and teacups the world would be a less violent place, they are,
in Pinker's view, breaking eggs with no hope of an omelette. They are simply
frustrating drives and instincts that will find an outlet sooner or later. It's
not nice to fool human nature.
----------------
Q: You argue that the modernist high culture and post-modernist criticism have,
on the whole, failed to engage humanity's interest because they ideologically
rejected basic truths about human nature. What are some of modern art's flaws?
A: My quarrel isn't with Modernism itself, but with the dogmatic versions that
came to dominate the elite arts and bred the even more extreme doctrines of
postmodernism. These movements were based on a militant denial of human nature,
especially the idea that people are born with a capacity to experience aesthetic
pleasure. Beauty in art, narrative in fiction, melody in music, meter and rhyme
in poetry, ornament and green space in architecture, were considered bourgeois
and lightweight, or products of mass-marketing. Instead, modernist and
postmodernist art was intended to raise our consciousnesses, illustrate a theory,
or shock us out of our middle-class stupor.
Q: Why, in contrast, did popular culture become so much more, well, popular?
A: Popular culture, to become popular, had to please people, and (at least at its
best) it perfected engrossing plots, catchy rhythms and melodies and gorgeous
fashions and faces.
http://www.mit.edu/~pinker/slate_reviews_file/upi_sailer.htm
> --
> Ron
>
Anachron
I've been reading a book called "The New Humanists" from a group of
scientists at www.edge.org . One of the writers claims that science has
been given second class status at some universities by the more artistic
types. How ridiculous. The greatest contributions to society are made by
individuals who combine creativity with analytic ability. Think Leonardo.
These academics are showing the same human failing that makes humans think
that belief in a god is identical with his actual existence. My experience
has been that wishful thinking does not produce much in the way of useful
results in this world. The universe is not infinitely malleable by human
beings. Our goal should be to determine the difference between the
unalterable laws of nature and what we believe merely by convention.
America is in desperate need of a Humanist alternative to the insanity of
the religious right. It's time for at least one philosophy course to be
added to even a high school education.
--
Anachron
George B.
> seen strung
> > together inside a single post.
> > Now go Cheney yourself.
>
> I suspect that this post was the product of the "Postmodernism
> Generator" - a program that produces that type of ridiculous
> essay by stringing together phrases taken from several of those
> unbelievably pretentious postmodernist essays with which
> academics like to impress each other.
Congratulation, you took the rigth guess:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/
>
> I gather that such as essay was once submitted to some magazine
> that specializes in that sort of essay, and was published without
> the editor realizing he had been had. (In fact, IIRC, the
> elsewhere.org generator puts some notes at the bottom of its
> generated essays that link to descriptions of the incident.
>
> Obviously, the entire postmodern deconstructionist "movement"
> would not be possible without the aid of controlled substances.
How would you define this movement, How are they connected to the
Frankfurt School or the "cultural revolution" etc.
ralph
<Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes
>Just be bold enough to make some small essays and cross post them about
>each of your favorite subjects. I will try and find contraversial and
>wanker arousing versions of your subjects during the next month.
I think that I would be wasting your time as well as mine if I tried to
engage seriously in a debate about post-modernism, although I may
comment on certain aspects of your post which I find surprising.
I will take your invitation and try to write a considered piece on one
of my hobby-horses. This will take at least a few days.
Till then ...
--
ralph
George B.
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes
> >
> >
> >Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that Einstein's
> >relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything
> >outside of
> >physics including social science
>
> I don't think so. We did have a genuine post-modernist lady posting here
> once, and I do not think she would have known about Heisenberg.
Well, maybe she would have?! They seem to understand "relativity" and
uncertainty their way.
> > and the stereotypical prejudace that human
> >nature is infinitely malable and moldable.
> Nor that, either.
>
> > Kinda like the novel 1984 these
> >wankers used to influence thought but now science is king once again and us
> >philosophers are in a presocratic age of wonder for a few decades.
>
> I know you can't stop regress, but do we have to go that far back? We do
> seem to have a real problem discussing anything which is either
> genuinely philosophical, or relevant to life today.
To become on-toppic for alt.revisionism. We could discuss what the
effect of the believe in the Holocaust was/is on postmodernism or
Western Philosophy in General.
> There are a large number of real problems which carry with them
> philosophical implications. Would anyone care to discuss how we make the
> U.N. more effective? Or whether we *should* make the U.N. more
> effective? Or the morality of subsidising western farmers? Or the
> decriminalisation of drugs?
I think you are putting the horse in front of the Cart. How they would
decide on those issues depends strongly on how they see (feel) things
and the information they are fed. The first one is strongly depend on
the state of philosophy they are taught.
> Or whatever?
@byplane.com Jason James
>
> I think you are putting the horse in front of the Cart. How they would
> decide on those issues depends strongly on how they see (feel) things
> and the information they are fed. The first one is strongly depend on
> the state of philosophy they are taught.
There is nothing philosophical about massacres. It's a physical act devoid
of inquiry of thought (philosophy) which violates every civilised code of
behaviour from Biblical times to the present.
Jason
ralph
> <Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes
> >
> >
> >Didn't the post-modernists make the mistake of believing that
Einstein's
> >relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to everything
> >outside of
> >physics including social science
>
> I don't think so. We did have a genuine post-modernist lady posting
here
> once, and I do not think she would have known about Heisenberg.
>
>>I am open to good arguments on this since many subjects I raise are
new
>>to me and some aren't. But this argument by Pinker and the Arts and
>>post-modernism seemed different the second time I read the book. Here
>>is some reviewer of the book addressing his comments on this subject
>>snipped from a very long article;
>>As he moves toward the finish line, Pinker turns his attention to the
arts.
>>Unlike many public intellectuals, he does not see them as going
through a
>>period of unusual trouble. Rather, he sees them flourishing more than
>>ever. "Art is in our nature-in the blood and in the bone, as people
used to
>>say; in the brain and in the genes, as we might say today." But as he
>>reviews conflicting theories about what art is for, he does find
problems.
>>Although one of these stems from the desire for status, in the artist
as a
>>striving for novelty, and in the audience as an instance of
conspicuous
>>consumption, his main culprits are modernism and postmodernism.
I disclaimed knowledge of this area, but I do know a little of
twentieth-century art.
>>He corrects Virginia Woolf's jocular remark that human nature
(actually, she
>>wrote "human character") changed in 1910 by explaining that
>>"Modernism certainly proceeded as if human nature had changed. All the
>>tricks that artists had used for millennia to please the human palate
were
>>cast aside"
Firstly, it is incorrect to talk of the same tricks being used for
millennia. We have very little painting before classical times (only
that in caves), and there were mighty changes around the renaissance
brought about by the discovery of how to show perspective, and new
materials. Plus a drive towards naturalism, and away from the
concentration on biblical subjects.
Secondly, modernism is generally agreed to have started with Picasso's
"Les demoiselles d'Avignon", which was unlike anything which had been
seen before. Matisse and Derain, when showed it in private, were said to
have totally failed to understand why he had painted it. But look at the
artist's history. He could paint as well as anyone in history by the age
of fourteen; he was sent to the art school in Madrid at sixteen, but
left after a year saying (truthfully) "They can teach me nothing."
He then was affected very seriously by the death of his best friend,
which pushed him into his "blue period". The ebullience of youth got him
over this in a few years, and he went into his "pink period". What
then? He could, clearly, have become a rich and successful society
painter, but his restless and enormously creative nature did not fit
this picture. So he went off to see what else painting could look like,
and turned the world of art upside down.
>>.Taking cues from Frederick Turner regarding preferences
>>built into our natures over millions of years, Pinker accuses
modernism
>>and postmodernism of being "based on a false theory of human
>>psychology, the Blank Slate."
I prefer my version: but if Pinker has any evidence for his theory, I'm
prepared to think again.
[…]
>>people prefer savannah landscapes, beautiful faces, consonant sounds,
>>narrative fiction, and so on. The attempts by modernist writers and
artists
>>to "make it new," to cut the connections between biologically
sanctioned
>>forms and aesthetic response, have been only a partial success
I suggest a visit to any gallery and a count of how many savannah
landscapes have been painted since 1910.
[…]
>>Although Pinker enthusiastically commends a wide range of modernism's
>>products, he is not happy with its disdain of "beauty" and its desire
to
>>frustrate our in-built nostalgia for the mud from which we spring.
Pardon?
>>Moreover, the need to succeed in a market-driven society has
>>encouraged artists to push things very far for their shock, media, and
>>commercial values.
That has been critical for the last twenty years or so. I don't know how
much awareness there is of the UK Turner prize, but that great
traditional artist's name has been taken in vain to reward "artworks"
like tanks filled with bisected cows in formaldehyde, and unmade beds
littered with soiled knickers and used condoms. Lord Saatchi will pay
big bucks for such material, and it is little wonder that it is emulated
by younger artists.
There are those who think that the later works of Jackson Pollock could
come into the same classification.
[…]
>>As he concludes his overview, Pinker remarks: "Within the academy, a
>>growing number of mavericks are looking to evolutionary psychology and
>>cognitive science in an effort to reestablish human nature at the
center of
>>any understanding of the arts." It is unnecessary to reproduce his
list of
>>luminaries here because I will turn to several of them in the second
part of
>>this account.
Does he mention aesthetics at all?
--
ralph
Immortalist
Modernism and postmodernism cling to a theory of perception that was rejected
long ago: that the sense organs present the brain with a tableau of raw colors
and sounds and that everything else in perceptual experience is a learned social
construction.
...In twentieth-century art, the search for the new new thing became desperate
because of the economies of mass production and the affluence of the middle
class. As cameras, art reproductions, radios, records, magazines, movies, and
paperbacks became affordable, ordinary people could buy art by the carload. It is
hard to distinguish oneself as a good artist or discerning connoisseur if people
are up to their ears in the stuff, much of it of reasonable artistic merit. The
problem for artists is not that popular culture is so bad but that it is so good,
at least some of the time. Art could no longer confer prestige by the rarity or
excellence of the works themselves, so it had to confer it by the rarity of the
powers of appreciation. As Bourdieu points out, only a special elite of initiates
could get the point of the new works of art. And with beautiful things spewing
out of printing presses and record plants, distinctive works need not be
beautiful. Indeed, they had better not be, because now any schmo could have
beautiful things.
One result is that modernist art stopped trying to appeal to the senses. On the
contrary, it disdained beauty as saccharine and lightweight...elite art could no
longer be appreciated without a support team of critics and theoreticians.
...Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist
only to illustrate the text...the theory upstaged the subject matter and became a
genre of performance art in itself. Postmodernist scholars...distrust the demand
for "linguistic transparency" because it hobbles the ability "to think the world
more radically" and puts a text in danger of being turned into a mass-market
commodity.
The Blank Slate - The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steven Pinker
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670031518/qid=1086630363/
> [.]
>
> >>people prefer savannah landscapes, beautiful faces, consonant sounds,
> >>narrative fiction, and so on. The attempts by modernist writers and
> artists
> >>to "make it new," to cut the connections between biologically
> sanctioned
> >>forms and aesthetic response, have been only a partial success
>
> I suggest a visit to any gallery and a count of how many savannah
> landscapes have been painted since 1910.
>
> [.]
>
> >>Although Pinker enthusiastically commends a wide range of modernism's
> >>products, he is not happy with its disdain of "beauty" and its desire
> to
> >>frustrate our in-built nostalgia for the mud from which we spring.
>
> Pardon?
>
> >>Moreover, the need to succeed in a market-driven society has
> >>encouraged artists to push things very far for their shock, media, and
> >>commercial values.
>
> That has been critical for the last twenty years or so. I don't know how
> much awareness there is of the UK Turner prize, but that great
> traditional artist's name has been taken in vain to reward "artworks"
> like tanks filled with bisected cows in formaldehyde, and unmade beds
> littered with soiled knickers and used condoms. Lord Saatchi will pay
> big bucks for such material, and it is little wonder that it is emulated
> by younger artists.
>
> There are those who think that the later works of Jackson Pollock could
> come into the same classification.
>
>
> [.]
George B.
It is not 100% clear what you are referring to. Something that is
perceived as an historical event and the interpretation of it can have
an effect on peoples thinking. Especially when this plays a role in
ideological conflicts.
> Jason