Introduction to postmodernism

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33 Terms

1
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Theoreticians of postmodernism

Loytard

Baudrillard

Jameson

Huyssens

McHale

Hutcheon

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Umberto Eco on postmodernism

Quote: man who declares love to woman saying “as … would put it, I love you madly”

modernism: innocence

postmodernism: age of lost innocence, everything has already been said, no need to stop speaking, just to be aware

treat it with irony and playfulness, not dead seriousness or feigned innocence

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Postmodernism is dead (according to McHale)

1989: with the death of Samuel Beckett

Federman: Postmodernism died because Godot never came

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Federman

1989: death of samuel beckett and postmodernism

postmodernism died because godot never came

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Postmodernism

The dominant cultural tendency during the second half of the 20th century in the advanced industrial societies of the west

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Postmodernism vs postmodernity

Postmodernism

  • cultural tendency

  • aesthetic principle

Postmodernity

  • sociocultural state, condition of society

  • historical period

  • from 1945 onwards

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Modernity vs postmodernity

Modernity

  • enlightenment - end of WWII

  • technological progress

  • rational thought

  • emancipating the human being

  • a better world?

Postmodernity

  • loss of innocence

  • humans only make the world worse

  • new way of thinking

  • mass media

  • governed by eclectisism (internationalisation)

Turning point between the two: holocaust, WWIIPo

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Modernist vs postmodernist architecture

Modernist

  • international style

  • universal grammar, functional above all else

    • steel, concrete, glass

    • function determines form

    • house as machine for living

    • no ornamentation

  • critique: lach of attention for the individual, leads to conformity

Postmodernist

  • multiplicity of references

  • mix of styles and excess: overkill

  • more true to life than austere modernism

  • influence of pop art

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Modernism vs postmodernism in visual arts

Modernism

  • van Gogh, Much

  • Depth, inviting a meaning

  • possibility of interpretation

  • transformation of reality and the viewer

  • unique style

  • artist produces art in order to express something

Postmodernism

  • Warhol

  • Depthless, mere surface, mere fetishes

  • no interpretation possible or necessary

  • no transformation of reality, mere play

  • not unique

  • no expression, only technological reproduction => dull

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From modernism to postmodernism

After modernism or more modernism?

John Frow: postmodernism as a continuation of modernism

  • modernism: make it new

  • innovation => obsolescence

  • modernism is obsolete and thus postmodernism is born

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John Frow

Postmodernism as a continuation of modernism

  • modernism: make it new

  • innovation => obsolescence

  • modernism becomes obsolete, postmodernism is born

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Continuity between modernism and postmodernism

Most of the literary strategies, but in a different way

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Rupture between modernism and postmodernism

Modernism

  • Art is educational and emancipatory

  • Art is redemptive

  • Art can compensate for chaos and fragmentation

Postmodernism

  • it is not

  • it is not

  • it cannot

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Threshold between modernism and postmodernism

WWII and the holocaust

  • modernism: celebration of reason and ratio

  • but: Holocaust was the ultimate display of rational behaviour

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Difference between first and second half of 20th century (McHale)

  • Conventional warfare => international terrorism

  • Nuclear

  • Decolonisation and mass migration to europe, end of old empires

  • Globalisation

  • New gender roles

  • more uncertainty, instability, anxiety, disillusionment

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Place of literature in modernism and postmodernism

Modernism

  • had a function

  • central to public debate

  • moral and ideological core of its time

Postmodernism

  • has no function

  • to entertain, commercial

  • has lost its value and relevance in society

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Double-coding of postmodernist literature

Linda Hutcheon

The logic of “both…and…” instead of “either…or…”

self-reflexive and parodic, but also historical

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Change of dominant from modernism to postmodernism

McHale: inherent changes to literature

Modernist novel

  • about interior experience and embodied consciousness

  • epistemological

postmodernist novel

  • about world-making and codes of being

  • ontological

difference is not absolute

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Dominant

set of priorities in fiction

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epistemological

knowledge-oriented

  • what do we know?

  • how do we know it?

  • what is unknowable?

  • is knowledge reliable?

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ontological

being in certain historical context (exterior world = society at large)

  • which world is it?

  • what is to be done in it?

  • multiple worlds and multiple selves

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Periodisation of postmodernism

McHale

1966 beginning

1960s the onset

1970-80s the peak

1990s the interregnum / late postmodernism

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Reading backwards/in reverse

McHale

1) identify properties in mature postmodernism

2) trace them backwards to earlier texts

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4 main theorists for postmodernism

Andreas Huyssens

Frederic Jameson

Jean Baudrillard

Jean-François Lyotard

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Andreas Huyssen

“After the Great Divide” (1986)

The Great Divide = between mass culture and high art

modernism: great divide

postmodernism: no more great divide

problem

  • inclusion of pop culture => consumerism, commercialism, encouragement thereof

  • affirmation instead of criticism

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Frederic Jameson

'“Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism” (1984)

postmodernism as a cultural dominant

Late capitalism

  • postindustrialism (not physical labour but services, main product is knowledge)

  • globalisation

  • modernity: a sense of alienation

Result

  • new flatness, superficiality, alienation

  • loss of historical consciousness

  • waning of affect

  • unique style replaced by pastiche

  • postmodern sublime

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Waning of affect

Jameson

no emotion in art, linked to alleged loss of separate and unique individual identity

we are all consumers

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Postmodern sublime

Jameson

Shock and awe, but no revelation

before: beyond beauty, powerfull, larger than life, leads to a revelation

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Jean Baudrillard

“Simulacra and simulation” (1981)

visual and digital media => impossible to distinguist between real and false copies/images

Simulacrum

  • before: a representation of something else

  • now: the original has been lost

example: the gulf war did not happen

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Jean-François Lyotard

“La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir” (1979)

  • new status of knowledge

  • effect of information-processing machines

  • knowledge = commodity, produced to be sold and consumed, loses it’s use-value

  • end of grand narratives

  • instead: petits récits / language games

postmodernism = an incredulity towards grand narratives

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Grand narratives

Jean-François Lyotard

Grands récits

overarching theories and ideologies

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Postmodernist features

  • no great divide between high and low culture

  • irony and playfulness instead of high seriousness

  • gestures of random historical citation: eclecticism

  • no emancipatory project anymore

  • depthlessness

  • pastiche instead of parody

  • loss of historical consciousness

  • reproduction: loss of the individual subject

  • simulacrum: loss of the real

  • end of grand narratives

  • language games

  • loss of things, focus on playfulness and not taking things too seriously, self-reflexive

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Parody vs pastiche

Parody

  • = imitation to make fun of something with purpose

  • moral, aesthetic, educational

  • implicit criticism of what is being parodied

Pastiche

  • = pure imitation for imitation’s sake

  • not necessarily funny

  • often combination of different genres or styles

  • no implicit criticism

  • nod towards the past

Difference is subtle

not mutually exclusive