Postmodernism: theoretical background Part 1
MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT POSTMODERNISM Denial of the existence of ANY truth Radical skepticism about ABSOLUTE TRUTH Representation of the CHAOTIC nature of the contemporary world Representation of the COMPLEXITY of the world Postmodernism is about DESPAIR and the MEANINGLESSNESS of life Postmodernist thought aims at a PLAYFUL restructuring of our ordinary ways of perceiving and representing the world
is a conscious problematization of what is “true” and “real”/an inquiry into how “truth” and “reality” are made rather than found. Postmodernism in the broadest sense Questioning the Platonist/metaphysical foundations of Western philosophy
METAPHYSICS Socrates Plato Aristotle WORLD Reality Ideal form Essential Eternal Mental Non-Material Appearance Replica (copy) Contingent Perishable Physical Material VS.
TRUTH IN POSTMODERNISM
Friedrich Nietzsche “Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying ‘there are only facts,’ I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations…” PERSPECTIVISM There can be several co-existing conceptual schemes within which “truths”/“facts” can be established.
THEORIES IN/OF POSTMODERNISM
DECONSTRUCTION (Post-structuralism) Jacques Derrida ( ) “Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)
Fredinand de Saussure ( ) Langue Parole (Language as a system) (Actual utterances) Sign Signifier Signified Referent Language is a system of differences STRUCTURALISM
The “deconstruction” of structures We like to see the world organized into structures Structures are always built around a center All centers are arbitrarily chosen, giving us the semblance of a structure
Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (1981) SIMULACRUM AND HYPERREALITY
“It’s a new reality show about a producer trying to make a reality show about a family obsessed with reality shows.”
Simulacrum: a copy or replica of something Baudrillard: simulacrum is not just a copy of an “original,” but a representation which becomes a “truth” in its own right Hyperreality: the representation is experienced as more real than the
An illustration of the logic of the simulacrum: Disneyland
DISTRUST OF GRAND NARRATIVES Jean-Francois Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979)
“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. […] To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, to the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements— narrative [...]. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?”
Examples of grand metanarratives: -Various historical accounts (e.g., universal, cultural, literary history) -Philosophical world-models (e.g., Western metaphysics) -Redemptive ideologies (e.g., religion, Marxism) -Explicative narratives (e.g., science, psychoanalysis) -Narratives of heroism and love (e.g., romantic novels)
Modernism and postmodernism in literature and the other arts Part 2
Rejection of Romanticist and Realist modes of representation Self-consciousness Radical subjectivization of the object Paradigm shift in the perception and representation of the world MODERNISM
Romanticism Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)
Realism Adolf von Menzel: Portait of Karoline Arnold (1905)
Modernism (1911)
Jackson Pollock: No. 5 (1948) POSTMODERNISMMODERNISM Georges Braque: Violin and Candlestick (1910) VS.
DALÍ AND PICASSO PAINTING THE “SAME” EGG
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (1929) MODERNIST FICTION The story of the Compson family subjectivized through the mode of representation stream of consciousness
A postmodernist text is not the subjectivized representation of a “story,” a “situation,” an “event,” etc., but a textual world in its own right
(1964)
DADAISM
(1973)
WORLD Reality Appearance SIGN WORK OF ARTLITERARY WORK TextForm Signifier Meaning Signified Content THE METAPHYSICS OF BINARY STRUCTURES
THE POSTMODERN VIEW No point in making binary disctinctions: -REALITY is a kind of APPEARANCE (Baudrillard) -SIGNIFIED is a kind of SIGNIFIER (Derrida) -CONTENT is a kind of FORM -MEANING is a kind of TEXT
Signifier(s)Signified Reading for the signified
Signifier Signified
Signifier(s) The reader is forced to face signifiers as signifiers
Postmodernism emphasizes that -all literary texts are material objects (signifiers) -all literary texts are simulacra
Modernism vs. Postmodernism Brian McHale via Roman Jakobson MODERNISM POSTMODERNISM Epistemological Ontological “Dominant” Brian McHale: Postmodernist Fiction (1987)
Techniques used in postmodernist literary works - Irony - Pastiche - Intertextuality - Metafiction - Metalepsis
Donald Barthelme ( ) The Dead Father (1975)
John Barth (b. 1930) “The Literature of Exhaustion” (1967) By “exhaustion” I don’t mean anything so tired as the subject of physical, moral, or intellectual decadence, only the used-upness of certain forms or the felt exhaustion of certain possibilities—by no means necessarily a cause for despair.
(1967)
Möbius strip (tangled hierarchy)
Maurits Cornelis Escher: Drawing Hands (1948)
M.C. Escher: Relativity (1953)
Raymond Federman ( ) “Surfiction” (1975) Surfiction (as in surreal) is “fiction above fiction”: it is a radically non-mimetic form whics has no intention to mirror “reality.”
(1985)
Ronald Sukenick ( ) In Form : Digressions on the Act of Fiction (1985) One of the tasks of postmodern fiction is “to displace, energize, and re-embody its criticism—literally to reunite it with our experience of the text.”
Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)
Entropy (transfer content) Energy (work content) The term was coined by Rudolf Clausius in 1865
Callisto’s apartment Callisto is dictating his memoirs to his lover, Aubade, and is brooding over entropy and apocalypse. Washington D.C. February 1957 Temperature: 37 F (cca. 2-3 ºC) Meatball’s apartment Meatball is throwing a raucous party, where a host of diverse guests are arriving. Saul’s apartment Saul has just had an argument with his wife over communication theory. “Entropy” (1960)
(1963)
(1966)
(1973)
Arnold Schoenberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909)
MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE
POSTMODERNIST ARCHITECTURE