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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2032960 [Reply] [Original]

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond

Thank me later.

>> No.2032966

skimmed, saw this
>the kind of people who had once written Ulysses and To the Lighthouse wrote Pale Fire and The Bloody Chamber instead.
closed window

>> No.2032968

>>2032966
Way to take things out of context. I thought /lit/ was for intellectuals.

>> No.2032970

>>2032960
tl;dr

>> No.2032969

>>2032968

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

>> No.2032973

>>2032966
Why? Explain

>> No.2032976

>>2032973
It's wrong.

>> No.2032978

>>old man thinks the new shift in thinking is bad and that his generation's ways were superior

woah

>> No.2032980

It is badly argued:
" they mostly do not dream even of the possibility of the technology and communications media – mobile phones, email, the internet, computers in every house powerful enough to put a man on the moon – which today’s undergraduates take for granted."
Well, that is because most of them are not Science Fiction and those that are do predict exactly those things.

>> No.2032984

>>2032973
Two books everyone has heard of are compared to two books no one has heard of?

>> No.2032985

>Postmodernism, like modernism and romanticism before it, fetishised [ie placed supreme importance on] the author, even when the author chose to indict or pretended to abolish him or herself. But the culture we have now fetishises the recipient of the text to the degree that they become a partial or whole author of it.
I wutted hard. My first exposures to postmodernism were all non-essentialist, reader-centric views.

>> No.2033017

>>2032984
I've heard of all of them.

>> No.2033021

I would go with 'hyper-modern' instead of pseudo-modern.

But yeah, interesting shit. 4chan is the ultimate pseudo-modern text, in its complete reliance on participation / contribution and its transitory nature.

>> No.2033132

I found it pretty interesting, and agree with the majority of it. Though I don't believe it's all doom and gloom these posts on a site the exemplifies what he's talking about:
>>2032966
>>2032968
>>2032969
>>2032970
don't engender confidence.

The one thing I'd say is that the participation of the "viewer" is not just present because of a new cultural norms or because that's the only way media will be made in the future, but because it NEEDS to be done. Trolling, I think, is a big example of this. Before the Internet you didn't really have a phenomenon where an author would actively try to ruin your day to the best of his ability through text if you weren't careful.

In Post-Modernism you might have had uncertainty of information/knowledge, but I don't think you had actively malicious information. In what this author calls pseudo-modernism, it's up to the "viewer" to be his own engaged filter for a world swamped in information, advertisement, propaganda, and straight up lies. It's not an amazing insight to question if the wikpedia entry for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is informed by cultural bias. It is, no question. It's up to the recipient to actively interact with the text, either through actual rewriting or selective reading, to minimize "bad" information from the reading experience.

>> No.2033218

>>2033132
interesting. where information is infinitely available (hypothetical, sort of), the reader is the only author. by choosing what to read (or "accept") out of infinite possibility, he writes. to some extent this has always been true: i am the curator for my mind, but now more than ever the various paintings i could hang are so varied that i might as well have painted them myself.

>> No.2034551

bump

>> No.2034559

I seriously think Kirby was just trying to coin a new term for the next "era" and get in the history books. His argument uses a lot of strawmen and doesn't really engage with any real postmodern "theory". It's like, yeah, those books look dated, but that doesn't mean over-arching narratives are receding in the face of an increasingly fragmented and commodified culture.

>> No.2034561

>>2034559
*NOT receding, I mean

>> No.2034622

>The pseudo-modern era, at least so far, is a cultural desert. We are confronted by a storm of human activity producing almost nothing of any lasting or even reproducible cultural value – anything which human beings might look at again and appreciate in fifty or two hundred years time.

You mad, Harry Potter fans?

>> No.2034677

Doesn't his whole argument rely essentially on the idea that nothing worthwhile is being produced right now? And isn't he basing this idea on the fact that a Postmodernism class is teaching Postmodernism, instead of whatever fake term he made up to describe some speculative future art based on his vague idea of our generation's zeitgeist? It all seems very poorly thought out to me, and frankly insulting to our generation as a whole. "No, you guys are doing it wrong, let ME show you how you feel." It also works on the idea that our generation will react artistically to how technology progresses, and not to any outside cultural factors. Very much so strikes me as a typical old man's rant about how 'the kids these days are always on their computers and their texting' and taking literally nothing else about the world into account.

>> No.2034688

>>2034622
I thought that no generation ever thought the next one produced anything worthwhile.

>> No.2034691

>>2034688
cont
Didn't Aristotle himself at one point call everyone his younger lazy, shiftless bums?

>> No.2034704

>>2034677
yeah, he started losing me when he started talking about pseudo-modernism.

But he is right about a lot of things, that twittering and emailing is nowhere near as high-brow as correspondence once was, that the only popular entertainment is interactive, vapid, and has no longevity.

Personally I would chalk all this up to the iPod generation's love of consumerism and narcissism, and not so much a rejection of post-modernism. Can a generation reject something it doesn't know about?

>> No.2034708

>>2034688
what if you felt your own generation didn't produce anything worthwhile?

>> No.2034724

>>2034677

it's kind of true, though

>> No.2034727

Shit writer, shit writing, shit people in this thread.

>> No.2034743

>Their every step hounded by market economics, academics cannot preach multiplicity when their lives are dominated by what amounts in practice to consumer fanaticism.

>pseudo-modernism sees the ideology of globalised market economics raised to the level of the sole and over-powering regulator of all social activity – monopolistic, all-engulfing, all-explaining, all-structuring, as every academic must disagreeably recognise. Pseudo-modernism is of course consumerist and conformist, a matter of moving around the world as it is given or sold.

this is so true.

>> No.2034746

The writer seems to assume that ill defined artistic paradigms move along in the same way as popular fashion or technology. "Post-modernism came out ages ago, and therefore it must be over by now, like punk, or the sixties." Traditionally artistic movements do not develop like this. Post-modernism is a reaction to modernism. It is not a fashion or a technological device that will inevitably one day become obsolete.

Writer fails to recognise that aspects of modernism and romanticism still dominate film, television and music.

Also fails to come up with a non-reductive definition of post-modernism. Yes, all definitions are reductive, but his are horribly so and filled with assumptions.

Pseudo-modernism, I understand to be "art" in which the reader/viewer/consumer plays a key role in its creation. This is quite interesting, but nothing new. The example of Charles Dickens as an author whose work is not influenced by his audience is incorrect. Dicken's success was largely due to his attentiveness to the desires of his readers and the marketability of his work. So the audience in the art work is nothing new.

Watch John Berger "Ways of Seeing" on youtube for more on the relationship between the artwork and its patron. This relationship changes over time, and I'd like to read something that incorporates new technologies such as twitter and 4chan into consideration w/r/t this.

Can't believe this guy has a phd :(

>> No.2034749

>>2034746
I'd like to add that subcultures are also reactions. Punk subculture was a reaction against the hippy and the music a reaction against the ultra-produced Rush, Pink Floyd, etc.

>> No.2034772
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[ERROR]

>>2034749

Many sixties bands were modernists in some respects. The Beatles' lyrics, for instance, were inspired by modernist writers like Joyce and Eliot. They incorporated a variety of influences from all over the world - sitars etc. This is a modernist trait.

Punk could be said to be post-modern. It is self-conscious where 60s music was not. It relies on irony and humour to undermine the confident self-belief of the hippy movement. It's closely linked to pop-art.

The reason for the shift seems to me to be not due to fundamental differences between the Beatles and the Sex Pistols, but due to the fact that the music of the 60s was slowly brought under the control of commercial and consumerist interests. When this happens, stuff gets boring, and we need new, exciting stuff...

>> No.2034780

>>2034772
> sitars etc... modernist trait.
What I mean is that modernists looked for international influences (Eliot's sanskrit dedication at the start of "The Wasteland" is the obvious example).

>> No.2034786

didnt read the thread, but Wallace repeated this phrase (or a similar one) throughout his work:

"Be careful what you choose to pay attention to!"

It sounds really obvious, but no one does it. Stephen Colbert said something really insightful, (he was out of character of course), something like "it used to be, everyone could have their own opinion. but now it seems as though everyone is allowed their own facts, and if you tell them they're wrong, you're somehow the bad guy".

I feel like my generation and the ones after us, the young kids I see now...we all live in our own heads, but it's just a defense mechanism. This world isn't real to us. It's too horrible and depressing. We didn't make it. We don't decide the wars or the laws or anything that's real. We don't want it. Leave us alone.

>> No.2034788

The main issue with post post-modernism is the very fact we don't have a good name for it. Irony is good and all, but if you have some kind of point you might as well say it sincerely. Were we to cross this lexical gap things could move along quite nicely. You could just call it modernism, but the fact we can write a new-modernism just means we are doing it while aware of post-modernism. The renaissance was a throwback to the enlightenment, but it was still it's own thing.

>> No.2034799

>>2034788

The enlightenment was a throwback to the renaissance, you mean?

Renaissance was a throwback to Ancient Greek and Italian art.

>> No.2034808

>>2034788
I thought post-modernism was a mind virus that eats everything it touches, like some sort of Midas Aurophage.

>> No.2034809

>>2034799
whoopsie yeah. I guess what I really should have said was that the renaissance was a throwback to classical civilization

>> No.2034812

>>2034799
>>2034799

Your mum is a throwback to Ancient Greek and Italian art.

>> No.2034814

>>2034808

>like some sort of Midas Aurophage

How many sorts are there?

>> No.2034852
File: 101 KB, 1024x768, Fiona_Apple_04.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

http://www.slate.com/id/2302202/

this is relevant. i promise. read the whole thing.

>> No.2034855

>>2034852
I love you.

>> No.2034860

>>2034772
>the music of the 60s was slowly brought under the control of commercial and consumerist interests. When this happens, stuff gets boring, and we need new, exciting stuff...
dfw loves talking about how television has ingested post-modernism. your commentary is very interesting with this in mind. somehow, i think you are familiar with these ideas.

>> No.2034873

>>2034772
Punk was just a simple minded reaction to commercialization. Post-punk is really post-modern. Super artsy, intentionally repetitive and ironic(think of bands like the Fall). In comparison, punk lyrics were pretty literal.

>> No.2034877

>>2034873
An obvious example would be Joy Division naming a song "Love will tear us a apart" as am ironic play on the song "Love will keep us together".

>> No.2034880

>>2034855
seconded

>> No.2034884

>>2034746
>Can't believe this guy has a phd :(
Safe bet it's not in physics, mathematics, or anything worthwhile.

>> No.2034895

>>2034884
DFW had a Phd in philosophy, but his focus was mathematical logic and modal logic(very closely related to math).

>> No.2034901

>>2034884
Just realized you were talking about the guy who wrote the article(yeah i done fucked up), his phd was in english lit. I just assumed DFW wrote it because OP used his picture.

>> No.2034902

>>2034895
heyhey! You must love the books with all the pictures!

>> No.2034905

>>2034902
yeahyeah! I like your attitude; things are always so bleak.

>> No.2034915

>>2034901
>>2034901
>yeah i done fucked up
It's cool. We all do sometimes.

I know I am on /lit/ not /sci/ right now, but Eng.Lit. ain't the greatest subject to study at a high level, to put it mildly.

Then again, it's better than Eng.Lang. at PhD…

>> No.2034919

>>2032960
Have you ever herped so much that peer reviewers derped?

>> No.2034921

>>2034915
Eh, but most graduate programs pay you to study. It can't be worse than actual work.

>> No.2034997

>>2032960
I think what the author fails to recognize here is the gap between media of popular culture and media of artistic merit. Nobody in the future is going to look back and seriously believe that crap like Big Brother and Lord of the Rings(films, obviously) defined the zeitgeist of this generation, much in the same way people in the 60s weren't lining up around the block to read Slaughterhouse-Five and The Crying of Lot 49. We're not living in an intellectual wasteland; intellectual works have just been marginalized and pushed to the fringe of society in favor of fluff, as has been the case for centuries. I realize this statement can be used by every pretentious prick to justify his hipsterdom, but it's the truth.

>> No.2034999

>>2034852
I think this author is giving entirely too much credit to the bureaucrats in charge of things like Reading. In truth, 90s revival is just being shoved down our throats by people who were young in the 90s and are now old enough to be in positions of influence, much the same way the sort of 80s revival was a few years ago. I mean, christ, why else would people have started wearing leggings again?

>> No.2035048

>>2034997
This.

However, after enough time has passed, today's populist art may be regarded as a form of High Art. Case in point: Shakespeare.