I also hate the term, but it wasn't intended to mean "after the present time". It was intended to mean something that came after the "Modernist" movement in art, architecture, etc. It alomst makes sense, but I am trying to start the "Preter-modern" movement. "Preter" meaning 'beyond', rather than after.Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
But now what comes next, after Post-Modernism? Or is nothing possible after Post-Modernism? Is Post-Modernism the total deconstruction of culture such that there is no more discernable culture and hence nothing can come after it? Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization?
Of course I have no real clue about what Post-Modernism is, so I’m not one to say. I think somebody defined it as Las Vegas, though, and if that’s the case then it most assuredly does mark the decline and fall of Western Civilization.
admittedly, i have not covered the whole thread, but in regards to the comment on the irony of post-modernism leaning on marxism - it does so only partially. post-modernism is more kin to post-marxism (which is entirely different).
I wish we had on Litnet now, such erudite assessments of the situation posited in the original thread.
"Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization."
There's no 'maybe' about it, it's just that too many people (let's refrain from calling them idiots) do not only understand it but are actually engaged in its destruction.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I wish we had on Litnet now, such erudite assessments of the situation posited in the original thread.
"Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization."
There's no 'maybe' about it, it's just that too many people (let's refrain from calling them idiots) do not only understand it but are actually engaged in its destruction.
There have been those crying that the sky is falling since the very first.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
fen, I am not the greatest Pynchon admirer, and Lot 49 isn't on my list of things to get to, but Pynchon likes to reflect American power as a paranoid conspiracy network, in GR this plays out as a coption of the Nazi's, with the rockets screaming against the sky, or a coption of Japan's psychic guilt for its defeat and the consequences of its atomic molestation, in Vineland, where Godzilla's footprint makes an unfathomable appearance, and the best progressive liberalism can do is tune out an smoke a but; he tries, as some critcs have noted, to be the American allegorist, not always successfully, but he has influenced later generations.
The history of the world is littered with dead civilizations, I see no reason to exempt ours. Current political, economic and social trends show an obvious shift away from the Western hemisphere. There are signs in France and Germany, and even the UK, that the liberal ethos that has held sway since 1945, and in my view has been partially to blame for the current situation, is being challenged at governmental level, but it appears to be too little too late.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Perhaps we should call it PostEurocentrism. Or Globalism? Universalism?
I didn't study postmodernism until after college. I didn't know much about it, but saw that my writing was influenced by it without me realizing. The other day I was staring at the cover of Norton's idea of postmodernism. I think it symbolizes this attempt at something bigger and greater, but, at this point, it falls short since we still are techinically in that phase; people are talking; the enormous hype; waiting and where is it? In the sky -- still?. A very critical way of labeling the "movement" would be, as I think, anyway, a chance for non-creative types to become creative using some basis("modern" works) or starting point. You have many critics and theorists putting a stamp or idea on something and it's basically never wrong. I think the fact it's never been definite, at least when it comes to scholars has harmed its chance to evolve. There is nothing wrong with no rules, per se; I think the Futurists, were really on to something. If you have this idea (post modernism) and at this point it still isn't clear what it is, we have to sit down and discuss this. I don't know why this hasn't been addressed sooner. Until then, I think it's nothing more than a great attempt.
Last edited by Perandorrrr; 02-06-2011 at 02:56 PM.
Why drag politics into it? Seriously, Asia and the Middle-East, etc... were just as limited in their world view as the writers in Europe or America. As for globalism....? Wishful thinking. Some of us may have read one or two books from Africa, the Middle-East, Latin-America, or Asia... most of these written in the last 100 years and in a style that is clearly impacted by Western literature. Beyond that? I don't see the Shanameh, Tu Fu, Li Bo, the Mahabharata, the Man'yōshū, Yosano Akiko, Ono no Komachi, Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī, Attar of Nishapur, Saadi, Nezami Ganjavi, or even Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Homero Aridjis, Machado de Assis, etc... pop up much in conversation. Heck, we're lucky if a non-Russian Eastern European or Scandinavian writer ever even gets mentioned. Certainly few names from outside Britain, France, England, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Classical Greece, and the United States ever get mentioned and discussed in those endless lists of "best of".
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
I think the Futurists, were really on to something. If you have this idea (post modernism) and at this point it still isn't clear what it is, we have to sit down and discuss this.
The reality is that all the "-isms" are but names attached by academics attempting to make some sense of an entire group of artists or an entire milieu. Some artists/writers/composers are also critics and as such struggle to make sense of what they are doing and how it fits within the tradition they inherited. Most artists/writers/composers are more concerned with creating and fit the aphorism: "God does not stoop to engage in theological debate."
Because all the "-isms" are but artificially imposed attempts to categorize art and artists, they are all rather "fuzzy". Can we find a point in history after which the Renaissance was no more and Mannerism had taken over? A point at which Modernism clearly began as separate from what went before? Where does Modernism start? Kafka? T.S. Eliot? Baudelaire? Wordsworth? Cervantes? Where does it end? Is Borges a Modernist or Post-Modernist? Beckett? Italo Calvino? Pessoa? Barth? Barthleme? Anne Carson?
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
The complaint that post-modernist techniques feel gimmicky may be justified in some cases. It annoys me in Pynchon, certainly, although Gravity's Rainbow was worth the experience, and Gaddis, who is a generation before, might have been stronger if he had trimmed the preaching. Even David Foster Wallace cannot make it work when he self-refers in his suicide story.
But post modernists have something to say, and the best of them are as powerful as any classicist, or realist. I agree with one of my professors that Enlightenment era English literature is a bloody bore, for instance, but I do not damn Milton or Pope for my sentiments, or excise the era from my understanding simply because its style is dull. I don't think it's a waste of time to learn how and why the post-modernists evolved, and they probably had some influence on my poetry, as I studied creative writing with a post modernist.
Broadly, they will challenge structure, subvert traditional expectations, and challenge us even with the meaning of written language itself. If European Modernists saw that the world order had self-destructed, the post modernists push it further, and fragment the authority of even our personal experiences, or classical models, like the way John Gardner implodes Beowulf in his novel Grendel. Their use of fragmentation is symptomatic of modern life, with our domestication and technology illusionary, at best, of our supremacy as a species.
Doesn't mean it cannot be trivialized or abused, and these authors aren't always overly deep. Gardner is a delight, at his best-- but their vision is worth the effort of understanding. I certainly know no one will have to tell me I told you so.
This movement is one that has misunderstood Nietzsche and thus stagnated at intellectual nihilism... Though if you were to punch one in the name of 'moral relativism' he would soon abandon this 'intellectual avant gard tolerance' and call the cops....
Conversely,it can be a great intellectual tool to break free of tyranical or conditioned morality....
Suppose really,it how you use this 'theoretical language tool'.
Finally,post modern writing really bores the pants of me and is terribly oblique,obfuscatory,wordy and most of all self indulgent,AKA 'look how intellectual i am'. Writing concisely and with realism are great arts not to be cheapened by post modern dogma.
While browsing in bookstores, I have occasionally looked into some of the authors mentioned on Litnet as post-modernnist, and your post says it all as far as I'm concerned. Although there may be writers that don't fit what to my mind is an increasingly pejorative description.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I use pejorative to apply to genre writers who don't care to challenge themselves or their readers to work a bit harder, but pad, write for money, and basically make no sense at the end of the day, but I still read them. Not all. I have not touched Rowling, but that is economics, and I know enough about her revival of the fantastical tradition in Britain that her Potter can wait.
You cannot, however, put Mitchell in the same category as Pynchon and claim not to missing something extraordinary. I am not going to repeat my last post, but all the over-educated have is a self-referential irony, and in the hands of extraordinary talent it can be just as rewarding.
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