PO-MO! UNO!
For the next couple of days I will be working on trying to sort out the mess that is Postmodernism: It’s key thinkers and their contributions; some elements and attributes of postmodern society; and I guess the hardest yet most valuable piece of the puzzle; what can we truly define as postmodern?
Of all the confusion, competing ideas and conflicting abstractions that come with postmodernism’s seemingly pervasive reach—dipping it’s fingers into almost every domain of thought—one thing is certain and consistent even amongst the opponents of the postmodern condition, as John Storey explains in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, “What is certainly the case is that as a concept postmodernism shows little sign of slowing down its colonial-like expansion.” (181)
I have been doing some reading on the subject, and feel like I have swirl of meaningful colors where once there was a complete absence of anything bu inkling on the subject. The real battle comes in turning those abstract colors into images, words and examples that demonstrate the concepts that are at the heart of Postmodernism. So! I will be writing about all that here! Hopefully we can slowly come to some framework of understanding.
So where to start?
How about in the 1960’s?
Postmodernism derives it’s name from the modernist movement. The modernist movement was led by such minds and figures as Virgina Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky , Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht, and many others. Their work was for its time, avant gaurde and radical, playing with conventions of structure, form and meaning within their respective disciplines. This can be seen in Faulkner’s play with time, chronology and voice (i.e. how he ‘Tarantino’s The Sound and the Fury) or Picasso’s abstraction and oddity in such pieces as Guernica, or Brechts departure from traditional theater to the politically poignant and often jarring styles of ‘epic’ theater with his play Three Penny Opera.
By the late 50’s or early 60’s there came a shift in thought as the products and creators of Modernism we beginning to make their transition from being “oppositional to hegemonic”. They were beginning to become canonized and accepted within the academy (Storey 182). It was this shift that brought about the beginnings of Postmodernism. Storey quotes Fredric Jameson, an American Neo-Marxist and pivotal thinker on postmodernism (especially in the field of culture) when explaining the birth of postmodernism.
“This is surely one of the most plausible explanations for the emergence of postmodernism itself, since the younger generation of the 1960’s will now confront the formerly oppositional modern movement as a set of dead classics…” —Fredric Jameson
However, while postmodernism might seem like a simple continuation of the cycle of opposition and hegemony, where radical thoughts and oppositional low culture slowly replaces—or finds itself canonized into—the “dominant” or elite/high culture, there is a major difference. Postmodernism in a way found its birth by challenging the elitism of the Modernist academy, much in the way modernists challenged the values of the enlightenment era. However, the fundamental difference lies in one of postmodernism’s basic principles: a rejection of inherent significance between “high” and “low” Art.
Storey explains this closing gap between high and low culture by referencing Sontag:
” …the most important consequence of the new sensibility, with it’s abandonment of ‘the Mathew Arnold notion of culture, finding it historically and humanly obsolescent’ (Sontag, 1996:299), is its claim that ‘the distinction between “high” and “low” culture seems less and less meaningful’. (302)”
This claim in and of itself suggests many things about the assignment of value and validity in a postmodern perspective. However, the rejection of “absolute standards of value” (Storey, 182) is a conversation for another post.
Through the lenses of different fields of study, postmodernism can often seem reactionary or resistant, even (for some) an organic evolution. In the context of literature, postmodern writers share much of the spirit of experimentation and many of the tropes pioneered by modernist writers (So much so, that often some modernists seem to spill over into early postmodernists. This is much the same way that some of the great structuralists found themselves continuing their thoughts into post-structuralism). This makes it hard to pin down just what distinguishes a postmodern text or author from modernist authors or others. However, it is the rejection of modernist values of “high” and “low” subject matter, structures, and forms, coupled with an tendency towards deconstruction and Derrida-esque concepts of textual value that seems to mark Postmodern literature.
The next post will dive a little deeper and introduce some more general principals of Postmodernism before jumping into so well know theorists in the study of Postmodernism.
Enjoy!
