P ostmodernis m: theoretical background

1. Postmodernism: theoretical background Part 1

2. 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 Postmodernist thought aims at a PLAYFUL restructuring of our ordinary ways of perceiving and representing the world Postmodernism is about DESPAIR and the MEANINGLESSNESS of life

3. Postmodernism in the broadest sense is a conscious problematization of what is “true” and “real”/an inquiry into how “truth” and “reality” are made rather than found. Questioning the Platonist/metaphysical foundations of Western philosophy

4. METAPHYSICS Socrates  Plato  Aristotle WORLD Appearance Replica (copy) Contingent Perishable Physical Material Reality Ideal form Essential Eternal Mental Non-Material VS.

5. TRUTH IN POSTMODERNISM

6. 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.

7. THEORIES IN/OF POSTMODERNISM

8. DECONSTRUCTION (Post-structuralism) Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) “Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)

9. STRUCTURALISM Fredinand de Saussure (1857-1913) LangueParole (Language as a system) (Actual utterances) Sign Signifier Signified Referent Language is a system of differences

10. 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

14. SIMULACRUM AND HYPERREALITY Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

15. “It’s a new reality show about a producer trying to make a reality show about a family obsessed with reality shows.”

16. 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

17. An illustration of the logic of the simulacrum: Disneyland

21. DISTRUST OF GRAND NARRATIVES Jean-Francois Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979)

22. “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?”

23. 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)

24. Part 2 Modernism and postmodernism in literature and the other arts

25. MODERNISM • Rejection of Romanticist and Realist modes of representation • Self-consciousness • Radical subjectivization of the object • Paradigm shift intheperception and representation of theworld

26. Romanticism Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)

27. Realism Adolf von Menzel: Portait of Karoline Arnold (1905)

28. Modernism (1911)

29. MODERNISM POSTMODERNISM VS. Georges Braque: Violin and Candlestick (1910) Jackson Pollock:No. 5 (1948)

30. DALÍ AND PICASSO PAINTING THE “SAME” EGG

31. MODERNIST FICTION The story of the Compson family subjectivized through the mode of representation  stream of consciousness William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

32. A postmodernist text is not the subjectivized representation of a “story,” a “situation,” an “event,” etc., but a textual world in its own right

35. (1964)

36. DADAISM

37. (1973)

38. THE METAPHYSICS OF BINARY STRUCTURES LITERARY WORK WORK OF ART WORLD SIGN Appearance Reality Text Form Signifier Signified Content Meaning

39. THE POSTMODERN VIEW • No pointinmakingbinary 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

40. Reading for the signified Signifier(s) Signified

41. Signifier Signified

42. The reader is forced to face signifiers as signifiers Signifier(s) Signifier(s)

43. Postmodernism emphasizes that • all literary texts are material objects (signifiers) • all literary texts are simulacra

44. Modernism vs. Postmodernism Brian McHale via Roman Jakobson MODERNISM POSTMODERNISM Epistemological Ontological “Dominant” Brian McHale: Postmodernist Fiction (1987)

45. Techniques used in postmodernist literary works - Irony - Pastiche - Intertextuality - Metafiction - Metalepsis

46. The Dead Father (1975) Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)

47. 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.

48. (1967)