Post-modernism: When “confusing signals…give you verisimilitude”*

1. Post-modernism:When “confusing signals…give you verisimilitude”* A sequel to the hit PowerPoint presentation, Modernism: More than a mass of crudely drawn rectangles, thank you very much. (link here, in case you forgot that one) * Menand, Louis. “Saved From Drowning.” Rev. of Hiding Man, by Tracey Daugherty. The New Yorker 23 Feb 2009: 68-76. 74.

2. Modernism  Post-Modernism “We can never be pre-modernist again…. We can never be modernist again.” – Menand 68 The middle of the 20th century is often thought to have created a barrier: grotesqueries, interconnectedness, and technology have put innocence and certainty permanently beyond our reach. But…is this bad? Or just real?

3. Modernism Post-modernism (Pomo) 1. Hope for truth but critique of past efforts: an existential crisis 1. Loss of faith in “truths” and authority. Widespread use of air quotes. 2. Attention to subjectivity but preference/admiration for The West remains • Radical decentralization: perspective, subjectivity 3. Meaning is difficult to find (c.f., Eliot [online version]) 3. The exterior exists, but drawing interior conclusions should be avoided 4. Technological/industrial society poses dangers: discontinuity, disorientation, fragmentation 4. No choice but to get used to parody, instability, mockery, discontinuity, “play”, disorientation, fragmentation 5. Authorial imposition: authorship is not “natural”…notice it! Notice language! 5. Narratorial imposition; challenge to authorship: pastiche, materials, audience as participant

4. Not a clear-cut division Can argue – and disagree – about whether a particular piece is modernist or post-modern More a philosophy about the state of the world than a literary “technique” Zeitgeist Some key pomo-linked terms, however: metafiction simulacrum intertexuality deconstruction

5. Conflict in America Just as Modernism was a tough sell to Americans in the first half of the 20th century, Pomo is an even tougher sell now: anti-traditional, anti-serious, anti-authority, anti-boundaries. Even: rude. Source: ThePublicInterest.freedomblogging.com. Painting by Robert Rauschenberg, 1955. Detail source: Boston.com. Source: ThinkParadox.net. Painting by Rene Magritte, 1928-29.

6. We have met the enemy, and he is…Postmodernism? (page 1 of 2) • Concerning these [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class. • journalist George Will, commencement speech at College of William and Mary, 1994 • The professors of humanities are in an impossible situation and do not believe in themselves or what they do. Like it or not, they are essentially involved with interpreting and transmitting old books, preserving what we call tradition, in a democratic order where tradition is not privileged…. The students just were not persuaded that what was being offered them was important. The loneliness and sense of worthlessness were crushing, so these humanists jumped on the fastest, most streamlined express to the future. This meant, of course, that all the tendencies hostile to the humanities were radicalized, and the humanities, without reservations, were pitched off the train. • professor and critic Allan Bloom, in Closing of the American Mind , 1987 (353) • [J]ust take a look at what these "postmodern" people like and at what they don't like in current art. They happen, I think, to be a more dangerous threat to high art than old-time philistines ever were. They bring philistine taste up-to-date by disguising it as its opposite, wrapping it in high-flown art jargon. • art critic Clement Greenberg, Dobell Memorial Lecture, 1979

7. We have met the enemy, and he is…Postmodernism? (page 2 of 2) • [P]ostmodernism subscribes to the notion that the human mind is incapable of knowing the real world because there is no world out there that exists separately from our senses. In other words, everything that exists is all in our heads.And, furthermore, what's in your head is no better than what's in my head. • blogger/scientist “Dr. Sanity”, 2009 • Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. • journalist E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 2005 • Modernism’s displacement of the Church, monarchy, and aristocracy from positions of power and privilege continues to be deeply resented among conservatives. • critic Christopher L.C.E. Whitcomb on arthistoryresources.net, originally 1997

8. So…what do we do? How should/can one live in the so-called Postmodern era: resist, succumb, revel, mourn, struggle to make sense, rage, plunge one’s head in the sand?