literature and the other arts Part 2 Postmodernism in literature and the other arts

Jackson Pollock: No. 5 (1948)

(1964)

DADAISM

(1973)

Theoretical background Previously…. Theoretical background

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

Postmodernism 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

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

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

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

Signifier Signifier Signifier SIGNIFIER Signifier Signifier Signifier Signifier Signifier Signifier Signifier

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

“Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” POST-STRUCTURALISM (Deconstruction) Jacques Derrida “Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)

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

CHAOS OR COMPLEXITY?

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

No point in making binary disctinctions: THE POSTMODERN VIEW No point in making binary 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

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

Arnold Schoenberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909)

John Cage: Imaginary Landscapes (1939)

MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

POSTMODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

MODERNISM Rejection of Romanticist and Realist modes of representation Self-consciousness Radical subjectivization of the object Paradigm shift in the perception and representation of the world

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

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

Modernism (1911)

DALÍ AND PICASSO PAINTING THE “SAME” EGG

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)

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

Reading for the signified Signifier(s) Signified

Signifier Signified

The reader is forced to face signifiers as signifiers

Signifier(s) Signified

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

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

Modernism vs. Postmodernism Purpose Design Finished Work Semantics Metaphysics Play Chance Performance Rhetorics Irony Ihab Hassan: The Postmodern Turn (1975)

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

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

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.

(1967)

Möbius strip (tangled hierarchy)

Maurits Cornelis Escher: Drawing Hands (1948)

M.C. Escher: Relativity (1953)

Raymond Federman (1928-2009) “Surfiction” (1975) Surfiction (as in surreal) is “fiction above fiction”: it is a radically non-mimetic form whics has no intention to mirror “reality.”

(1985)

In Form : Digressions on the Act of Fiction (1985) Ronald Sukenick (1932-2004) In Form : Digressions on the Act of Fiction (1985) One of the tasks of postmodern fiction is “to displace, energize, and re-embody its criticism—literally to re­unite it with our experience of the text.”