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Postmodernism.pptx
Postmodernism
Double Lecture
Focus Question:
Imagine, if you will a caveman drawing a line:
in this act he becomes writer, reader, critic AND text;
he writes the line, reads into it what he intends it to say, interprets it;
in future days it is open to myriad other interpretations;
in the act of writing he is a text to be interpreted in himself
What can we read into his drawing?
What can we learn about his culture, politics and so forth from the image of him drawing a line?
What can we say about his culture in that they are producing written texts (irrespective of how rudimentary they may seem)?
In one sense we can say that the written text is the work – a novel, a poem, a play.
A text is an application of writing and/or image to communicate information and ideas.
Anything that can be read, interpreted and written about is a text.
With this in mind we can begin to discuss Hermeneutics or the theory of Interpretation
History of hermeneutics
Medieval Scholastics/Patristics;
Numerous ‘schools’ of literary criticism;
Dilthey;
Habermas;
Husserl;
Heidegger;
Hirsch:
–H. Gadamer, Truth & Method
“Not occasionally only, but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive, but always a productive attitude as well”.
What does this mean?
The hermeneutic loop:
No presuppositionless understanding
No end point to understanding
Intentionality throughout
Can we have an uncontaminated experience of art?
Is there such a thing as a work of art that we can approach in a pure or pristine condition?
No!
All works of art are products of -and are embedded in - a "form of life," a tradition, or history
This is history is part of the work of art and also part of us, as spectators
With written texts we encounter only from within a shared linguistic tradition
So
Our cultural repertoire is always already reflected in the work of art
This is a crucial aspect of the hermeneutic insight which is derived from Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur.
To experience a work of art it is necessary to interpret. There is no choice about this – the work of art remains incomplete until it is received or deciphered. It is an ultimate form of communication.
So
We can view the work of art as a meeting place between artist and recipient
To interpret we must:
See the work of art against a framework of shared assumptions and practices, in a process, where the interpreter moves back and forth from the text to those common assumptions, then returns to the text, in a "hermeneutic circle";
This means that understanding is ultimately a matter of engagement with the work of art in which prejudices can never be entirely excluded;
in short we must acknowledge that we bring our own cultural repertoire to the work of art.
Interpretation is that encounter between artist and recipient.
Any attempt to describe, dispassionately and objectively, what a work of art "means" will only produce the reader's subjective assessment of the work;
No two people see the same painting even as they look at the same canvas, especially if they view it at different times, or even if the same individual views a painting at different times in his or her life. (See "Arthur Schopenhauer and the Metaphysics of Art.")
This can be ‘true’ in a sense as this is what the work ‘is’ to us;
Therefore, what the work is will be in flux;
As it is mediated through different perceptions the work's meaning is dynamic and not static.
But
It is always changing:
Let’s take the example of a traffic light:
A traffic light is a text which is only understandable to someone who brings a great deal of prior knowledge to his or her encounter with that text;
We need to know about cars and streets, driving, modern society, mechanisms, the meanings of the colours "red" and "green" and “amber” in this context.
None of this knowledge is spelled out in a huge billboard over the traffic signal;
It is simply part of the assumed background or framework to that encounter between driver and traffic signal.
Nevertheless, we can badly misinterpret of misread this text;
Interpreting "red" to mean "go"; when everyone else reads "red" to mean "stop," may get you killed. This would not be a good interpretation.
Postmodern Writing: Theory
Postmodernism has become a buzzword for a great, and hotly debated, movement of the late 20th century.
debated like poststructuralism, but looms much larger in the public mind
this is because of its role as a cultural movement that produces art as well as critiquing it
postmodernism adopts a sceptical, nose-thumbing, attitude to many of the ideas that have been cherished by Western thought and social life for the last few centuries.
Gone is belief in the grand narratives of Western progress
Beliefs like the Enlightenment’s claim to great truths inherent in reason
or colonialism’s belief in a God-given right to rule and the glory of great journeys through ‘dark’ continents).
targets for deflation by postmodernism include any claim to ownership of social or spiritual truths,
other beliefs challenged are:
authoritarian dogma, nostalgia, self-righteousness, high-minded aspirations and assertions of scientific objectivity.
But, remember…no movement begins and ends at any particular point.
In the cultural continuum there is always an ebb and flow of theories and ideas.
Movements overlap in a constant flux of new ideas; in their growth, diminution and possible resurgence.
Postmoderism flows from the deconstruction theory of the poststructuralists in a more or less linear sense
however in a parallel sense it also engages in an ongoing dialogue with Modernism that to some extent still accompanies it on a cultural journey.
Some cultural commentators believe that Modernism continues today and there is no such thing as postmodernism.
An ongoing debate with Modernism?
This is because as the child of Modernism it is the beneficiary of Modernist ideas,
it accepts some of these ideas in adapted form and others it rejects.
has adapted Modernism’s fragmention of form in art and literature
however it celebrates a postmodern disbelief in the possibility of unity, rather than the yearning for unity and cohesion that is a feature of Modernism.
What postmodernism rejects, along with the desire for unity, are Modernism’s certainties of style and cultural elitism.
Postmodernism also departs from Modernism’s despair at the loss of hope brought about by the Industrial Revolution and World War One.
A larger cultural movement and a particular textual style,
Postmodernism operates as a catchcry to describe the whole condition of the world in the late 20th century.
Think of Andy Warhol and those soup cans that simulate reality to the point of hyperrealism – as so much photographic painting following in Warhol’s wake also does.
Think of art that draws eclectically from image and print and uses audio or visual technology like television in its construction.
Think of the movies Pulp Fiction and its fragmented, looped narrative, and The Hours with its intertextual reference to Mrs Dalloway.
postmodernism
Think of graphic design that uses an explosion of word and image.
Think of essays and stories in which the narrative is made up of fragments chosen from other sources and put together to create meaning that is devoid of additional authorial comment.
As a movement postmodernism is resolutely complex, diverse, multiple and difficult to define as it skims the surface of culture, selecting, juxtaposing, metamorphosing and resisting arrest.
postmodernism
It can be historical in drawing on traditions of the past in the construction of its art and literature (often using past traditions and form ironically).
It can be ahistorical as it discards the context of the history it pillages for bits and pieces to construct a kind of montage form of art and writing called pastiche.
It is also historical in acknowledging the heritage of its own critical culture (Modernism and poststructuralism)
but generally through that acknowledgement, postmodernism defines itself by what it is not.
It is liberating in its refusal to acknowledge the boundaries of form and genre, incorporating fragments of art and literature into a single work for example.
However, questions do arise as to where liberation from belief, cohesion, reality, ideology, history and judgement of values can take a culture.
Key Concepts
disregard for the Enlightenment’s grand narratives of truth and order • the death of the authority of the literary canon and its power to control discourse • the demise of the concept of the individual and the notion of a stable self • the loss of the ‘real’ through the birth of technology such as television and its simulations of reality. • the birth of global communities • the reign of poly-vocality or multivoices.
Studying the Novel, Jeremy Hawthorn
Postmodernism can be used:
to refer to the non-realist and non-traditional literature and art of the post-Second World War period;
to refer to literature and art which takes certain modernist characteristics to an extreme stage; and
to refer to aspects of a more general human condition in what is tendentiously referred to as the ‘late capitalist’ world of the post-1950s which have an all-embracing effect on life, culture, ideology and art, as well as (in some but not all usages) to a generally welcoming, celebrative attitude towards these aspects (1997, p.83).
Postmodernist writers and critics endorse the value of popular culture.
don’t distinguish between what is often called high and low culture,
popular forms of culture like crime writing or pop art are given as much value as what have been regarded as more intellectual forms
examples are the classics in fiction writing or paintings done by what are generally considered to be the masters in art like Michaelangelo or Picasso.
Postmodernism is not without critics.
Some critics see the dismissal of reality (in the embrace of technology with television as the ultimate hyperreality that replaces the reality it reproduces, and the simulacrum or imitation that becomes reality) as postmodernism’s amoral co-existence with late 20th century capitalism.
Marxist critics like Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton see postmodernism as feeding its art by picking over the bones of a culture already bled of meaning by technology, capitalism and consumerism.
Therefore it is sometimes argued that what postmodernism constructs is superficial in its detachment from morality and social values.
Literary Postmodernism
Like the general philosophy of postmodernism, literary postmodernism is also difficult to define.
does have discernible stylistic characteristics though
these include a tendency to be non-traditional and anti-authoritarian,
to oppose conventional processes of signification.
Postmodern experimental techniques are displayed in such literary forms as the anti-novel, magic realism, Theatre of the Absurd and perhaps concrete, or shape, poetry, but this has been around for a long time.
Stylistic Aspects
self-referentiality • pastiche • intertextuality • eclectic approaches to subject matter and styles • aleatory (or random) writing • parody • hyperreality
Self-referentiality
relates to the ways in which postmodern narrative often self-consciously comments upon itself during the writing, drawing the reader’s attention to writing as a construct.
Pastiche
is usually a ‘patchwork of words, sentences or complete passages from various authors or one author’ (Cuddon 1998, p.644). As it draws on the work of others for its fragments postmodernism is imitative of other authors or artists. It can also be a longer piece written in imitation of another author’s style, usually as a parody of the work. (Make sure you explore any of these terms that may be unfamiliar to you and include them in your journal’s glossary).
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the the way texts interact with other texts rather than the way they are unique and stand alone. When one writer influences another there is a similarity in style, ideas, presentation or even themes. When a writer quotes another whether in imitation or parody there is intertextuality. As we have seen throughout the study in this unit, texts are constructed in relation to previously existing texts. These are all aspects of intertextuality.
Some definitions . . .
Eclectic means bits and pieces taken from many different and often unexpected places. Aleotory often looks as if things have been chosen randomly. They aren’t integrated in a cohesive fashion. Parody is to imitate in a satiric way.
Hyperreality
Hyperreality is a simulation of the real, a reconstruction of the ordinary as larger than life media representations that become real, or more properly, hyperreal.
This is a very recent concept that comes out of the work of Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco and is central to the arguments about the nature of the postmodern world.
An example of the hyperreal is the way television events become more real through being televised than the actual event itself.
What Postmodernist Critics Do…
The following pointers to the practices of postmodernism are listed by Peter Barry in Beginning Theory: 1 They discover postmodernist themes, tendencies, and attitudes within literary works of the twentieth century and explore their implications.
2 They foreground fiction which might be said to exemplify the notion of the ‘disappearance of the real’, in which shifting postmodern identities are seen, for example, in the mixing literary genres (the thriller, the detective story, the myth saga, and the realist psychological novel, etc.)
3 They foreground what might be called ‘intertextual elements’ in literature, such as parody, pastiche, and allusion, in all of which there is a major degree of reference between one text and another, rather than between the text and a safely external reality.
What Pomo Critics Do 2
4 They foreground irony, in the sense described by Umberto Eco, that whereas the modernist tries to destroy the past, the postmodernist realises that the past must be revisted, but ‘with irony’ (Modernism/Postmodernism ed. Peter Brooker, p.227).
5 They foreground the element of ‘narcissism’ in narrative technique, that is, where novels focus on and debate their own ends and processes, and thereby ‘de-naturalise’ their content. (Also known as self-reflexivity.)
6 They challenge the distinction between high and low culture, and highlight texts which work as hybrid blends of the two (1995, p.91).
Major Postmodernist Critics
• Jurgen Habermas who explored communication and repatriated the value of the grand narratives of the Enlightenment after their repudiation by Modernism and structuralism • Jean-Francois Lyotard who attacked Habermas and the grand narratives and described the postmodern as a performance of what in Modernism would have been unpresentable in form and taste • Jean Beaudrillard who developed the idea of the loss of the real with reality and simulation blurring in the simulacrum (or imitation) as a new reality called hyperreality.
Postmodernism is in a sense an umbrella movement for other discourses that share some of its refusal to be controlled.
The discourses of feminism and postcolonialism have in common with postmodernism a determination to deconstruct centres of power.
Feminism and postcolonialism seek to legitimate decentred or marginalised voices.
Where for feminist discourse the centre of power is the patriarchy and the institutions supported by it, postcolonial discourse challenges the power of the colonising nation and any of its agencies.
Postmodernism rejects authority generally, and this includes artistic, institutional, national, theoretical, and cultural centres or hegemonic discourses.
Premise
Liberal Humanism vs. Critical Theory Traditional Ideas about Art and Literature: (the ideology of liberal humanism, cf. Barry 1995, 16-21)
Literature is of timeless significance.
The literary text contains its own meaning within itself, it can (and must) be studies in isolation from contexts of any kind.
Human nature is essentially unchanging.
Individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our unique ‘essence’. The subject is antecedent to and thus transcends the forces of society, experience, and language.
The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the propagation of humane values. Criteria of excellence: organic fusion of form and content, ‘sincerity’, showing/‘enactment’ rather than explanation.
Basic ideas of the Enlightenment (humanism)
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1, There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal.This self knows itself and the world through reason.
2. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world.
3. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
4. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection.
Basic ideas of the Enlightenment (humanism)
5. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true..
6. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful)
7. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
8. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also.
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By Contrast
Recurrent Ideas in Critical Theory: (cf. Barry 1995, 34-36)
What we usually regard as the basic ‘givens’ of our existence (including our gender identity, our individual selfhood, and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and unstable (i.e. ‘socially constructed’ and thus contingent) categories rather than fixed and reliable essences (> anti-essentialism, relativism, linguistic or cultural constructivism).
In literature, as in all writing, there is never the possibility of establishing fixed or definite meanings.
‘Human nature’ (and ‘greatness’ predicated on this idea) is not universal, but in practice Eurocentric and androcentric.
► Politics is pervasive, Language is constitutive, Truth is provisional, Meaning is contingent, Human nature is a myth.
In Other Words:
The idea that things we have thought of as constant, including the notion of our own identity (gender identity, national identity, e.g.) are not stable and fixed, but rather are fluid, changing, unstable.
Rather than being innate essences, these qualities of identity are "socially constructed."
Literary Theory looks at HOW identities are constructed…
Theorists Argue
There is no absolute truth. Everything is constructed and provisional;
Truth is a matter of perspective, therefore all truths are relative rather than absolute;
There is no objectivity: everything we think or do is in some degree the product of our past experiences, our beliefs, or our ideology.
Rather than language reflecting the "real world," language actually creates and structures our perceptions of "reality."
Rather than being speakers of language, these theorists hold that we are products of language.
Theorists Argue
Because all truths are relative, all supposedly "essential" constants are fluid;
Because language determines reality, there is no such thing as definitive meaning.
There is only ambiguity, fluid meaning, multiple meaning, especially in a literary text.
Recurrent Ideas in Theory
(from: Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Second Edition. Manchester, 2002)
Anti-essentialism—many of the notions previously regarded as universal and fixed (gender identity, individual selfhood) are actually fluid and unstable. These are socially constructed or contingent categories rather than absolute or essential ones.
All thinking and investigation is affected by prior ideological commitments. There is no disinterested enquiry.
“Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. Language doesn’t record reality but constructs it. Meaning in texts is jointly constructed by the reader and writer.
4. “Theorists distrust all totalizing notions” (great books, human nature)
Barry sums these ideas up in 5 key points:
politics is pervasive
language is constituative
Truth is provisional
Meaning is contingent
Human nature is a myth.
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Modernist Philosophy
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Modern philosophy liberates itself (to a large extent) from the Aristotelian world view. In doing so it shifts its emphasis (via the French philosopher Rene Descartes) toward the notion of an a priori conscious ego--a thinker or cogito--that observes the world and historical events from a position of rationality, detachment and objectivity.
Rationalism: We, as thinkers, are linked to pure rationality--a transcendental order. We are rational beings because the universe is rational. The universe is rationally ordered because God is rational. Thus, by objectively-- empirically and scientifically--studying the order concealed in Nature we are studying the ways of God the Mathematician.
This "objectivity", together with an increasing value placed on the individual, puts the human being ("Man") at the center of History and knowledge.
With this freedom and centrality comes a strong measure of responsibility and the duty to protect and increase the autonomy of every rational human being. [Kant]
The main features of Modernism
A movement (in novels) away from the apparent objectivity provided by such features as: omniscient external narration, fixed narrative points of view and clear cut moral positions.
“Blurring of genres” – true and false at the same time. One might instead call this the beginning of a disregard for genre rather than a deliberate attempt to blend genres, which is more of a postmodernist activity.
Increased subjectivity and emphasis on the mode of perception rather than on the object itself. How we see, not what we see. Stream-of-consciousness writing in the novel (although this also occurred in poetry).
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The main features of MODERNISM
4. The collage, fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives etc. A basic modernist technique of which T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land is a central example. This is related, at one level, to the subjectivity of the writer. (and a new emphasis on the subconscious) but also to a certain nostalgia for past forms.
5. Poems, plays and novels raise issues concerning their own nature, status, and role. This indicates the way in which modernist works tended to be self-referential.
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In Postmodernism: Metafiction
“Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique of their own methods of construction, such writings not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text.”
(Patricia Waugh)
David Lodge: 4 Techniques Typical of PM Fiction
Permutation: incorporating alternative narrative lines in the same text
Discontinuity: disrupting the continuity, unity, “reality” of the text (by unpredictable swerves of tone, metafictional asides to the reader, blank spaces in the text, etc).
Randomness: discontinuity produced by composing accord to the logic of the absurd
Excess: as a method of departing from or testing the bounds of “reality”
Modernism v Postmodernism
Modernism
Purpose
Design
Hierarchy
Presence
Depth
Urbanism
Elitism
Postmodernism
Play
Change
Anarchy
Absence
Surface
Fragmentation
Anti-authoritarianism
Feminist Theory
Three main areas of study and points of criticism exist in Feminist Theory:
1. differences between men and women
2. women in positions of power and power dynamics between men and women
3. the female experience
Examining “Cinderella” from a Feminist Perspective
Consider the potentially misogynist theme of abused-girl-waiting-to-be-rescued-by-prince.
Consider the values conveyed in the portrayal of the “good girl” as physically beautiful and the “wicked girls” as physically ugly.
Marxist Theory
Four main areas of study:
economic power
materialism versus spirituality
class conflict
art, literature, and ideologies
Examining “Cinderella” from a Marxist Perspective
Consider Cinderella as a representative of the proletariat:
oppressed by her bourgeoisie stepmother and stepsisters, who have stolen her rightful inheritance and turned her into a servant in her own home;
Desiring to join the ranks of the bourgeoisie by marrying the prince.
Psychoanalytic or Freudian Theory
There are strong Oedipal connotations in Freudian theory:
Main areas of study/points of criticism of the first view are:
the son’s desire for his mother
the father’s envy of the son and rivalry for the mother’s attention
the daughter’s desire for her father
the mother’s envy of the daughter and rivalry for the father’s attention.
Of course, these all operate on a subconscious level to avoid violating serious social mores.
Examining “Cinderella” from a Psychoanalytic Perspective
Consider Cinderella as a representative of the id —expressing desire.
Consider the stepmother and stepsisters as representatives of the superego—preventing the id from fulfilling its desire.
Consider the fairy godmother and the prince as representatives of the ego—negotiating between the id and the superego and allowing the desires of the id to be fulfilled in a socially acceptable manner.
Mythological or Archetypal Theory
Three main points of study:
1. archetypal characters
2. archetypal images
3. archetypal situations
Examining “Cinderella” from an Archetypal Perspective
Examine the stepmother and stepsisters as archetypal villains.
Examine the chores Cinderella must complete (especially involving the beans in the fireplace in Grimm version) as the archetypal catalogue of difficult tasks.
New Historicism
Main areas of study/points of criticism:
Traditional history is, by its nature, a subjective narrative, usually told from the point of view of the powerful.
The losers of history do not have the means to write their stories, nor is there usually an audience interested in hearing them.
Most cultures, once dominated by another, are forced
to forget their past. To maintain its sovereignty, the culture of power simply does not allow the defeated culture to be remembered.
Examining “Cinderella” from a New Historicist Perspective
What can we infer about the society in which this story—considering, especially, the violence and vengeance in the Grimm version—would evolve and be told to young children?
What can we infer about property and inheritance laws in the society in which “Cinderella” evolved? What can we infer about the society’s view of royalty and monarchic power?
Formalism
Three main areas of study:
1. form and unity
2. diction
3. incongruities or inconsistencies
Examining “Cinderella” from a Formalist Perspective
Look for symbolic, or some other, significance for the specific items and animals chosen (for the coach and staff) and/or the numbers of each chosen.
Compare the speech patterns of Cinderella and the stepmother and stepsisters. Are there noticeable differences in cadence? Do any use more (or less) figurative or poetic language than the others? Do any speak noticeably more (or less) than the others?
