08 Statements About Postmodernism By Published Authors 17-20
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This article is from the Postmodern FAQ, by Van Piercy vpiercy@indiana.edu with numerous contributions by others.
08 Statements About Postmodernism By Published Authors 17-20
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(17) "I begin with what appears to be the most startling fact
about postmodernism: its total acceptance of the ephemerality,
fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic that formed the one
half of Baudelaire's conception of modernity. But postmodernism
responds to the fact of that in a very particular way. It does
not try to transcend it, counteract it, or even to define the
`eternal and immutable' elements that lie within it. Post-
modernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic
currents of change as if that is all there is. Foucault [in the
"Preface" to Deleuze and Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_ (U of Minn.
Press, 1983. xiii)] instructs us, for example, to `develop
actions, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition,
and disjunction,' and `to prefer what is positive and multiple,
difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrange-
ments over systems. Believe that what is productive is not
sedentary but nomadic.' To the degree that it does try to legit-
imate itself by reference to the past, therefore, postmodernism
typically harks back to that wing of thought, Nietzsche in par-
ticular, that emphasizes the deep chaos of modern life and its
intractability before rational thought. This does not imply,
however, that postmodernism is simply a version of modernism;
real revolutions in sensibility can occur when latent and
dominated ideas in one period become explicit and dominant in
another. Nevertheless, the continuity of the condition of frag-
mentation, ephemerality, discontinuity, and chaotic change in
both modernist and postmodernist thought is important." (Harvey
44)
**
(18) "Postmodernism, then, is a mode of consciousness (and *not*,
it should be emphasized, a historical period) that is highly
suspicious of the belief in shared speech, shared values, and
shared perceptions that some would like to believe form our cul-
ture but which in fact may be no more than empty, if necessary,
fictions." (Olsen 143)
**
(19) "The point is that there *are* new standards, new standards
of beauty and style and taste. The new sensibility is defiantly
pluralistic; it is dedicated both to an excruciating seriousness
and to fun and wit and nostalgia. It is also extremely history-
conscious; and the voracity of its enthusiasms (and of the super-
cession of these enthusiasms) is very high-speed and hectic.
>From the vantage point of this new sensibility, the beauty of the
machine or of the solution to a mathematical problem, of a paint-
ing by Jasper Johns, of a film by Jean-Luc Godard, and of the
personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible."
(Sontag 304)
**
(20) "All my life I have worked to establish distinctions with
the areas covered by umbrella-terms such as iconism, code,
presupposition, etc. Naturally I am intrigued by the term
`postmodern.' It is my impression that it is applied these days
to everything the speaker approves of. On the other hand, there
seems to be an attempt to move it backwards in time; first it
seemed to suit writers or artists active in the last twenty
years, then gradually it was moved back to the beginning of the
century, then even further back, and the march goes on; before
long Homer himself will be considered postmodern.
But I believe that this tendency is to some extent justified.
I agree with those who consider postmodern not a chronologically
circumscribed tendency but a spiritual category, or better yet a
*Kunstwollen* (a Will-to-Art), perhaps a stylistic device and/or
a world view. We could say that every age has its own post-
modern, just as every age has its own form of mannerism (in fact,
I wonder if postmodern is not simply the modern name for
*Manierismus*...). I believe that every age reaches moments of
crisis like those described by Nietzsche in the second of the
_Untimely Considerations_, on the harmfulness of the study of
history. The sense that the past is restricting, smothering,
blackmailing us." (Umberto Eco, "A Correspondence on Post-
modernism" with Stefano Rosso in Hoesterey, op cit., pp. 242-3)
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