postmodernism 2

7/29/2019 Postmodernism 2

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"Just What is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?"

(1956) - Richard Hamilton



Postmodernism: Significant Events

•August 6, 1945 - atomic explosion over Hiroshima,

Japan The conclusion of World War II

•The Korean War (Conflict?)

• The Cold War of the 1950s

• McCarthyism and the House Un-American

Activities Committee• The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

• The assassination of President Kennedy, Nov. 1962

Identity Movements of the 1960s: Feminism, Civil

Rights/Black Power

• The assassinations, in 1968, of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy



Postmodernism: Significant Events (con’t)

• The Vietnam War (Conflict?)

• The killing of four students by the National Guard

at Kent State Univ., 1970

• The resignation of President Nixon in 1974•The AIDS epidemic

•Identity Movements: Gay, Lesbian, Queer

movements, Postcolonial movements and minority

literature.

•The rise of Theory

•Culture Wars: debates over canonical inclusion and

“great books”



Postmodernism Samples

(from Jameson)

John Ashbery -- David Antin

Pop Buildings

Pop Art, Conceptual Art,

Photorealism

John Cage, Philip Glass, the

Clash, Talking Heads, Gang of

Four

Vanguard film: Godard, etc. to

Hollywood “nostalgia film”

Fiction: Burroughs, Pychnon,

DeLillo, French new novel

Other samples?



Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, Summer 1911

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 –1973)

Oil on canvas; 24 1/8 x 19 7/8 in. (61.3 x 50.5 cm)



Cubist Still Life by Roy Lichtenstein, 1974.



Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes, 1969



Recurrent Ideas in Theory

(from: Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An

Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.

Second Edition. Manchester, 2002)

1. 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.

2. All thinking and investigation is affected by prior

ideological commitments. There is no

disinterested enquiry.

3. “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 in5 key points:

politics is pervasive

language is constituative Truth is provisional

Meaning is contingent

Human nature is a myth.



Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles



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 betweenfiction 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 possiblefictionality of the world outside the literary

fictional text.”

(Patricia Waugh, courtesy of Patrick)



David Lodge: 4 Techniques Typical of PM Fiction

• Permutation: incorporating alternative narrativelines 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 bycomposing accord to the logic of the absurd

• Excess: as a method of departing from or testingthe bounds of “reality”



“The Babysitter” fragments

“a scream” a fight “Stop it!”

“Decides to take a quick bath” a golf club

a pair of underpants “are you being a good girl?”

“Dolly!” “Where’s Harry?” “peeping in”

“Hey! What’s going on here?” “Harry?”

“I’m just wrapped in a towel”

“I’ll spank!” “Something about a babysitter…”

a ringing telephone

“Maybe you better get in the tub too”

“They’re all dead”

postmodernism 2

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