/lit/ - Literature

trans-modernism

inb4 "lol he put an s at the end of things"

The holes postmodernism creates are inescapable. It aims to be the end-all philosophy.

Well a Dark Age is always possible, and a return to fundamentalist or religious thought.

On the other hand, the grand narrative of democracy might pull through, although this seems unlikely today.

Alterity is a possibility as well, that something totally alien might emerge on our scene, creating a divisive change in the world before and after it. Might be aliens, free energy, an apocolypse. Maybe something currently unimaginable.

But as it stands, post-modernism is an ill defined field. Or maybe it isn't ill defined, but has many variations, hard and soft, liberal, conservative, radical, fundementalist. For instance Feminism is a post-modern event. But so is a new age cult like Aum Shinrikyo

We're already post-postmodern. Have been for about a decade.

anarchy through the realization of nothing. chaos reigns.

Postermodernism will probably be carved up into a number of more discrete and coherent movements in a couple of generations.

I doubt greater Western culture lasts long enough to foment another true movement. Things will just balkanize, like the guy above me said.

Post-modernism is dead already. Now people just repeat what's been said, and ignore all of their problems. The Western world no longer listens to philosophy. Apparently, whatever the Jersey Shore crew fucked last Saturday is more important.

get ready for some serious wittgenstein and post wittgenstein philosophy to hit mainstream academia.

>>2046743
Sincerity. Much like the German Youth Movement followed the fin-de-siecle.

Yes I am suggesting that fascism will come next. Workers, gather your forces, for the last fight we must face.

>>2046844
You seem mad, distressed, cynical, depressed, contemptuous, derisive, and angsty.

It's because you are a tripfag.

The guy who wrote the Philosophy Today article is on to something.

What has changed is how we get our information.

It is no longer necessary (nor comparatively interesting) to read an encyclopedic novel with fucking footnotes.

The key is interactivity.

And no, this doesn't necessarily mean a sudden deluge of choose-your-own-adventure books, because the existence of the OP's question shows that we, as potential forerunners, have not decided how to handle this with literature.

And, of course, here I specifically speak of literature; so let's not diverge from this.

>>2046896
>read an encyclopedic novel with fucking footnotes.
idk, some still seem popular. on lit at least...though that doesn't say much.

>>2046900
>idk, some still seem popular. on lit at least...though that doesn't say much.{{citation needed|August 2011}}

>>2046900
I'll be completely honest, because I would be lying if I said that I don't enjoy some of these novels.

This form of the novel, however, has run its course and a writer/author/novelist would be hard pressed to defend himself as such if he continued to create in this style.

Studies and theories abound now with the purpose of how the new informational paradigm is shaping our minds and their (inter/intra)operation.

The true artist will recognize how we as individuals, and as a culture, have changed and he will be able to create something that reflects and illuminates this change.

literally unable to conceive of what could come after post-modernism. as far as i can see, it's the dead end of philosophy and literature, the end of history. all we can do now is go back over ground that we know to be ultimately fertile and do shit that at least excites us for a little while, even if we know it's pointless.

it's entirely possible, of course, that some visionary will see a way through and found some really new philosophy or school of literature. but i doubt it.

>>2046956
Or the central point of post-modernism could have previously been refuted, say, by Kierkegaard's hermeneutics—leaving us free to get on with the proletarian revolution.

>>2046961
or that's the other possibility. that post-modernism is an error and that the correct path was somewhere back in the path. but i really doubt it. although if you want to explain to me how kierkegaard's hermeneutics refute post-modernism, i'd be more than happy to listen (lol, this is never going to happen, you're going to call me a plebe for not being an expert on it and laugh at me)

Modernism was rejecting what was before it and trying to establish something new, and Post-Modernism was a wholesale rejection of that that established very little that is new. Therefore we've scraped the bottom of the barrel- It's like dividing by zero because we HAVE HIT zero. From here things can only be built up again- From a cultural void we must abandon the half-hearted norms of modern literature, of self-criticism, the building of our parents' generation's art, and our so far failed attempts to capture this generation's zeitgeist (the most formed attempts of which seem to be all based around 'apathy', which is just blatantly lazy). We have to actually create something new for ourselves to get out of this rut.

Someone'll have to do it soon. We've hit a cultural low point- What has culture since 2000 offered that is new, revolutionary, or challenging? The entire 00-10 decade is gone, and left to be remembered entirely for technological advances and music that no one listens to, the radios replaying tired unrepresentative crap or even just the music of yesteryear.

There hasn't been a drought of cultural innovation and social energy like this in a century, anywhere in the West. The last time this happened was in a similar drought of originality, and that spawned Modernism, rejecting the barely-relevant ideas of the increasingly distant past and instead embracing their own, new ideas.

Honestly, I'd be excited- Our generation, as it matures into the relevant artists of the next three or four decades, is going to have to decide on something here. And we, being the savvy literary people we are, might have a part in it.

>>2046971
The central point of post-modernism is the meaninglessness of meaning at a semantic level, due to the failure of structuralist semiotics. Therefore, demonstrating the continued correspondence of texts with meanings—solving the epistemic problem—refutes post-modernism.

Kierkegaard's leap of faith does this. We know that there is a gap between text and meaning, but we leap into the meaning knowing that reading with faith will cause the text to support our reading.

ITT: People trying to characterize vast and varied forms of thought in a few sentences, all while trying to predict where the fuck things are going.

Seriously, go back 100 years and look at what people's "predictions" are, (literary or otherwise). They are almost always very far off the mark -- some people happen to be right, but statistically, it only makes sense that some are.

In other words, there is no real way of knowing.

Also, no one in philosophy "really" takes Wittgenstein very seriously, except for maybe a few die-hard analytic professors in the US.

>>2046956
>it's entirely possible, of course, that some visionary will see a way through and found some really new philosophy or school of literature

Maybe it won't be a single visionary. In fact, it's probably highly unlikely that we will be carried on a solitary man's shoulders into the next phase.

I could be wrong, but I envision that this next movement will entail probably not a sequence of direct actions/reactions in a straight line but rather the new creative growth in this age will grow as a tree grows. Branches will grow out from a main trunk, some will be strong and others will be weaker. Together it will be awe inspiring.

I'm not purposefully being abstract, but let's for a second look at something we all are familiar with: 4chan and the meme

Within 4chan you can see the roots: a lot of interesting stuff goes on and from there a lot of creations die, but some of it branches out into areas outside of the website.

Some of these memes embed themselves in popular culture and, once there, they become part of the collective societal psyche.

I don't know, myself, what all of this means but I'm pretty sure it has to do with a certain simultaneously collective/individualistic culture that is fostered here at 4chan.

>>2046984
I don't think that's a satisfactory answer at all, but perhaps Kierkegaard finds some way to justify it; I ought to read him. I'm sure I'm wrong, but it seems to me that an answer that just says that the meaning of a text is created for each person by their 'leap of faith' in assuming the truth of their own reading is not really a satisfactory answer to the problem of meaning.

>>2046956

There is no "end". Do you know how many times people have declared an "end" to one thing or another, whether it be physics, politics (Marx), or history and philosophy (Hegel).

The only point at which things will truly end, (from the human perspective), is when our species cease to exist.

>>2046971
You can also read Hayden White on the production of truth when we doubt any correspondence between text and meaning; yet, still believing in meaning.

"The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality", Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, On Narrative (Autumn, 1980), pp. 5-27.

>>2046992

Not that poster, but I don't believe we will ever get a satisfactory answer for "the problem of meaning". (Read some Derrida or Quine to explore it further).

Christ, Mathematics is thought to be one of, if not the most universal and/or agreed upon subject, and even the foundations of math -- or maths for my UK friends -- were shown to be self-contradictory by Godel.

>>2046992
Whether you feel this is an adequate solution to the problem of meaning is a matter for you—in post-modernism—whereas my use of hermeneutics (it is the foundation of my discipline's methodology, historiography) indicates that I can force my reading onto you.

Hermeneutics guarantees me in my meaning, and this is sufficient for grand narrative projects.

Don't worry, our society is going to collapse.

>>2047131
Oh thank heavens, I was getting pretty worried.

First we enter the Ironic Age, with the rise of "hipster" culture, the popularity of which will wane, and give rise to Post-Irony

>>2047193
Can you define Post-Irony for me, please?

>>2047193
>Ironic age
Clearly this anon isn't familiar with post-modernism

>>2047725
Well you can either go the full Laibach and become retro-avant-garde; or, you can go for a new sincerity ala romanticism.

Formalism is possible but unlikely.

post-post-modernism. duh.

>Post-modernism

Well, naturally enough, you'll get a "non-modernism" genre of masturbationure. Of course, there are other forms of literature devoid of chronological placement, but that's neither heathen hair.

>>2046743
>What the fuck can possibly come after post-modernism dies?

Whatever you would call contemporary literature like those by Sam Pink, Barry Graham, Tao Lin, Hervé Le Tellier, Ben Marcus, Nate Slawsom.

po-mo is dead.

>>2046861

My body, my body is ready.

Everything has been thought of before, everything has been written before, everything has occurred before. Post-modernism is the end.

>>2047738
you really think that stuff is fundamentally different from po-mo? i mean, obv its not po-mo fiction, but the critiques developed by post-modernism are still totes valid. whether people are actually writing the shit or not, po-mo is only going to be dead when people come up with a new interpretation of literature/meaning/truth that seems plausible to a significant portion of the intellegentsia. which now that i write it doesn't really seem like it matters that much, maybe the answer here is to stop caring what the educated people think.

-You heard it hear second, in no second flat graconz:
Post Eclecticism.
-Any Q's that'll be asked will be directed at someone's wordpress.com.

>>2047753
>'is', is most certainly isn't.

Post-Modernism was a sort of Alexandrian period in literature (just like the Greek literary period). People will find still authentic and yet more simplistic ways of expressing themselves and certain art mediums will slowly die because they've become superfluous.

>>2047753
>I 'HEAR' it right here.

I mean, maybe the end of post-modernism will really just be the end up symbolic art, the end of fiction, etc.

I predict a future where what we today call "art" is really just hyper-true and sincere laments or stories. Visual art will soon only be unaltered photography/video and written art will be actual stories without the nearest thing to a "literary tool."

The world today is vast enough and enigmatic enough to produce all the kinds of stories people once had to make up. And due the technologic growth the imagination capacity of the modern human is diminishing significantly. So even if people were interested in fiction tale, they won't be able to comprehend them.

So, in layman, I don't think post-modernism is the end-all philosophy, I believe the next movement is unbridled honesty and sincerity. That, however, will be the end-all philosophy since by the time that movement would seem to run it's course the technologic growth of our species will abolish our ability to process what we today call "art."

A devolving, if you will.

What stories do people want to hear nowadays?
Do people even care about stories?

>>2048188

That is the saddest thing I've read in a long time

If OP could develop a reasonable prediction, it would have happened already. There are people far smarter than either of us playing this exact same guessing game - some of them actively pushing for their argument.

>actively pushing for their argument.

???????

>>2048172
Oh, you mean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_sincerity

New sincerity is a term that has been used in music, aesthetics, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy, generally to describe art or concepts that run against prevailing modes of postmodernist theory

>>2048205
>it would have happened already. There are people far smarter than either of us playing this exact same guessing game

You would think that because it seems reasonable and, in fact, part of me agrees with it.

But then I come across tidbits such as what happened in 1957 when, after the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik I, a special program was started to encourage the best young scientific minds into a full-on dedication to this specific discipline.

This group of dozens of students in NYC, and in other nations across America, ended up being a catastrophic bust in regards to their eventual contributions to scientific knowledge. Interestingly enough, however, these students (at a rate very close to 100%) went on to other fields. There was a high level of success and contribution from these students in the non-science fields throughout their respective careers.

My point is that we, as a culture, have been attached to this notion for perhaps the past 100 years or so that it is important to study one area of knowledge and become a master of it. The more that I dig into this, however, all the evidence points to the contrary.

It seems that people who devote themselves to one field of knowledge simply re-learn what has already been accomplished in the field and train their mind to think in the same old, beaten patterns. By binding your mind to one discipline it becomes impossible to think outside of the box, and it becomes impossible to forge into the new frontier which eagerly awaits us.

>>2048240
>in other nations across America
this is supposed to be
>in other areas across America

my mistake

>>2048240
interesting point you have there anon, but can i see a source on that program??

The internet has turned our lives into novels, half-truths that are more about what they represent than what they truly are. We walk about displaying symbols; jobs, cars, clothes, hairstyles, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, children, etc. in an effort to project some super-egoic identity, but we all inherently understand it to be bullshit, an act. We turn ourselves and everyone we care about into objects for others' consumption. It's a dispicable practice, but an inevitability of turning every 'thing' and every 'one' into capital. Some of us abhor this new paradigm, we are the minority.

>>2048265
not off-topic at all

I thought I've heard of romanticism or expressionism coming back.

>>2046974
>The entire 00-10 decade is gone, and left to be remembered entirely for technological advances and music that no one listens to, the radios replaying tired unrepresentative crap or even just the music of yesteryear.
>mfw every movie and vidya commercial now is playing one hit wonders from the 90's

What comes next is a realist reaction to post modernism, hyper realism I suppose.

You could argue that popular literature has suffered this already. There is very little post modern or modernist influence in the genre fiction of today. This is not true of the seventies and eighties.

>>2048363

Posting a picture of George Kostanza is pretty off-topic.

Sure is sounding Grant Morrison in here.

>>2048392

Doesn't that ultimately lead to a circulatory transmission back to post-modernism, though? I mean, the same flaws that the po-mo literary contributors saw in modernism would still stand legitimately if the only aspect of modernism that is changed in this "realism" era is its intensity. Would the next generation then make a return to intensified post-modernist thought as a result?

There would be a continuously oscillating wave if no solutions were ever found to the problems in both movements.

>>2048403

Transmission, what the fuck am I saying?

*transition

>>2048265

This. One strand of a new literature will attempt a realist portrayal of the Society of the Spectacle, and it's possible subversion.

A sort of literary situationist street art for adults.

>>2048245
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/08/29/110829ta_talk_owen

I also ponder that if a connection could indeed be drawn between Gutenberg's printing press and the rise of the Renaissance, then what could the rise of the Internet mean for the coming age?

>>2048394
Off-topic now?

>>2048410

the first tentative steps in that direction are seen in something like Tao Lin's 'Richard Yates', even perhaps inspite of himself

>>2048430

Stop derailing this thread.

We're actually getting somewhere.

>>2048430

Thanks, I'll have a look at that. I'm not able to comment much further, as I don't read any new fiction, despite having an English degree.

I just listen to increasingly bizarre music, and internet.

The future for anybody that aspires to be a paid literary writer is very, very grim.

>>2048430
I don't think so. What he seems to be doing is creating 'art' that is 'not-art' to make the point that 'art' is never 'art,' and therefore anything. But this point has been made many times before, and with more grace. He writes tomes of absurd meaninglessness that do nothing to salve the post-modern blemishes of literature. I understand the need to laugh at the absurdity of human existence, but to employ it as your mantra is dangerous. He's a continuation, not an innovation.

Meant at >>2048430 not >>2048415 my bad.