/lit/ - Literature

imo post-modernism isn't a 'movement' so much as a condition, or a historical fact. you just can't get around post-modernism, a prevailing mood which grew out of the linked development of arts, thought, and history. i don't think people choose to be post-modernist, and i don't think you can really talk about the 'strengths and weaknesses' of post-modernism as though you're going to compare and contrast it with other styles or ideologies. as i see it, either you're a post-modernist, or you're deluding yourself. it's frankly more a curse than anything.

>>2073277

Fuck off

>>2073301
okay

>>2073264

YOU ARE COMMITTING THE SAME MISTAKE THAT YOU CLAIM HAS OCURRED, BY ASSUMING THAT THERE IS AN "OBJECTIVE CROWD OF PERSONS CONFORMING 'THE ARTS' THAT IS 'MOVING TOWARDS' 'POSTMODERNISM'".

>>2073304
Stand down, Cap. There are a number of serious artists and critics who describe their work or the work of others as "post-modern" and it is sometimes believed to be a "philosophical movement" which, to me, differs from what I would conventionally describe as a movement in that it lacks easily definable characteristics (other than not being modernism).

>>2073329

Basically, what price did we pay for abandoning modernism and what did we gain?

>>2073335

Fascism/Nazism was modernism par excellence. nuff said

>>2073329

IS NOT THAT "POSTMODERNISM" IS REGARDED AS A DEFINED MOVEMENT BUT THAT THAT IS THE "TAGNAME" WHICH IS BESTOWED TO WORKS OF LITERATURE THAT "CANNOT BE CLASSIFIED" AND IT IS NAMED "POSTMODERNISM" BECAUSE "MODERNISM" WAS THE "LAST' 'EASILY CLASSIFIABLE' 'LITERARY STYLE'".

>>2073342

Standards=/=Fascism/Nazism

>>2073346

niggers don't know what postmodern actually means so lots of horseshit that isn't really postmodern gets named postmodern

look no further than lyotard for an definition of the postmodern.

>>2073346

Okay then, so what happens if we start classifying again? Is that a return to modernism? Because I think it would make lit a lot more comprehensible if there were some solid ideas on what a piece is striving for.

>>2073361

> if we start classifying again? Is that a return to modernism?

"MODERNISM" WAS/IS A "LITERARY STYLE" NOT A "CLASSFICATION STYLE".

>I think it would make lit a lot more comprehensible if there were some solid ideas on what a piece is striving for

I DO NOT THINK THAT IS NECESSARY NOR RELEVANT TO KNOW UNDER WHICH "LITERARY STYLE" OR "GENRE" A WORK CAN BE CLASSIFIED TO BE ABLE TO COMPREHEND IT.

Metamodernism comes (came) next. Deal with it.

>>2073380

I'm waiting for post-neo Modernistic-classicism, personally.

>>2073354
That was a surprisingly fruitful line of inquiry you turned me down.

>>2073371

http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/postmodernism.html

>>2073371

Yes, but then even total shit can pass on through, so long as it doesn't have any real standards of classification it needs to be held to. And I feel like there's a lot of that in post-modern lit and art.

I just want some more classicism.

>>2073371
In fact, as a flamboyant counter-argument, I call on Pierro Manzoni.

anticonfluentialism > postmodernism

>>2073405
How is that different from deconstructionism? Hell, what exactly is it?

>>2073400

BUT THAT DEPENDS ON WHO IS JUDGING THE WORK. EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE, SO IF YOU DO NOT LIKE IT THEN DO NOT READ IT, OTHER PERSON'S TASTES SHOULD AFFECT OTHER PERSON'S TASTES. IF A WORK IS NOT OF YOUR LIKING AND/OR DOES NOT MEET YOUR "STANDARDS" THEN "REJECT" THAT WORK.

>>2073415
But even Lyotard acknowledged that, though we may never be able to achieve perfection, there are better or worse ways to present ideas. Moreover, what about concepts like darwinnian aesthetics and the so-called "sublime"?

>>2073415
Why did you change your name Koz?

>>2073400
LOL MERIT= CLASSIFICATION 2011 I SERIOUSLY HOPE YOU DON'T DO THIS

I die a little every time I see some idiot try to defend this line of thinking, I dunno if it's out of laughter or losing faith in humanity.

>>2073422

EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE; "CONCEPTS" AND "ABSTRACTIONS" ARE OVERLY RELATIVE & SUBJECTIVE. HOW CAN YOU NOT REALIZE THAT? THINK FOR YOURSELF INSTEAD OF JUST ABSORBING MINDLESSLY WHATEVER THEORY, HYPOTHESIS AND/OR OPINION THAT YOU READ & LIKE.

>>2073415
I guess what I'm saying is, isn't it a weakness of post-modernism that "subjectivity" has eradicated universality in art and therefore contributed to anti-intellectualism by producing works that are out-of-touch with the general public? It seems like a suicidal idea in a globalized world.

>>2073433

EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE; "CONCEPTS" AND "ABSTRACTIONS" ARE OVERLY RELATIVE & SUBJECTIVE. HOW CAN YOU NOT REALIZE THAT? THINK FOR YOURSELF INSTEAD OF JUST ABSORBING MINDLESSLY WHATEVER THEORY, HYPOTHESIS AND/OR OPINION THAT YOU READ & LIKE.

>>2073432
I know that and really, I agree. But to me, art and literature are about the messages they convey. Diversity for diversity's sake may be beautiful and may produce new ideas but I feel like it weakens everything by eradicating messages for art and leaving it "subjective". To me, that's just another way of saying that you are free to project whatever fanciful purpose onto a work that you want which, >>2073342 , is what Nazis and fascists actually do to serve their own narratives.

TBH, I don't believe the author is dead.

>>2073442

I doubt you would say that mathematics is silly because "EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE". In a specific language/meta-language things have concrete meaning and pragmatic merit.

5>1 is not a worthless statement
modernism is better than postmodernism can be a worthwhile statement

>>2073457
Whomp whomp wawawawawawawaaaaa, it's not art unless it has some pragmatic quality that I can't define and I know when I see.

How many times have I heard this before and it's still 10/10. It's like we never had mannerism, impressionism, dada, surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, and on and on, and people are still too lazy to actually examine something beyond their gut reaction.

Ahh, it's new! Better let the critics handle this and then accept it once popular opinion is formed!

>>2073457
>I feel like it weakens everything by eradicating messages for art and leaving it "subjective".
It's a good thing the way you feel has nothing to do with how things are, then, huh?
Art is subjective. That doesn't mean you can just slap whatever the fuck you want onto it. Sure, that happens sometimes, which is an obvious byproduct, but acting like that's the norm is ridiculous. Post-modernism doesn't and hasn't rendered critical analysis obsolete. Hell, modernism in many ways DID attempt to do so, placing the author as the person responsible for the meaning. Think about it: why go through the process of analysis at all if the author had the meaning and that's what the meaning is?
The acknowledgment of subjectivity strengthens our critical awareness through opening up the playing field. If you can argue it, and argue it well, and not just argue it well but back it up with significance, semiotic or otherwise, it can be seen as relevant.

>To me, that's just another way of saying that you are free to project whatever fanciful purpose onto a work that you want which,
You're wrong. So, good deal then. You can just project whatever fanciful purpose onto a work you want: the problem comes along if you decide to try and share or include this fanciful purpose with other people. That's when _your_ metanarrative that you've constructed for this work comes under fire, it gets scrutiny, and if it doesn't survive, they sank your fucking battleship, you have to start over or retreat into the fanciful fascism of modernism which insisted that it's right simply because it's right.

Post-modernism is a huge subject that you apparently have only skimmed the surface of. You haven't even checked out the tip of the iceberg, as far as I can tell, you just noticed it's awful cold in these frigid seas and went back belowdeck.

Also as a side-note I can't believe people try to argue a pragmatic aspect to modernism when it was clearly the movement of "art for art's sake." Gertrude Stein was a leading modernist: go read her poetry and try to place a fanciful purpose on this woman's work that claims it was concerned with pragmatics or utility in art. I'll be here waiting on your thesis, good luck and godspeed.

>>2073489
>You haven't even checked out the tip of the iceberg, as far as I can tell, you just noticed it's awful cold in these frigid seas and went back belowdeck.

Not really. I confess to obviously being more ignorant about the subject than most on /lit/ but on the other hand, I've never really had an opportunity to discuss the subject in depth... which is why I started the thread. Really, I had a feeling things would get a bit rough and disagreement does not equal retreat by any means.
For example, this is pretty interesting to me:
> Think about it: why go through the process of analysis at all if the author had the meaning and that's what the meaning is?

If that's the case, what exactly does the author do when they write? If there's no intent or message there, what exactly are you reading, other than what you want to read?

I don't feel it annihilates say, the Chronicles of Narnia to tell someone that they're Christian allegory, much as a math problem doesn't cease to exist if someone tells you the answer. The subjective element of literature is the same as it is in math to me; it's how you, personally, choose to reach that "answer". Problems can have multiple ways of being solved and they may have multiple answers, but the problem itself remains the same and cannot, necessarily, be made to accept any and all solutions. Some will always be wrong.

But maybe we are more in agreement about this than originally thought;
>That's when _your_ metanarrative that you've constructed for this work comes under fire, it gets scrutiny, and if it doesn't survive, they sank your fucking battleship, you have to start over or retreat into the fanciful fascism of modernism which insisted that it's right simply because it's right.

As a continuation of:
>>2073542

However, if my subjective metanarrative is open to attack from others, doesn't that defeat the point of post-modernism because it sets a standard for what's "wrong"?

>>2073559
Or am I just subjectively wrong?

>>2073542
>Not really. I confess to obviously being more ignorant about the subject than most on /lit/
You're not. Most of the people here can't answer any simple questions about it. If they can, it's usually in jargon with refusals to explain which imply they just heard it somewhere.

>If that's the case, what exactly does the author do when they write? If there's no intent or message there, what exactly are you reading, other than what you want to read?
The author has their intent. The death of the author doesn't mean there is no intent on the author's end. It means "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." There are far more things going on in a narrative than just what the author thinks he means after he's done with the work. New Criticism had already revealed the intentional fallacy: The Death of the Author firmly pointed out that not only does the intentional fallacy occur in literary theory, but a further fallacy occurs in New Criticism's analysis that's still a development of or based in the author's intent. This was simply a lateral shift, and that historical/cultural factors and numerous ambiguities in textual analysis arise. The ambiguities aren't resolved in New Criticism, they're just glossed over with assumptions and rationalizations.

The author has their intent. The reader has their own intent. To Barthes, the reader's intent was the crux of the matter, because the author was already done with the text. They created it, that's done, they're done. With the reader is where the text remains alive. You are reading what you want to read.

>>2073592
You are always reading what you want to read. Even if somebody explained Hamlet to you line by line by line, ambiguities and disagreements would arise. Why? Because you're the reader. This other person placing themselves as designators of meaning are merely trying to place themselves as the author now, and fraudulently so: hence Barthes' criticisms of New Criticism.

I'm no expert here, either, this is just what I've learned through conversation with professors I know and the occasional person on /lit/ who actually does know what they're talking about.

>>2073578
This is part of what it comes down to, yes, but there's also a huge difference between just being subjectively right, whatever that means, and positing a sound stance through reasoning, textual reference, acknowledgment of differance and use of close reading, and many other factors.

>>2073602
>>2073592

The answers that neither wiki nor anons could produce. I appreciate this.

>>2073602
>>2073592
>>2073512
>>2073489
You sir are a god among men.

>>2073629
You're welcome, but like I said, I'm no expert, and even what I've gone into is only a tiny portion inadequately explained. If you haven't read Foucault's essay "What Is An Author?" I'd highly recommend it because it both provides a little more historicity to Barthes' claims while also having subtle counterpoints.
As for the problems of subjectivity and lack of meaning inherent in literary analysis, you might want to look into Howard Bloom's essay "Breaking of Form," he takes Derrida's ideas and proposes a way in which meaning can still be not just derived but edified, although his focus is entirely in a history of poetics juxtaposed with a history of poetry.
For post-modernism specifically, I'd suggest the works of Donald Barthelme (recommended to me in turn by 3rd), and if you haven't read Borges I'd highly recommend you do so, he was in many ways the forerunner of post-modern literature yet he still had a modernist flair to his works, his stories are a perfect series of stepping-stones from one to the other.