Modernism

An Overview
 Herrick on Modernism
Characteristics
questioning received truths of Christian tradition

elevating rationality over other sources of truth

seeking solutions to social problems by means

of scientific method

viewing the universe as governed by inviolable

physical laws
 Three Key Concepts
1. Modernism is generally used as a way of referring to an aesthetic
approach dominant in European and American art and literature
in the Twentieth Century. The principles of formalism and the
autonomy of art are key features of modernism.

2. The "project of Modernity" can be thought of as the development

of science, philosophy and art, each according to its own inner
logic. This links the concept of modernity to the concept of
modernism as it was articulated by Greenberg.

3. The concept of the avant-garde is that of a loosely organized

oppositional force and challenge to the dominant artistic culture.
The avant-garde is often thought of as part of the "inner logic of
modernism" - the built in source of contradiction or critique that
moves art forward. (Note that this assumes a model of progress
as part of the inner development of the arts and culture.)
 General Definitions
Modernism
a term typically associated with the twentieth-century reaction
against realism and romanticism within the arts. More generally,
it is often used to refer to a twentieth-century belief in the virtues
of science, technology and the planned management of social
change.
Modernity
refers to a period extending from the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries (in the case of Europe) to the mid to
late twentieth century characterized by the growth and
strengthening of a specific set of social practices and ways
of doing things. It is often associated with capitalism and
notions such as progress.
 History & the Influence of
Modern Science
1. Modern European society emerged from the 18th Century with an
Enlightenment optimism based on the apparent success of science
& technology in explaining various natural phenomena in rational
& mechanical terms and in utilizing aspects of "Nature" for the
purposes of "Man".
2. This modern, Enlightenment approach retains, for the most part,
vestiges of a Christian world view which assumes
a separation of "Man" and "nature", mind and body, and thus
the possibility of understanding human experience as, in some sense,
distinct from natural events.
3. The experience of human beings on earth becomes the basis for
a grand teleological concept of History [Hegel]. On this account,
the history of "Man" becomes the story of how human beings came
to increase their freedom from the natural world and the material
constraints associated with it by the exercise of their innate capacity
to think logically in the pursuit of truth and knowledge.
 A Working Definition
Modernism is a cultural movement which
rebelled against Victorian mores
emphasis on nationalism & cultural absolutism.
placing humans over and outside of nature.
belief in a single way of looking at the world, and in
absolute and clear-cut dichotomies between right
and wrong, good and bad, and hero and villain.
seeing the world as being governed by God's will,
and that each person and thing in this world had a
specific use.
 A Working Definition
Modernism is a cultural movement which rebelled
against Victorian mores
seeing the world as neatly divided between "civilized"
and "savage" peoples.
According to Victorians, the "civilized" were those
from industrialized nations, cash-based economies,
Protestant Christian traditions, and patriarchal
societies; the "savage" were those from agrarian
or hunter-gatherer tribes, barter-based economies,
"pagan" or "totemistic" traditions, and matriarchal
(or at least "unmanly" societies).
 In contrast, Modernists
rebelled against Victorian ideals

emphasized humanism over nationalism, and argued

for cultural relativism.

emphasized the ways in which humans were part of

and responsible to nature.

argued for multiple ways of looking at the world, and

blurred the Victorian dichotomies by presenting
antiheroes, uncategorizable persons
 In contrast, Modernists
challenged the idea that God played an active role in the world,
which led them to challenge the Victorian assumption that there
was meaning and purpose behind world events.
Instead, Modernists argued that no thing or person was born for
a specific use; instead, they found or made their own meaning
in the world.
Challenging the Victorian dichotomy between "civilized" and
"savage," Modernists reversed the values associated with each
kind of culture.
Modernists presented the Victorian "civilized" as greedy and
warmongering (instead of being industrialized nations and
cash-based economies), as hypocrites (rather than Christians),
and as enemies of freedom and self-realization (instead of good
patriarchs).
 Modern Philosophy
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]
 Literary Characteristics
"a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of
experimental & avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of
the early 20th century....

Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th

century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader:
conventions of realism ... or traditional meter.

Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde

disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by
adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles.

Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses

a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new
anthropological and psychological theories. Its favored techniques of
juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to re-
establish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms."
 General Critique
Late Modernism: Social turmoil, increasing nuclear threat, the
technologization of the workforce under multinational capitalism,
and the breakdown of religious belief leads to a kind of nihilism
and anxiety about the future.
World War II - Negative effects of the war are offset temporarily
by the economic prosperity & postwar reconstruction which
takes place during the ‘50s.
Cold War - Tension between the Soviet Union and the United
States under the strain of a nuclear buildup offsets the
psychological effects of the post-War economic prosperity.
Domestic tensions: Civil Rights Movement, Women’s
Movement, Environmentalism, Viet Nam, political
assassinations (JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X).
 General Critique
All aspects of the Enlightenment project of modernity
are called into question. This involves a radical critique
and often uncritical rejection of:
objectivity;
the a priori subject as the source of meaning, authenticity,
and authority;
the importance of truth and abstract reason;
the teleological approach to history;
universalizing grand narratives that aspire to completeness;
the distinction between "high" and "low" culture.
 General Critique
According to Frederic Jameson, postmodernism
rejects what he calls "the depth model" and its binary
oppositions:
essence vs. appearance,

latent vs. manifest content,

authenticity vs. inauthenticity

signifier vs. signified.

 General Critique
Thought, reason, & observation come to be seen as dependent
on language as a structural, mediating system and not as the
acts of a pure, nonmaterial consciousness with direct access
to reality.

Thus, "there is no outside-the-text" [Derrida], i.e. there is

no point outside of some conceptual frame-work, model or
form of representation.

There are no origins or fixed references. All discourse is

an intertextual play of signifiers on a level surface without
depth and without a foundation.
 General Critique
The alienation of the subject is replaced by a sense of
"free-floating and impersonal" fragmentation. This signals
the "death of the subject", i.e. the end of Individualism.
Modernism valorizes personal style.
This presupposes a unique individuality - a private identity or self
(subject) - that generates his or her own style according to a
personal vision.
This individualism is put into question in High (or Late) Modernism.
The concept of the individual, autonomous subject is looked upon
as ideological.
This presents us with a problem: If there are no individual, creative
subjects, and nothing new is possible, what is it that an artist does?