Revisiting the Postmodern D I K A I A G AVA L A & J O R G

MEURKES
Characters no longer
contemplate how they can
unravel or unmask a central
mystery, but are forced to ask,
'Which world is this? What is
to be done in it? Which of
myselves is to do it? instead.
(Harvey, ‘Postmodernity,’
emphasis added, p. 48)
Key concepts
Based on the two readings, what are the key concepts of postmodernism?
 Postmodernism vs Modernism
‘Postmodernism – both filially faithful and oedipally oppositional to modernism.’ (Hutcheon,
Postmodernism)
‘Modernism tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history […] but
presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as loss.
Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence
and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human
institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation,
provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that.’ (Klages, pp. 165-166.)
Famous examples: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) vs Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1955)
 Pastiche and https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog
/004C804F?bcast=3281934
Parody…and (2.51.00-2.59.00)

Progress Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991), adapted for

TV (HBO, 2003)
 Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus
(1920) and Walter Benjamin:
His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a
chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which
keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front
of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,
and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is
blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings
with such violence that the angel can no longer close
them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to
which his back his turned, while the pile of debris before
him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY
 Pastiche and
Parody…and
Palin/Trump
 Pastiche and
Parody…and
Palin/Trump
 Pastiche and
Parody…and
Palin/Trump
Broken discourse/logos
‘so no love . . . spared that . . . no love such as normally vented on the . . .
speechless infant . . . in the home . . . no . . . nor indeed for that matter any of any
kind . . . no love of any kind . . . at any subsequent stage . . . so typical affair . . .
nothing of any note till coming up to sixty when– . . . what? . . seventy?. . good
God! . . coming up to seventy . . . wandering in a field . . . stop and stare
again . . . so on . . . drifting around . . . when suddenly . . . gradually . . . all went
out . . . all that early April morning light . . . and she found herself in the--– . . .
what? . . who? . . no! . . she! . . [Pause and movement 1.] . . . found herself in the
dark . . . and if not exactly . . . insentient . . .’ (Not I, Samuel Beckett, 1972)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LD
wfKxr-M
1.00’-4.00’

The world cannot be expressed, it can perhaps be indicated

by mosaics of juxtaposition, like objects abandoned in a
hotel room, defined by negatives and absences’
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch, (1959)
Empty
the significance
of urban space
The Merritt Parkway,
Connecticut.
one of the oldest scenic
parkways in the United
States.
Denise
Levertov’s
Merritt
Parkway
(1986)
Robert Bly’s Merritt Parkway (1962)
G.E. Murray’s Mythmaking on
the Merritt Parkway (1979)
What do these three poems
capture of the postmodern
experience?
Could you imagine the road
having not seen it?

When does the road acquire a

mythical dimension?
On Identity
By Alain de Benoist

A speech by Alain de Benoist at the NPI conference at The Ronald

Reagan Building

The National Policy Institute (NPI) is a white supremacist think tank and lobby group
based in Alexandria, Virginia.[1][2][3][4] It lobbies for white supremacists and the
alt-right.[5] Its president is Richard B. Spencer.
“the imposition of an across the board system of global
homogenization eliminates all human diversity, diversity of the
peoples, of languages and cultures. This system is associated with
the notion of global governance and the global market. Its
underlying goal is the erasure of boundaries in favor of a unified
world. I call this this system the ideology of Sameness and the
ideology of the Same.”
“Another reason why the subject of identity appears so complex lies in
the fact that identity, be it individual or collective, cannot be only
reduced to one dimension in the life of individuals and peoples.
Identity is never one-dimensional; it is multidimensional. Our identity
combines inherited components with those that we choose ourselves.
We have a national identity, a linguistic identity, a political identity, a
cultural identity, an ethnic identity, a sexual identity, a professional
identity, and so on.”
“For me, the big question in the coming years will be: are we headed
towards a unified, unipolar world, where differences will disappear, or
are we headed to a multipolar world where identities will retain some
meaning? “
“Why is the philosophy of the Enlightenment inherently hostile to
collective identities? The dynamics of modernity tears man asunder
from his communal ties and disregards his insertion in a specific
humanity, because such notions are based on an atomistic conception
of society conceived as sum total of fundamentally free and rational
individuals who are supposed to choose their own goals when guiding
their actions.