On Postmodernism

The Silence of the Avant-Garde {275}

Postmodernism questions destructuve aspect
Postmodenrism opts for renovation
Postmodernism as reaction to "silence" and sterility of avamt-garde

Sees link between exhaustion of furiously antitraditional avant-garde and emerhence of postmodern willingness to revisit past
"The historic avamt-garde tries to settle scores with the past ("Down woth moonlight")
defaces the past
destroys the figure
arrives at abstract, informal, whire canvas, slashed canvas
Architecture: curtain wall, minimal art, destruction of flow of discourse
Music: absolute silence (Cage(
Postmodern reply - recognition of past [277]
John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967)
Postmodern rediscovery of the "alreadu said" cannot be innocent
use irony, playfulness,parodic nostalgia
Postmodernism's Loss of innocence trlated to darker, savage side of modernity -
monstrous consequences of modern utopianism (in USSR)
Stalin
Hitler
Postmodern artists
Broch, Beckett, Kundera
come to terms with debacle of modernity and its tragic legacy
Scarpetta, _L'Impurete_ - impurity of postmodern aesthetics
post-apocalyptic
The notion of a culture resuscitated after Auschwitz is absurd
Therefore only possible culture would be post-apocalyptic
All naivete, all innocence is totally anchronistic
Postmodernism can be usefully employed
not a new reality
Aperspective from which one can ask certain questions about modernity
self-skeptical, searching, ironic [279]

On Postmodernism