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How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

jamesgmartin.center

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Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#11

Post by therobots927 »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #10
therobots927 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

It’s been acknowledged that Abstract Expressionism was partly a CIA op ( https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/ ) probably along with other attempts at cultivating anti-Soviet “soft power.” As for postmodernism or deconstruction, the connections are less clear. Derrida for instance had connections with American universities that themselves had government connections and funding sources, but I don…

I knew about expressionism. Has nothing to do with postmodernism. I do believe the CIA determined that post modernism was not a threat because it was so abstract and also the left tends to eat itself without outside help. Regardless the content of the philosophy is extremely compelling.

Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#12

Post by smitty1e »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #3

The author of this article is so straightlaced she didn't realize My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a satire...that should tell you everything you need to know.

> Modern life, according to Moshfegh and many other writers of contemporary literary fiction, has no meaning whatsoever!

If the intent is to satirize meaninglessness, then perhaps the protagonist should have joined a satirical cult, like the one in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, proclaiming that Bugs Bunny is God, and Earth is shaped like a carrot.

A satirical look at null, it seems, should argue something non-null in the end.

Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#13

Post by DiscourseFan »

smitty1e wrote: post #12
DiscourseFan wrote: post #3

The author of this article is so straightlaced she didn't realize My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a satire...that should tell you everything you need to know.

> Modern life, according to Moshfegh and many other writers of contemporary literary fiction, has no meaning whatsoever! If the intent is to satirize meaninglessness, then perhaps the protagonist should have joined a satirical cult, like the one in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, proclaiming that Bugs Bunny is God, and Earth is shaped like a carrot. A satirical look at null, it seems, should argue something non-null in the…

Art doesn’t “argue,” it is something open to its own possibilities. Proscribing anything for art kills it.

Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#15

Post by krapp »

skywhopper wrote: post #4

This is truly some ahistorical reactionary nonsense. I thought people got tired of complaining about “postmodernism” 30 years ago. Yes, most art is bad! Historical art seems better because it has stood the test of time, and we don’t see the junk it outlived. Yawn.

The right is weird that way, they're still stuck in a frame of mind and set of references from the 1960s or earlier. They'll talk about "women's lib" and feminism as if they're new, they consider hair dye and piercings to be signs of radicalism, they still think about China as Maoist and Russia as Soviet, and still see the world (and America in particular) through Cold War ideology.

They still complain about hippies as if there were any left. They want to go back to the gold standard. They yearn for the mines and the factories, for the hard times of hard men that they've only read stories about. And of course they believe all modern art and media is infantile, leftist garbage and they harbor a particular mistrust of the "cultural Marxists" in academia.

And the younger they are, the more regressive they get. It's like they're LARPing as characters in a Norman Lear sitcom that they don't understand are supposed to be parodies of them. The trad caths are more hardcore than Catholics have been in a thousand years. The groypers are more racist and misogynist than their own grandparents.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that they're still complaining about postmodernism. They aren't capable of updating their philosophy or looking forward, they can only look backward to an imaginary golden age and the spoils they feel entitled to and robbed of by "the left." They can never get over a fear of the future that's so deeply rooted in fundamentalist Christianity. It's just another wound on their psyches that will never heal.

Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#16

Post by orwin »

This person speak about "The Postmodern Condition" like they read it, but as they didn't, the criticism comes out as dead wrong and quite dumb.

Don't read this person. I'm not saying you have to read the whole book to use a quote, but talking this confidently while doing what we call in French a "contresens" is a sign that the author have no business talking about serious books or philosophy.

It's like Ayn Rand who believed Kant "critique of pure reason" is about criticism of the scientific method and now a huge part of US authors think the same while never having read Kant.

Re: How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature

#17

Post by smitty1e »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #13
smitty1e wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern life, according to Moshfegh and many other writers of contemporary literary fiction, has no meaning whatsoever! If the intent is to satirize meaninglessness, then perhaps the protagonist should have joined a satirical cult, like the one in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, proclaiming that Bugs Bunny is God, and Earth is shaped like a carrot. A satirical look at null, it seems, should argue something non-null in the…

Art doesn’t “argue,” it is something open to its own possibilities. Proscribing anything for art kills it.

Art does, too, offer arguments, more or less explicitly.
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