New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology » September 23rd: Postmodernism, Part 2

September 23rd: Postmodernism, Part 2

Overview

Parody and Pastiche

I have a page Postmodernism, an Introduction where I have more definitions, but let’s focus on these:

  • Parody: “A literary composition modelled on and imitating another work, esp. a composition in which the characteristic style and themes of a particular author or genre are satirized by being applied to inappropriate or unlikely subjects, or are otherwise exaggerated for comic effect” (From the online OED, which you should have access to on campus).
    • “Parody, according to Jameson, has a critical edge: it challenges and subverts that which it mimics” (Malpas, p. 25)
  • Pastiche: “concerned only with the superficial appropriation of different modes and genres for the generation of its own performative style” (Malpas, p. 25).

The Simpsons and Family Guy

Although both of these shows are parodic and have pastiche elements, I’m arguing that The Simpsons is prevailingly parody while Family Guy is prevailingly pastiche.

Before you ask, South Park seems to be a unique parodic satire text, and, true to the creators’ vision, it’s difficult to identify in a particular category. The only other text I know of that does this is Fear of a Black Hat (1993). What unifies these texts is that most would identify them as “postmodern.”

Modernism and Postmodernism

These terms have long histories, and many scholars have weighed in on defining, re-redefining, and refusing to define their boundaries and exact meaning(s). I think it’s best to worry less about who says/claims what about either (or both) terms but to focus on understanding the theories as products of the 20th century. Sure, Malpas points to earlier periods–and I have a debate resolution on the Declaration of Independence (1776) as a postmodern text–but our class’s focus is better served by considering these as prevailing ideas of how intellectuals grappled with the 20th century. Therefore, I’ll somewhat arbitarily divide modernism (1900-1945) and postmodernism (1946-present). I can make a case for both modernism and postmodernism extending to the present, but that’s for a different class.

  • Modernism focuses on the conditions of modernity, roughly 1900-1945 (these are academic boundaries)
    • “Modernity” isn’t synonymous with “modern,” which is often referred to as history since the Rennaissance (circa 1500), including the Enlightenment, through today.
    • Might 1492 be a good year to propose as a beginning?
  • Futurism, the first European avant-garde
  • Fodism/Taylorism
    • Industrialization is in full swing
    • Colonial power grabs and conflicts
    • Militarization
    • Mass propaganda
    • Communism
    • Fascism
    • WW1
    • WW2

A note on “modern” vs “contemporary.” In everyday conversation, using “modern” to mean the current epoch is perfectly fine; however, when writing for academic audiences, especially in the arts & humanities, consider using “contemporary” to refer to current trends, ideas, and conditions. “Modern” evokes a variety of connotations depending on the reader’s disciplinary focus.

Simon Malpas, The Postmodern (2005)

Let’s separate the last two chapters: Ch. 2 “Modernity and Postmodernity” and Ch. 3 “Subjectivity”

Ch. 2 “Modernity and Postmodernity”

  • p. 33: “[The modern] is the epoch of gradual emancipation from superstition and mysticism as the Enlightenment, which became central to philosophical thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sought to provide a rational and scientific basis for human experience.”
  • Third Millennium
    • p. 35: From Steven Best and Douglas Kellner–“we are thus witnessing the advent of a digitised and networked global economy and society, fraught with promise and danger’ (2001: 1).”
    • p. 35: “The distinctions between high art and popular culture as well as ruling ideas of critical orthodoxy and aesthetic value have fallen into disrepute.”
  • Jean-Francois Lyotard
    • p. 38: “The loss of overarching grand narratives and their ideas of progress means that the structures that legitimate knowledge, the metanarratives, also begin to lose their power and stability.”
    • p. 39: “…capitalism is more than happy with fragmentation, so long as those fragments of knowledge continue to develop, grow and make a profit.”
    • p. 39: “…Lyotard sees the main threat facing members of a postmodern society as the reduction of all knowledge to a system whose only criterion is efficiency. He argues that in the contemporary world the markets for science and technology, having lost touch with the emancipatory goals of the modern grand narratives…”
  • p. 44: “Postmodernity is not a new age, but rather the name for a collection of critiques that seek to challenge the premises of those discourses that have shaped modern experience.”
  • p. 48: “To be modern, [Marshal Berman] argues, is to be caught up in the inevitable progress of history: to have one’s roots swept away into the past as one journeys into a future that promises to be radically different.”
  • p. 51: “…Habermas’s critique brings to the fore: the emancipation of subjectivity from mystical and religious world-views, the idea of history as the story of the rational progress of humanity, and the possibilities of resistance to the commodification of daily life.”
  • Rejection of Mysticism in Modernity via Hegel
    • p. 53: “The idea that there are eternal truths and transcendent structures that organise reality was gradually replaced by analyses based on notions of historical development and progress towards enlightenment and justice.”
    • p. 54: “Hegel’s work develops is the idea that reality and rationality are historically determined, and that humankind is capable of transforming itself as it progresses towards freedom, truth and communal understanding.”

Ch. 3 “Subjectivity”

  • The Postmodern Subject
    • p. 57: Via Stuart Sim–“the subject is a fragmented being who has no essential core of identity, and is to be regarded as a process in a continual state of dissolution rather than a fixed identity or self that endures unchanged over time.”
    • p. 58: “Prior to Descartes, the human subject tended to be conceived as the product of external forces and plans – usually those of a divine being – subjected to the tides of providence or fate.”
  • Psychoanalysis: link is to the Video Games class discussion
    • p. 66: “This unconscious, although we cannot experience it directly, has a significant influence on the desires, motivations and interactions that shape the course of our everyday existence.”
    • p. 67: “The unconscious, Freud argues, is necessary for human life: it acts as a repository for all of those thoughts and impulses that are too disturbing for conscious reflection and are thus repressed by the mind.”
    • p. 68: “What we find desirable is generated by the norms and values of the culture in which we live, even if it can focus on what that culture presents as perverse or unhealthy.”
    • pp. 68-69: “We are driven by forces over which we have no conscious control, our identity is shaped by the recognition we receive from others, and the possibility of ever fully knowing ourselves is forever denied.”
    • Postcolonialism

Next Class

Well, we’ll be discussing a different definition of class on Wednesday–ha! Finish Malpas and move onto Marx & Engels “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas.” You might want to look over the notes for next class (9/25). Don’t forget to look over Weekly Discussion Post #6.

Works Cited

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke UP, 1991.

Malpas, Simon. The Postmodern. London: Routledge, 2005.