Literary Theory

Series 1; Handout #12

“Virtual Bear”: reflects postmodernism of Baudrillard (of simulacrum fame) and the “Queer Studies” branch of gender studies; also the subversive, alt-erotic qualities of pomo pop culture as it exists in urban subcultures apart from literary studies. BIGGLORIA3 shows the postmodernist enthusiasm for the breakdown of traditional values, the lack of a distinction between high and low culture.

Postmodernism is not a school of criticism (like Deconstruction); it is a way of describing an intellectual chronology that includes many smaller critical movements, just as Modernism or Romanticism does.

Modernism: roughly between 1890 and 1970s (lots of geographic variation in chronology, 1910-1930 was climax); rejection of 19^th-century standards of artistic value; includes various art movements like Dadaism, Surrealism, Cubism, etc.; major writers include Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Woolf, Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner; in general, a movement towards subjectivity, impressionism, ambiguity, fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, fluid genre boundaries, free verse, collage, self-reflexivity (preoccupation with form), favors obscurity and experimentation (cult of originality).

Postmodernism: roughly since the 1970s; not exactly a rejection of modernism (both include eclecticism, pastiche, parody); one critic says modernism was sad about the break up of old authorities and belief systems, but postmodernism embraces the escape from old beliefs and hierarchies. The latter is like Derrida’s carnivalesque inversions: playful rather than serious and ascetic. (BTW, Derrida is not the founder of Postmodernism, but he is one of its major figures.) Another major figure, Jean Baudrillard, emphasizies the postmodern theme of the “disappearance of the real” in a world of simulated experiences. Irony is also characteristic of the movement in its most popular forms: seriousness or earnestness implies belief in “Truth” or “Progress,” which are naïve; self-absorption or narcissism is another characteristic (there is nothing outside the self and its perceptions).

Major critical figures we’ll consider: Jurgen Habermas (sketches out the development of modernity); Fancois Lyotard (attempts to define the postmodern as rejecting metanarratives); Frederic Jameson (postmodernism and consumer culture); and Jean Baudrillard (the breakdown between the real and the simulation).

Also consider the following: Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Francis Bacon, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Philip Glass, Robert Venturi.