postmodernism 2
TRANSCRIPT
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"Just What is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?"
(1956) - Richard Hamilton
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Postmodernism: Significant Events
•August 6, 1945 - atomic explosion over Hiroshima,
Japan The conclusion of World War II
•The Korean War (Conflict?)
• The Cold War of the 1950s
• McCarthyism and the House Un-American
Activities Committee• The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
• The assassination of President Kennedy, Nov. 1962
Identity Movements of the 1960s: Feminism, Civil
Rights/Black Power
• The assassinations, in 1968, of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy
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Postmodernism: Significant Events (con’t)
• The Vietnam War (Conflict?)
• The killing of four students by the National Guard
at Kent State Univ., 1970
• The resignation of President Nixon in 1974•The AIDS epidemic
•Identity Movements: Gay, Lesbian, Queer
movements, Postcolonial movements and minority
literature.
•The rise of Theory
•Culture Wars: debates over canonical inclusion and
“great books”
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Postmodernism Samples
(from Jameson)
John Ashbery -- David Antin
Pop Buildings
Pop Art, Conceptual Art,
Photorealism
John Cage, Philip Glass, the
Clash, Talking Heads, Gang of
Four
Vanguard film: Godard, etc. to
Hollywood “nostalgia film”
Fiction: Burroughs, Pychnon,
DeLillo, French new novel
Other samples?
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Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, Summer 1911
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 –1973)
Oil on canvas; 24 1/8 x 19 7/8 in. (61.3 x 50.5 cm)
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Cubist Still Life by Roy Lichtenstein, 1974.
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Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes, 1969
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Recurrent Ideas in Theory
(from: Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.
Second Edition. Manchester, 2002)
1. Anti-essentialism — many of the notions
previously regarded as universal and fixed
(gender identity, individual selfhood) are actually
fluid and unstable. These are socially constructed
or contingent categories rather than absolute or essential ones.
2. All thinking and investigation is affected by prior
ideological commitments. There is no
disinterested enquiry.
3. “Language itself conditions, limits, and
predetermines what we see. Language doesn’t
record reality but constructs it. Meaning in texts
is jointly constructed by the reader and writer.
4. “Theorists distrust all totalizing notions” (great
books, human nature)
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Barry sums these ideas up in5 key points:
politics is pervasive
language is constituative Truth is provisional
Meaning is contingent
Human nature is a myth.
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Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles
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Metafiction
“Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing
which self-consciously and systematically draws
attention to its status as an artifact in order to
pose questions about the relationship betweenfiction and reality. In providing a critique of
their own methods of construction, such writings
not only examine the fundamental structures of
narrative fiction, they also explore the possiblefictionality of the world outside the literary
fictional text.”
(Patricia Waugh, courtesy of Patrick)
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David Lodge: 4 Techniques Typical of PM Fiction
• Permutation: incorporating alternative narrativelines in the same text
• Discontinuity: disrupting the continuity, unity,“reality” of the text (by unpredictable swerves of tone, metafictional asides to the reader, blank spaces in the text, etc).
• Randomness: discontinuity produced bycomposing accord to the logic of the absurd
• Excess: as a method of departing from or testingthe bounds of “reality”
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“The Babysitter” fragments
“a scream” a fight “Stop it!”
“Decides to take a quick bath” a golf club
a pair of underpants “are you being a good girl?”
“Dolly!” “Where’s Harry?” “peeping in”
“Hey! What’s going on here?” “Harry?”
“I’m just wrapped in a towel”
“I’ll spank!” “Something about a babysitter…”
a ringing telephone
“Maybe you better get in the tub too”
“They’re all dead”