A complicated term…a
SET OF IDEAS: HARD TO DEFINE, HARD TO
LOCATE
MODERNISM IS EASIER TO
DEFINE….
Aesthetic movement at the end of
20thC: western ideas about art, music,
literature, drama
Rejecting Victorian Standards
Between 1910 and 1930 (during
WW1 and before WW2)
CHARACTERISTICS OF
MODERNISM
EMPHASIS ON IMPRESSIONISM AND
SUBJECTIVITY
A MOVEMENT AWAY FROM
‘objectivity’, fixed viewpoints, clear-cut moral positions
Blurred distinctions between
reality and fantasy (Surrealism)
Emphasis on fragmented forms,
discontinuous narratives, seemingly ‘random’ collages (Cubism)
Reflexivity – self-consciousness
– and an emphasis on how work is produced and consumed
Rejection of formal aesthetic
theories in favour of minimalist designs, and in favour of spontenaity
Rejection of distinctions
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms in popular culture
CONTINUATION INTO
POSTMODERNISM
POSTMODERNISM FOLLOWS MOST OF
THESE IDEAS
Favours: reflexivity, self consciousness, fragmentation, discontinuity,
ambiguity, sumultaneity, empahsis
on destructured, decentred, dehumanized subject
(especially in narrative form)
SO, WHAT IS THE
DIFFERENCE?
ATTITUDE:
Modernism is based on an idea of loss, something gone
that needs to be mourned and a fragmented view of human subjectivity
A Modernist: HOLD THE VIEW
THAT WORKS OF ART CAN PROVIDE UNITY
POSTMODERNISM: doesn’t lament the
idea of fragmentation, the temporary or incoherent, but rather celebrates this
Alternatives:
From Socio/economic
viewpoint:
Market capitalism: 18thC thru to late 19thC saw a period
associated with technological development (steam engines, realism)
Monopoly capitalism: late
19thC until mid 20thC a period associated with electricity and the internal
combustion engine (cars) and with modernism
Multinational or consumer capitalism:
emphasis on marketing, selling
and consuming – not production, associated with nuclear and electronic tecnologies
(power and computing – CORRELATES WITH POSTMODERN
From history & sociology
viewpoints:
Postmodernism;
ENTIRE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL FORMATION, SET OF ATTITUDES
There
is a stable, coherent, knowable self
This
knows itself and the world through reason
The
mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is “science”
The
knowledge produced by science is “truth” and is eternal
Reason
is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore, what is “right”
Science: is the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge
Language: must be rational also
These are fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. The serve to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about creating order out of chaos
Modern societies are constantly ‘on guard’ against anything that could be called ‘disorder’
They continually have to create ‘disorder’ in order to remain stable societies
In Western cultures (dominant cultures) this becomes “the other” defined in binary opposition
Thus, anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, etc. becomes part of “disorder” and has to be eliminated from the ordered rational modern society
Argues that: “grand narratives” are the means by which a culture tells itself about practices and beliefs
e.g. An American grand narrative might be democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government
Every belief system has a grand narrative: a kind of meta-theory or meta-ideology – a story told to explain the belief system.
Believes that: all aspects of modern society, including science, depend on these grand narratives
Grand Narratives rejected in favour of “mini-narratives” or stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large scale universal or global concepts. Mini-narratives are always situational, provisional, contingent, temporary and make no claim to universality, truth, reason or stability.
LANGUAGE – NARRATIVES (GRAND OR mini) ARE SPOKEN, WRITTEN, ETC. IN LANGUAGE
Therefore, studying language, signs and semiotics has replaced Science, Grand narrative study and universals, especially in social psychology.
Signs = signifiers/signified
POSTMODERNISM AND PERFORMANCE
Links with language as Art has come ‘off the wall’ of the gallery/institution of art
Two dimensions have given way to three dimension – space and time more important, with a sequence of events linking them together. Moments in time, not histories of chronological time.
Significance is more important than meaning
There is no longer a search for “truth”
OFFERS A NEW THEORY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS – BASED ON LINGUISTICS - Critiques Freudian theory of the unconscious
Uses linguistics (from Ferdinand Sassure) of the structure of language as equating to the structure of the unconscious.
Sign =
|
signifier signified | (is significant – a sound
image c a t = cat = IMAGE OF CAT) (is a mental concept of CAT) |
Each sign in a language is given a meaning by other signs in the language – there is no essential meaning to signs, only in chains of significance
For example, the door, the door with knobs on it, and the door with knob and image/word – which changes into a toilet.
Deconstruction – means looking at the chains of association that come with any image or sign (text) and following the linkages – often through personal experience (eg the experience of learning to use the appropriate toilet) in a particular social context