"Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?"

Providers: Jana Yi-wen Chien
15 Oct., 1998

  1. thesis
  •  postmodern sublime/unpresentable of the postmodern art
  1. The phrase is related to Nietzssche's nihilism--a kind of perspectivism.
  2. It is also akin to Kant's aesthetics of the sublime.
    1. "The sublime evokes a contradictory feeling" (The Idea of the Postmodern: A History 133). It is ". . . a strong and equivocal emotion: it carries both pleasure and pain . . . in it pleasure derives from pain." (p43)
    2. For Kant, sublime occurs "when the imagination fails to present an object which might, if only in principle, come to match a concept." This is the relation between Kantian aesthetics of sublime and unpresentable. (p43)
    3. Lyotard's postmodern sublime is "an art of negation, a perpetual negation . . . based on a never-ending critique of representation that should contribute to the preservation of heterogeneity, of optimal dissensus . . . [it]does not lead towards a resolution; the confrontation with the unpresentable leads to radical openness" (The Idea of the Postmodern: A History 133).
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    II. Some key concepts of Lyotard's postmodern
  1. Lyotard is opposed to totality.
  2. Lyotard uses the term "initial forgetting" to support his conception of the rupture of modern and postmodern. (From Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "Note on the Meaning of 'Post-'." 1985.)
    III.  Outline
  1. A Demand = Lyotard aims to question Habermas' conception of unity.
  2. Realism
    1. Because of the call for "unity" and "identity," it is believed that ". . . nothing is more urgent than to liquidate the heritage of the avan-gardes" (p40).
    2. The definition of realism: = "Realism, whose only definition is that it intends to avoid the question of reality implicated in that of art, always stands somewhere between academicism and kitsch" (p41).
    3. Postmodern sublime
    1. Because of modernity, we discover the "'lack of reality' of reality, together with the invention of other realities." (p43)
    2. The phrase is related to Nietzssche's nihilism--a kind of perspectivism.
    3. It is also akin to Kant's aesthetics of the sublime.
    4. In order to present the unpresentable, Kant shows "formlessness, the absence of form, as a possible index to the unpresentable" (p44).
    5. As to the modern art, it makes effort "to present the fact that the unpresentable exists" with "its little technical expertise" (p43).
  1. The Postmodern
  • Lyotard's definition of the postmodern.
  1. Lyotard believes that postmodern is "a part of the modern," and there is a circular relation between modern & postmodern. (p44) "A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism . . . is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant" (p44).
  2. The difference between modern aesthetics & postmodern aesthetics in the aspect of unpresentable.
    1. "modern aesthetics is an aesthetic of the sublime, though a nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues of offer to the reader or viewer matter for solace and pleasure" (p46).
    2. "The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations . . . in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable" (p46).
    3. ex. the works of Proust (modern) and Joyce (postmodern) both allude something unpresentable.
    1. Proust--". . . what is being eluded as the price to pay for this allusion is the identity of consciousness, a victim to the excess of time . . . ." (p45).
    2. Joyce--". . . the identity of writing . . . is the victim of an excess of the book or of literature" (p45).
    IV. Questions:
  1. When discussing the postmodern art, why does Lyotard adopt the conceptions of Kant and Nietzssche?
  2. Is there really a rupture between the modern and the postmodern?
References
Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern: A History. London: Routledge, 1995. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "Note on the Meaning of 'Post-'." 1985. Docherty, Thomas, ed. Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. p47-50.
---. "Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?" Postmodernism: A Reader. Docherty, Thomas, ed. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. p35-46

(external) Literary Criticism Databank: Postmodernism and Urban Space ;
Postmodern Theories and Texts