Conceptual Overview: Introduction to Postmodernism

Outline, Notes for Tuesday, January 26, 1998:

a) be sure to review the discussion below of epistemology and metaphysics,

especially as these may help us untangle some initial confusions between the domains of art/architecture/literary critical theory - and philosophy.

b) if you need a little humor pick-me-up - switch over to the recent admission by Richard Rorty, prominent postmodern philosopher, that no one really knows what it means - and the resulting coverage by Jenny Jones...

Art: Modernism to Postmodernism

How long have we been "modern"? Quite long...

Example: Abbot Sugar's reconstruction of his abbey basilica of St. Denis in Pars, 1127 - resulting in "new" look - which he called opus modernum, a modern work.

["How can you call yourselves modern if you're reviving something that's ancient?"

"Because nature and reason have shown us that the classical is the only true and perennially modern style."] - points to the characteristically modern "authorities," nature and reason.

Modernism ("infrastructural sense"): 1890's/1900's, the second wave of the Industrial Revolution, as marked by

mass technological innovations (internal combustion, diesel engine; steam turbine electricity generators /electricity, petrol as new sources of power; autombile, bus, tractor, airplane; telephone, typewrite, tape machine [new basics of office, systems management]; chemical production of new synthetic materials; new engineering materials - reinforced concrete, aluminum, chromium alloys)

Mass Media and Entertainment (advertising, mass circulation newspapers; gramophone; cinematography; wireless telegraph, radio, first movie theatre [the Pittsburgh Nickelodeon = 1905]

Science:

genetics

psychoanalysis

discovery of uranium, radium (1897-9)

Rutherford's model of the atom (1911)

Planck's quantum theory (1900), revised by Bohr and Rutherford (1913)

Einstein's Special (1905) and General theories (1916) of Relativity

--> "postmodern" science, information:

Postmodern cosmology: - atomic theory, quantum mechanics, Relativity

modern copper telephone wire replaced with the postmodern fibre-optic cable (increases information data-load by 250,000x)

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 - "the first truly modernist painting" - a new anti-representational mode of [de]FORM[ation] (the result [?] of the invention of photography, which ends the authority of painting to reproduce reality).

[Over the next several pages, the authors take us through something of the history of art and architecture we have examine, with a nice summary on p. 45, of "three fundamental stages in modernism's progress:

representation

2) presentation of the unpresentable (abstraction: Suprematism, De Stijl, etc,; Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism)

3) non-presentation (abandoning the aesthetic process - Conceptualism [1960's-1990's; "100% Pure Artist's Shit", etc.])

My assignment was: how does the modernist beginning with the sublime lead to self-annihilation?
One response would be: once art abandons the realist project of addressing "reality" in any strong sense - perhaps no other consequence than self-annihilation is possible?
Alternatively: modernism's entanglement on the paradox of attempting to represent the sublime reflects a failure to attend carefully to aesthetic theory - e.g., Kant's analysis of the sublime and the beautiful, which suggests that the sublime, while surpassing the domain of (what can be represented to the) senses - can nonetheless be approached on analogy with the moral and the ideal.
On this view - self-annihilation is the (avoidable) result of modernism's taking a wrong turn with Malevich (1915, white square on a white background; 1919, Manifesto of Suprematism).

Another alternative:

Now let's approach art/architecture/literature through a philosophical lens...

Realism is coming to an end - art as the faithful re-presentation of reality - a philosophy of art (aesthetics!) which rests on a specific epistemology (theory of knowledge):

realist/empiricist epistemology (predominantly Anglo-American):

"the mind is a mirror of reality (John Locke: the mind is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, upon which external reality faithfully writes itself via the senses). Objects existing outside the mind can be represented (reproduced by a concept or work of art) in a way that is adequate, accurate and true." (13)

NOTE 1: this epistemology is also coupled with a specific theory of truth:

"truth" on this view = correspondance between the internal mental image/picture/re-presentation of the external entity and the external entity "as it really is"

NOTE 2: this epistemology and correspondance theory of truth are not the only possible accounts of knowledge and truth - nor are they necessarily the accounts of knowledge and truth definitive of philosophy in

the modern period (Ess's dates: 1588-ca. 1770//1830)

the philosophers contemporary with modernism in art (1907-?).

Rather:

in addition to the realist/empiricist tradition of epistemology, modern philosophy also includes the

idealist/rationalist traditions of epistemology, beginning with

Descartes (1637, the Discourse on Method)

and culminating in

Kant (1781, Critique of Pure Reason) and

Hegel (1807, Phenomenology of Spirit [Geist] -- 1821, Philosophy of Right)

as for contemporary philosophers - Nietzsche dies in 1900, his last publication is The AntiChrist (1895).

Idealist/rationalist epistemologies lead to different theories of truth, e.g.

instrumentalism:

idealism stresses the role of the mind in filtering/shaping/constructing our "picture"/experience of external reality;

given this role, truth cannot consist of "correspondance" between our "picture"/experience of the world and the world (since the mind has fundamentally reshaped its sense data);

so - our "picture"/experiences of the world can be true in an instrumental sense - i.e., if they work, like maps as "instruments," to guide us successfully through the world. [Example of the highway map / topo map.]

Briefly: the idealist/empiricist epistemology, coupled with the instrumentalist understanding of truth, both foreshadows and is confirmed by the important scientific developments mentioned here as characteristic of "postmodernism" (quantum mechanics and relativity theory).

--> If Kant's idealist epistemology is - in philosophical eyes, modern --

then: quantum mechanics and relativity are

modern in philosophical categories, insofar as they implicate Kant's idealist/rationalist epistemology,

postmodern in art/architecture/literary criticism categories, insofar as they are appropriated by these genres as signfiying the failure of modernism (as defined within these genres - i.e., beginning in 1907, vs. the philosophical definition of ca. 1588-1830)

This fundamental ambiguity surrounding our terms, moreover, is not simply a matter of using terms differently in different genres: this ambiguity points to a further philosophical caution:

--> Philosophical observation: while "postmodernism" rests upon the various failures (real and perceived) of "modernism" as defined here -

the philosophical underpinnings - the underlying assumptions regarding epistemology, ontology, truth, etc. - of these shifts remain inarticulate and hence unexamined, "philosophically naive."

In particular: the account of modernism/postmodernism we are using thus far does not examine the idealist/rationalist epistemology and instrumentalist theory of truth, as an alternative tradition characteristic of modern philosophy.

Rather, the account we are using thus far assumes only the rea/ist/empiricist epistemology and correlative correspondance theory of truth.

But this means...

Rejecting the rea/ist/empiricist epistemology and correlative correspondance theory of truth (as modernism in art seems to - and is assumed in postmodernism?) is not tantamount to rejecting all modern philosophical epistemologies and theories of truth:

rather, this is simply to reject only one side of modern philosophy - a side already critiqued and (ostensibly) replaced by another side of modern philosophy, namely, the idealist/rationalist epistemology and instrumentalist theory of truth.

But this means - ironically -

if modernism/postmodernism in art/architecture =

a rejection of realist/empiricist epistemology and the correspondance theory of truth - then

modernism/postmodernism in art/architecture (at least partially) agree with philosophical modernity insofar as these include the idealist/rationalist critiques of realist/empiricist epistemology, etc.

More strongly: it may be that by failing to attend to the philosophical underpinnings - and thus, to their alternatives - of their predecessors, folk in art/architecture/literary critical theory

a) are simply mistaken in thinking that they've successfully overturned or surpassed modern philosophy in its totality, much less Western philosophy; and

b) are still groping towards epistemological and ontological resolutions to the failures of realism/empiricism which modern philosophers such as Kant have already worked out.

(That is, their philosophical naivete may result in the postmodern project collapsing squarely back into modern philosophy - a possibility in fact called for by Foucault in 1984 (see our text, 173) and exemplified by various postmodernists such as Derrida and others who "now" see themselves as continuing the Enlightenment tradition, not rejecting it entirely.)

For now, at any rate, the lesson is this:
By failing to take into account these philosophical foundations, the art / architecture / literary critical theory analyses of "modernism"/"postmodernism" may draw conclusions which

at best, are at least different from the conclusions we would draw from a philosophically-informed perspective, and/or

at worst, are arguably mistaken in light of philosophically-informed perspectives.

Architecture: Modernism to Postmodernism

these shifts might be summarized as a rejection of the programs of modern art and architecture - programs built on fundamentally philosophical assumptions:

(machine-like) notions of rationality, where "rationality" is expressed in terms of

efficiency

The shift in Linguistics: from Structuralism to Poststructuralism

Postmodernist Philosophers

Derrida (77

Foucault and the Structures of Power/Knowledge (82-

Lyotard

Lacan (1901-1981) and the fiction of the Self (88-97) - leading to a dualistic conclusion:

either

Kristeva

Theories of Everything and "Postmodern science" (Feyerabend - BUT: the Sokal Affair...)