What is postmodernism?

A useless, self-masturbatory shit.

>>9262612
Autistic retardation.

Something to pin my grievances of the modern world upon

it's what comes after modernism

>>9262612
Stories that draw attention to the fact they're stories, mostly.

>>9262625
Modernism, but after

>>9262629
So is the Divine Comedy post-modern?

>>9262640
Reasonably so, but not as much as Tristram Shandy.

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>>9262612
a stepping stone

the cultural condition of late-capitalism

Something we can simply move beyond without paying much attention to it

1. An artistic movement, 2. an umbrella term referring to philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard, 3. and this: >>9262658

Something that people are afraid of because it says things that are difficult/undesirable to believe but true.

>>9262612
Basically a catch-all term for all ideologies that reject modernism and try to dismantle its institutions and achievements.

>>9262640
not in the sense you're asking

>>9262651
stop posting your garbage, no one wants to read it

>>9262640
You can't have post-modernism without the context of modernism

>>9262697
Read the wikipedia page, it's a meme.

>>9262674
>and try to dismantle its institutions and achievements.
untrue

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>>9262694
no

>>9262706
I think I worded it wrong. The term includes people who try do that.

>>9262694
I like it a lot desu

>>9262712
Have you created anything else?

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>>9262723
not on that scale that's as close to finished

>>9262612
The inversion, perversion, or utilization of traditional or non-traditional genre convention (or not) in order to make a point (or not).

>>9262801
So, basically, pure retardation?

>>9262612
>everything has been written
>there's no more substance
DUUUDE LET'S GO META LMAO

>>9262805
Yeah. I think some PoMo stuff is fun to read and a good writing exercise but not really a great """genre""".

PoMo's general conventions are too vague to really mean anything, well, meaningful.

My master's thesis was on " ThePublic Burning", one of the only worthwhile PoMo pieces.

PoMo is pretty stupid because it asks us to ignore reality and then pay attention to reality but not really but also do etc etc.It's more of a philosophical exercise than a real genre.

"Menalaiad" is the quintessential trash PoMo. It is difficult to read for the sake of being difficult to read.

>>9262830
bullshit GR and M&D are fantastic books

>>9262852
GR is good, yeah. I like Pynchon, don't get me wrong. But when it comes to M&D, which is also good, I would rather just read Chaucer tbfh.

But it is hard to argue that most of PoMo is trash. You gotta remember that there are many more books than just the "greats".

>>9262830
I agree. Also, I always wondered why PoMo insists so much on form, meta elements, genre conventions, etc... and then it falls back so often to the historical novel. Just look at the list of postmodern novels on wikipedia: 70% of them are historical novel. And history is substance, history is meaning. Pretty hypocrite, don't you think so?

Why do so many of you guys rag on postmodernism as a concept but then ejaculate over Pynchon and Wallace?

>>9262883
*I meant to say "that it's hard to argue that most pomo /isn't/ trash".

The issue with most PoMo writing is that the writers are trying to remove themselves from reality while also directly referencing reality.

People would argue, however, that history does not have substance based on the idea that all of history isn't recorded and is subjected to subjective bias. "History is written by the victor" all all that jazz.

So, I suppose, based on your subjective understanding of history one COULD argue that history is meaningless.

>>9262885
The good PoMo authors are like really good harmonica players.

The harmonica is gay, but one can be good at the harmonica.

>>9262909
kek

>>9262909
That's a useful answer, thanks.

>>9262909
Harmonica players with a really good understanding of musical history.

Don't forget, post-modernism may include some pretty dumb stuff, but by virtue of being the current movement also includes everyone past 1960 who thought Ulysses was pretty good. And good writers who learned from the Modernists have rather a lot to draw from.

>>9262945
Does one immediately become an aspiring postmodernist if he read Ulysses once?

>>9262945
Still choosing to play the harmonica.

>>9262957
Not if he's a modernist. Otherwise, yes. The categories are so broad that the overwhelming bulk of important people in the last 100 years are either modernists or post-modernists simply by definition, are they not? And before then, it is simply impossible to read Ulysses.

>>9262612

What did he mean by this: the literary movement

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>>9262612
A phase of a world-spanning civilizations' developing self-consciousness.

Leaving the gold standard of absolute, objectively understood truth. Perhaps to rediscover it later on.

>>9262988
>the overwhelming bulk of important people in the last 100 years are either modernists or post-modernists
That's not true. Out of the US there has been much more than modernism and postmodernism.

>>9262612
The hipster's modernism

>>9263008
I don't actually study or read about this, I just make it up from experience. Maybe you could either fill me in a little or point me to a good overview of something? I'm on a wikipedia page and the smaller movements I've heard of (Dadaism, Imagism, The Harlem Renaissance, Surrealism, and I'm including minimalism) seem to me not at all obviously outside of modernism. Or what works are you thinking of?

>>9262998
but the question is have we ever known it at all?

Decentralization of truth

>>9262612
>It's just a phase Mom
It is only a transitional period, a necessary one, but it is not an end point.

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>>9263114
I would say no. People thought they did and acted accordingly. People still do this. It would be nice to think that we simply acquire more precise vocabularies, better equipment, better understanding.

To me at least the most interesting development in this sense is antiphilosophy, how to do philosophy without the need for the production of truth. But I'm fond of a lot of thinkers /lit/ would call obscurantists and charlatans, so of course I would say that.

Still tho. It makes sense to me. Certain wisdom traditions have psychological aspects to them that to me seem more or less timeless; it would be hard to imagine those being suddenly refuted by a new advance in scientific of medical technology.

Of course, we will always be saying some things to ourselves - now we know, we used to be so primitive, etc., etc. Maybe this is neverending as well.

Us humans sure are an interesting bunch. We're becoming enlightened, I think. Tortuously slowly, but it's happening. Postmodernism is a good look. As modernism was. Painful, maybe, because you always feel like the floor is being pulled out from under your feet. But it was only belief that put the floor there in the first place.

Apologies for the crypto-pedantry also.

>>9262612
'autistic screeching' comes to mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw

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>>9262723
>>9262751

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What is required reading for learning about and understanding postmodernism?

>>9263721
Start with Nietzsche. He's the demolitions expert.

>>9263543
At last, I understand.

>>9263547
what? stop writing or posting to this image board?

>>9263721
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wGv0ZxNEg

not even once

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>>9263922
I want to understand it so I that may eventually refute it.

>>9263036
Well, Dadaism and Surrealism, along with Futurism, Simbolism and OuLiPo, are usually described as Avant-garde movements, especially confined to the first half of the 20th century, and they're characterised by the presence of a specific manifesto under which writers were grouped together. Movements of the second half of the 20th century are not that strictly defined and well organized, and sure as Jesus they're not ideological. That said, take Italy for example (since I'm Italian and I'll speak for my country): Neorealism is widely known as a film movement, the best of Italian cinema, but that's incomplete. Few people know that Neorealism was primarily a literary movement risen from the scenery and the living conditions of the post-war period, which, in Italy in particular, was devastating and unprecedented. This historical moment, following the madness of Fascism, Futurism, and the experimental vitality of their art, spawned a new drift towards realism - so, I would say, the opposite direction of Postmodernism. The vast majority of Italian novelists from the last century were related to Neorealism, and Calvino, later to become close to the postmodern experiences, was at first one of them. Pasolini, possibly the biggest literary genius of the Italian 20th century (and totally neglected overseas except for his movies) was a realist writer. He developed a personal thought throughout the political scenery of the 60s and 70s, criticising the shift from a fascist power to an even worst capitalist power; he wrote about the language of advertising, of television and youth trends. His novel Petrolio (Gasoline) is probably somehow postmodern, but still very different, in the approach and in the form, than the American novels of the same period. Other authors wrote monumental and winding books that could stay on an equal footing with tomes like Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow - I'm thinking about Arbasino and D'Arrigo in particular, which, unfortunately, have not been translated into English yet, due to the huge volume of their work - but their intentions were quite divergent from those of Wallace or Pynchon (i.e.: more actual and current reality, less mental masturbation). And then you have poetry. Montale is the closest one to the modernist idea of poetry (he's often matched with Eliot for his use of the objective correlative), but otherwise you see completely different tendencies, compared to other countries: Italy had Ermetism (similar to Minimalism but better), Crepuscolarism, Expressionism, Gruppo 63 (also known as Neoavanguardia, literally "new vanguard") and so on. A lot of stuff still to be discovered and treated.

>>9262612
it's garbage