Postmodernism

1
Postmodernism
2
Reaction to Modernism

• What is Modernism?
• How do we react to it?
• Results?

3
Principles of Postmodernism

• Disregard all basis of hierarchy, order,
  structure etc
• Born of disillusionment bred by the horrors of
  World War II
• Rejection of elite or high class culture

4
Philosophical Roots

• Heidegger Rejected the existence of
  subjectivity and objectivity
• Foucault Language is oppression
• Baudrillard Reality is extinguished in favor of
  simply a multiplicity of signs

5
Postmodernist Literature

• Themes Disillusionment, Rebellion, Anarchy
• Terms Deconstruction, Free Verse,
  Impressionism, Existentialism, Nihilism, Black
  Humor, Pastiche, Temporal Distortion
• Names Samuel Beckett, Randall Jarrell, Wallace
  Stevens, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Kurt
  Vonnegut

6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10

• There are lots of things I don't understandBut
  from 50 years in this game, I have learned two
  things (1) I can ask friends who work in these
  areas to explain it to me at a level that I can
  understand, and they can do so, without
  particular difficulty (2) if I'm interested, I
  can proceed to learn more so that I will come to
  understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard,
  Kristeva, etc. even Foucault, whom I knew and
  liked, and who was somewhat different from the
  rest --- write things that I also don't
  understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold no one
  who says they do understand can explain it to me
  and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to
  overcome my failures. That leaves one of two
  possibilities (a) some new advance in
  intellectual life has been made, perhaps some
  sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form
  of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory,
  topology, etc., in depth and profundity or (b)
  ... I won't spell it out.
• --Noam Chomsky

11
Death of The Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur
froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its
dream of life, I woke to black flak and the
nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me
out of the turret with a hose. -- Randall
Jarrell 1945
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Disillusionment of Ten OClock
People are not goingTo dream of baboons and
periwinkles.Only, here and there, an old
sailor,Drunk and asleep in his boots,Catches
TigersIn red weather.

• The houses are hauntedBy white
  night-gowns.None are green,Or purple with
  green rings,Or green with yellow rings,Or
  yellow with blue rings.None of them are
  strange,
• With socks of laceAnd beaded ceintures.

-- Wallace Stevens
15
The Beat Poets A New Wave

• A nearly wholesale rejection of mainstream
  traditional American Values
• Focused interest in Eastern Spirituality and
  often involved experimentation with drugs
• Movement began late 1940s flourished through
  the 1950s and 1960s

16
On The Beat

• The original beat poet, Jack Kerouac coined the
  term and ascribed to it a wide range of meanings
• Began in New York as an underground
  counterculture youth movement
• Small but influential group of poets including
  Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S.
  Burroughs

17
Dude, This is So Beat

• "The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch
  of people, of all different nationalities, who
  came to the conclusion that society sucked."
  -- Amiri Baraka
• "Once when Kerouac was high on psychedelics with
  Timothy Leary, he looked out the window and said,
  'Walking on water wasn't built in a day.' Our
  goal was to save the planet and alter human
  consciousness. That will take a long time, if it
  happens at all." -- Allen Ginsberg

18
Jack Kerouac
1922 1969 Highly influential musically The
Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Simon Garfunkel,
Bob Dylan, Tom Waits Not critically acclaimed
until after his death
19
Bowery Blues- Jack Kerouac

• Themes - Disillusionment, Frustration
• Tone Dejected, Hopeless
• Language Strong, Clear Language
• Style Coarse, Gritty

20
3rd Chorus Mexico City Blues-Jack Kerouac

• Describe fires in riverbottomsand, and the
  cookingthe cooking of hot dogsspitted in
  whittled sticksover flames of woodfirewith
  grease dropping in smoketo brown and blackenthe
  salty hotdogs,and the wine,and the work on the
  railroad.

• 275,000,000,000.00 in debtsays the
  GovernmentTwo hundred and seventy five
  billiondollars in debtLike UnendingHeavenAnd
  Unnumbered Sentient BeingsWho will be admitted
  Not-Numberable To the new Pair of ShoesOf
  White Guru FleeceO j o !
• The Purple Paradise