gnostic and Gnostic

[JTDaly2 at aol.com]

This, from the appendix to Lyotard's _The Postmodern Condition_, seems 
apropos:

"What, then, is the postmodern?... All that has been received, if only 
yesterday, must be suspected. What space does Cezanne challenge? The 
Impressionists. What object do Picasso and Braque attack? Cezanne's. What 
presupposition does Duchamp break with in 1912? That which says one must make 
a painting, be it cubist....

In an amazing acceleration, the generations precipitate themselves. A work 
can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus 
understood is NOT modernism at it END but in the NASCENT state, and this 
state is CONSTANT....

The artist and the writer are working without rules in order to formulate the 
rules of what will have been done." (emphasis mine)

I like this take on the modern/postmodern divide. It seems apropos of 
questions of how to classify Finnegan's Wake or Pynchon.

----------------------------------------


  has pynchon ever called himself or his work "postmodern"? does it really
 make  
  sense to name vineland "postmodern" but finnegans wake "modern"? do you
 think  
  that fiedler or brinkmann, if still alive, would go for the phrase "pomo
 rules 
  ok"? and do we need the label "pomo" to devote ourselves to the beauty of 
  pynchon's prose?

 kai


 jbor schrieb:
 >
 >
 > ----------
 > >From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus)
 > >To: o.sell at telda.net
 > >Subject: Re:  gnostic and Gnostic
 > >Date: Wed, Dec 20, 2000, 8:53 PM
 > >
 >
 > > but where are the great 'pomo' works from
 > >   the 80s and 90s? [vineland and m&d will not be accepted as
 representatives
 > of
 > >   this genre!]
 >
 > I would say that it is the very notion of "genre" as being something stable
 > and finite which has been overturned, both by postmodernist criticisms and
 > postmodern fictions (such as _M&D_ and _Vineland_, among many other
 examples> c.1950-2001.) And, not all of those critical texts Otto listed are
 from the
 > 60s and 70s. What of post-colonialism (eg Homi Bhabha's _Nation and
 > Narration_ 1990, and _Location of Culture_ 1994) . . . cyberpunk (Gibson et
 > al) . . .  the hypertext novel (perhaps a dead end, admittedly) . . .
 > Rushdie, Coetzee, Gibson, Gaddis, Foster Wallace . . .
 >
 > > let's face it: a generation has gone into the land (- as we say
 > >   here, don't know if this formulation does exist in the english
 language),
 > and
 > >   "pomo" has turned into a fat bitch kept up by exactly that kind of
 > >   institutional indolence brinkmann and fiedler wanted to overcome ...
 > >
 > I don't know that this is at all true. (Would you say the same of Pynchon,
 > for example? Or is it easier to claim that his later texts are no longer
 > "postmodernist" and seek to redeem him somehow, while slagging
 > "postmodernism" in the very same breath?) Anyway, it's the practitioner who
 > becomes a "fat bitch", not the practice.
 >
 > best
 >
 >

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