The Death of Post Modernism

[Otto]

On the literary side there are clearly differences between 19th-century realism (pre-modern), the hard-core modernism from the first decades of the 20th century and the post WW-2 literature we're mostly busy with -- post-modernism. 

What comes after post-modernism? As long as it hasn't been understood by more people than it has I think it still has something to tell. As long as the majority of the people haven't realised at all that there has been a philosophical movement of that name (at least until 1989/90) and that we're indeed living in times very different from the first half of the 20th century I don't think that a real development can take place. It's just an accelerated rerun of what we've seen before. What fundamentalists like the Bushes & Bin Ladens of the world are really trying to do is to put us back into the ages of feudalism and imperialism when warfare was a legitimate way of foreign policy. This is absolutely pre-modern from my point of view. This partly explains to me the ongoing success of fairytales in politics today (for example all that WMD and Hutton-report spin or the terrorists' claim to represent the true Islam).

I think you're right that existentialism has its place in early post-modernism. It is what modernism has taught us in the end, thus is a prerequisite for post-modernism.

Otto
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com 
  To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
  Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 10:32 PM
  Subject: Re: The Death of Post Modernism


  Post modernism is humbug.  There is no post modernism.  Or rather all human history is post modern class struggle.  Fast forward.  What comes after post modernism?  Post post modernism?  You are all post post modernists (& sanpaku as well).
  I like to think of myself as proto post modernist because I am an existentialist.  
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