POSTMODERNISM: Theory and Practice
Instructor: Dr. Doug Mann
Is the author dead? Has the body disappeared? Has reality dissolved into pure simulacra? Have we denizens of the late 20th century lost our faith in meta-narratives? In this course we'll attempt to answer these and other questions in surveying the theory and practice of the much ballyhooed postmodern era, an era which we may or may not be living through this moment. We'll start the course by attempting to come to grips with modernism and postmodernism, then spend several weeks looking at several key philosophical and cultural themes associated with postmodernist thinking - deconstructionism, the disappearing subject, representation and reality, popular culture, the end of history, irony in truth and values, and postmodern politics. In the final two weeks of the course we'll read in its entirety Albert Borgmann's interesting mapping of the postmodern era, Crossing the Postmodern Divide.
TEXTS
Jim Powell. Postmodernism for Beginners, Readers and Writers, 1998. (PFB)
Pauline Marie Rosenau. Postmodernism and the Social Sciences. Princeton U P, 1992.
J.F. Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition. University of Minnesota Press, 1984. The first 5 chapters are available online at the Value of Knowledge philosophical library
Albert Borgmann. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The key readings each week are indicated with an asterisk
Week 1. What is Modernism? Introduction to the Course.
(a) Overview: Jean Baudrillard, "Modernity". Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 9/3: 63-72.* (Library: JA4.C35). PFB 8-16. (b) Triumphant Modernism: F. T. Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto (1909)*; Mussolini Arch (1939); Leni Riefenstahl, The Triumph of the Will (1935); Georges Seurat, La Grande Jatte (1884-86); Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917); Pablo Picasso, Bull's Head (1943); Modern Architecture: van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Bauhaus, etc. (c) Alienated Modernism: W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1921)*; T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland (1922)*; Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)*; Dada; Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avigon (1907), Guernica (1937); Albert Camus, The Outsider, Penguin, 1983 (1942), 9, 44-5, 59-60, 67-8, 116-9; Frederico Fellini, 8½ (1962).
Week 2. What is Postmodernism?
J. F. Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism"?, The Postmodern Condition, U of Minnesota Press, 71-82.*
Doug Mann, "What is Postmodernism?", Philosophy Today, September 1996.
J. F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, opening sections. (BD162.L913 1984)
Rosenau Chapter 1, 3-24 (HM73.R59 1991). PFB 1-7, 17-21.
Week 3. Lyotard's Postmodernism
J. F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, sections not covered in week 2.*
Week 4. Dying Authors and Disappearing Subjects: Poststructuralism and Deconstruction.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols 6/3; Beyond Good and Evil Sections 3, 11, 13, 16, 19, 21; On the Genealogy of Morals Essay II Sections 2, 16.
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", in Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press, 1978, 278-93.* (B2430.D482E5 1978)
Rosenau Chapter 2, 25-41; Chapter 3, 42-61; Chapter 7, 116-124. PFB 93-115.*
Week 5. The Crisis of Representation and the End of the Real.
Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra", Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984, 253-81.* (NX456.5.P66A74 1984)
Charles Jencks and Postmodern Architecture.
Rosenau Chapter 6, 92-108; Chapter 7, 109-112. PFB 41-92.*
Week 6. The (Pop) Cultural Logic of Postmodernism.
Frederick Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, Duke UP 1991, Introduction, ix-xxii; Chapter 1 "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", 1-55.* (PN98.P67J3 1991)
Jean Baudrillard, The Evil Demon of Images, Sydney, 1987, 13-34. (PN1995.B318x1987)
Doug Mann, "Truth, the X-Files, and the Postmodern Condition", Mid-Atlantic Almanack, 7 (1998), 17-27. The X-Files, the mythology episodes.
The Simpsons, any episode. Woody Allen, Stardust Memories (1980); Zelig (1984). Andy Warhol. The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967). Beck, Odelay.
PFB 34-40, 122-128.
Week 7. The Body under Postmodernity.
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, "Body Digest: Theses on the Disappearing Body in the Hyper-Modern Condition", Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 11 (1987): i-xvi.*
Mark Kingwell, Dreams of Millennium, Chapter 4 "The Virtual Future", 153-9; Chapter 5 "Our Bodies, Our Selves", 181-228. * (HM101.K55x1996)
David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1982) and Crash (1996).
William Gibson's cyberpunk novels, especially Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). (As a general phenomenon: don't read them all!)
Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Borg episodes, especially Redemption I & II.
Cindy Sherman's self-portraits.
PFB 128-146.
Week 8. A la recherche du temps perdu: Postmodern Thinking About History.
Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History". Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ed. Donald Bouchard. Cornell UP, 1977.* (P106.F67 1977)
F.R. Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism". History and Theory 28, 137-53.* (D1.H8173)
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?", The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989): 3-19.
Rosenau Chapter 4, 62-76.
PFB 116-121.
Week 9. Goodbye Values and Truth, Hello Irony and Play?
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, Introduction, xiii-xvi; Chapter 3, 44-69; Chapter 4, 73-95; Chapter 9, 184-198.* (P106.R586 1989)
Rosenau Chapter 5, 77-91; Chapter 7, 114-6, 127-133, 136-137.
Terry Eagleton, "Capitalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism". New Left Review 152: 60-73.* (HX3.N36)
Camille Paglia, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders", in Sex, Art, and American Culture, Vintage Books, 1992, 207-233, 247-248.* (E169.12.P33 1992)
Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, London, Routledge, 1989, Chapter 1, 1-27. (PN3503.H84 1989)
Rosenau Chapter 8, 138-166.
PFB 147-8.
Week 11-12. Albert Borgmann. Crossing the Postmodern Divide.
Borgmann, Chapters 1-3, 2-77. (E169.12.B666 1992)
RESOURCES
The CRAPS web site - http://members.home.net/crapsonline - contains my articles "What is Postmodernism" and "Truth, The X-Files, and the Postmodern Condition", along with a few other interesting articles of relevance to the debate over postmodernism. My chapter on Cronenberg on this site has an extensive bibliography attached to it.
There is an excellent bibliography in the back of Rosenau's book, along with a glossary of postmodernese terms in her book.
If you're interested in Baudrillard, surf on over to:
http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/baudweb.html
The best site on David Cronenberg can be found here:
http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/zappa/cronen.html
On William Gibson, see:
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~thefinn/gibson/gibson.html
For a complete gallery of all of Picasso's works, see: