Module 5: Postmodern Pluralisations PDF

Module 5: Post-Modern Pluralisations 1. Postmodernist Pluralisations – Contexts and Contours − World War II: changes and reorientations o rationalism → irrationalism o logic/causality →contingency/chance o progress → relativity o enlightenment...

Module 5: Post-Modern Pluralisations 1. Postmodernist Pluralisations – Contexts and Contours − World War II: changes and reorientations o rationalism → irrationalism o logic/causality →contingency/chance o progress → relativity o enlightenment → scepticism/anxiety − the reorientations are the new way of living, are expressed in art and literature (features of society, art and literature) o individual is free and alone → individual is anonymous to society o absurdity o conformity to social standards o culture of performance (traces of this in modernism like Gatsby): excess o material compensations (no source of orientation over the years of war) o differences, inequalities in society o multiple, hybrid identities (race, gender, culture, sexuality, …) o research in sexuality o liberation of the individual o overcoming taboos, restrictions − 1960s: challenging American ideologies and traditional social structures o civil rights and ethnic rights movements o Anti-Vietnam War movement o war on poverty o student protest movement o counterculture o environmental movement o women’s movement o... 2. Contexts and Contours – Civil Rights Movement (1950s to 1970s) − towards the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s o 1909: National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) o 1911: Society of American Indians o 1929: League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) o 1942: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) o 1944: National Congress of American Indians o 1950: Asociación Nacional México-Americana − racism thus continued − double V-campaign − ending segregation in school − events during this time o 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, KS o 1955-56: Montgomery Bus Boycott o 1963: March on Washington (Martin Luther King) o 1964/65: Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights → violent reactions: assassination of MLK, kidnapping and killing of Freedom Riders, bombing of black churches, riots, … − multiplicity of diverse ethnic movements o 1967: St. Carmichael & Black Power o 1967: El Movimiento Estudianti Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) o 1968: American Indian Movement o 1968: Asian American Political Alliance (University of California) 3. Contexts and Contours Continued to Today − 1980s/1990s/ff o conservative turn o turn to ‘American Values’ (Cold War, new exceptionalism): conservative, excluding, unique, superior o threat in daily life/insecurity: school shootings, terrorist attacks o erosion of middle class → financial crisis o Obama Years ▪ post-racial society (?): claiming this means just avoiding addressing racism and avoiding having to stand up for others ▪ continued debates on immigration legislation, LGBTQ+ rights, welfare, health care, … o Trump Years ▪ post-factualism, fake news, populism ▪ paleo-conservatism, alt-right, ethnonationalism, white nationalism, white supremacy ▪ immigration ▪ isolationism ▪ Covid-19 o Biden/Harris ▪ Inauguration in January 2021 ▪ mob in Washington: not wanting to accept the change in presidency ▪ immediately changed some issues from Trump’s presidency 4. Contexts and Contours Continued – Critical Whiteness Studies, the Pandemic, Virtualisation − Black Lives Matter o targets racism in every place o colour-blind racism (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva) ▪ people just see people and not colours but this is borderline racist ▪ there is a tendency to give the fault to the people complaining about racism ▪ blacks are experiencing inequality in all areas of life ▪ whites argue that different opportunities and inequalities are not based on racist practice (based on skin-colour) ▪ yet the reason for the different opportunities and equalities that whites name nevertheless reveal their racism ▪ new racism is subtle, institutional and apparently non-racial ▪ instead of questioning these structures, it actually claims it as an excuse for one’s own racism ▪ it has become a tool for the maintenance of white supremacy o white fragility (Robin DiAngel) ▪ systematic racism ▪ white privilege: hard to understand blacks − virtualisation o determined by the cell phone: connectivity o global participation (but not everyone has access) o new reality 5. Glimpses into Postmodern Literatures: Postmodernism, Diversity, Beat Movement − postmodern literature and contemporary art are linked to different and diverse media and forms of expression − definition: postmodernism o experimental aesthetic movements of the post-WWII era o modernism as an unfinished project that needs to be finished with postmodernism o but it is also a critical reflection of modernism o there is not one truth or one way of interpretation but multiple meanings → no consensus o all these interpretations are important and valid o after 9/11: post-post-modernism? − precursors and influences o Gertrude Stein ▪ radical experiments ▪ disillusion of forms ▪ focus on association ▪ play with language o Jean-Francois Lyotard ▪ he claims the end of the grand or the master narrative (like the American dream, Frontier, Rags to Riches, self-made man, …) ▪ but life isn’t as simple as that → there is no universal model that applies to everyone ▪ leads to a certain insecurity and multiplicity: arbitrariness and absurdity is the answer in literature o poststructuralism / deconstruction: Derrida, Barthes, Foucault ▪ strong intersection with postmodernism: multiplicity of meanings ▪ there are multiple interpretations of one text like there are multiple in life ▪ can literature really depict reality in an authentic way? ▪ ‘death of the author’ (Barthes): there is no focus on intention or message by the author, the reader decides for himself how he likes to perceive a text even though the author might have had a different idea (birth of the reader) − ideas and characteristics o conventional modes are overused ▪ new forms are needed ▪ innovative re-use because there is nothing new anymore ▪ examples: collage techniques (combining), intertextuality, hybridity o fusion and dissolution ▪ postmodern literature dissolves the distinction between art and popular culture (there is no such thing as high and low culture / literature) ▪ no distinction between reality and fantasy ▪ faction (fact + fiction): new journalism o experiments, improvisation o processes are more important than the faced plot (performance over storyline) o criticising and re-writing of history o metafiction o playfulness, parody o dissolving chronology − postmodernist manifestos o Ronald Sukenick: ‘Innovative Fiction / Innovative Criteria’ ▪ form of fiction from older times are no longer adequate ▪ literature through history was and still is an expressive medium of experiences, feelings and energy ▪ there is not just one new fiction but many ▪ recombinations and fusions ▪ not plot but ongoing incident ▪ innovative fiction represents the progressive struggle of art to rescue the truth of our experience o Charles Olson: ‘Projective Verse’ ▪ focus on openness ▪ turning away stanza and over-all form ▪ kinetics of the thing: energy, not about a static poem, feeling of mobility that the poem expresses to the reader ▪ one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception → focus on movement  ▪ insistence of breath (part of the author): you have a performative character that you give life to, poetry is experienced as a performance, joint experience between the poet, the performer and the audience o Audre Lorde: ‘Poetry is Not a Luxury’ ▪ for women poetry is not a luxury, it is a vital necessity of our existence ▪ writing and performing poetry is closely linked ▪ poetry as a way of phrasing their experiences ▪ poetry are experiences turned into language and ideas ▪ giving a name to the nameless ▪ poetry is not entertainment but necessary − topics: diversity of postmodernism is reflected in o identities o migration and diaspora o home and belonging o generations o collective memories o revision of history and ideology o complicating white narratives (standard) o reveals marginalisation, racism and discrimination o diverse traditions and conventions o language o holocaust o civil rights movement, neo-slave narratives o reservation life, trickster stories o migratory work, immigration, undocumented immigrants o border, borderlands o … − examples o Ralph Ellison: ‘Invisible Man’ (1952) ▪ describes the search of a black protagonist for his identity in the American culture and society ▪ focus on invisibility: ‘I am an invisible man’ ▪ but he knows that he exists with all human traits and experiences → invisible because no one wants to see and recognise him ▪ it is white America that makes him invisible o Gwendolyn Brooks: ‘We Real Cool’ ▪ postmodern play with language and not sticking to conventions o Gloria Anzaldúa: ‘Borderland / La Frontera: The New Mestiza’ (1987) ▪ discusses the Mexican – Texas border ▪ focus on experience of mixed cultures ▪ border as symbolic sign for hybrid identities of people who live there ▪ she attacks that society expects a clear order not a mixture between two things ▪ celebrates the hybrid identities ▪ focus on inclusivity ▪ idea of experimentation through change of form (from a more prose kind of style to a poetic style) ▪ fusion of languages as part of postmodernism but also of the hybridity she’s talking about ▪ struggles of walking from one culture into another because she is both ▪ results of this struggle: mental and emotional states of perplexity, insecurity and indecisiveness, psychic restlessness, inner conflict and war ▪ struggle is not being hybrid but predominantly the white culture which does not accept this ▪ one culture discriminates another culture: how could you live with both  ▪ mestiza consciousness: how she writes it is how cultures should perceive each other, future will belong to la mestiza, breaking down borders between culture, focus on differences ▪ healing this split: split is already within us, in our language, in our thoughts → this would end violence, war, rape, … o Linda Hogan: ‘To Light’ (1985) ▪ writes about the Native American experiences ▪ cultural pride in regard to cultural memories − Beat Movement and Beat Writers o protest and innovation o literary avant-garde movement o critique of 1950s America: consumerism o focus on protest and dissent (American tradition like Transcendentalism) o outsiders, non-conformism o liberation of the individual o breaking limits and taboos o life as mystical experiences o writing is experimental, open and free forms o actual performances o San Francisco: Six Gallery, City Lights o Jack Kerouac: ‘On the Road’ (1957) ▪ counter culture / anti-establishment ▪ individualism leads to a better America ▪ journey to a better America 6. Postmodern Performance Art and Theater: Postmodern Literary Movements − 19th century American theatre o commercialised theatre and entertainment o focus lies on shows and star actors o melodrama (through the 1910s): good / bad, happy endings o actors were more important than playwrights o strong European influences o fusion with circus o often very racist and stereotypical − Provincetown Players o birth of 20th century American drama o focus shifts towards performances, playwrights, … − postmodern theatre: performance art in the 1950s/60s o moving away from old forms to improvisation and performance, less focus on the storyline, plot or outcome o term and idea of ‘happenings’ were influenced by Allan Kaprow: performance art (includes interaction with the audience → different every time) o ‘The Living Theatre’: Judith Malina and Julian Beck ▪ focus on experimentation ▪ emphasises politics and activism ▪ post-dramatic, not traditional ▪ strong attempt to challenge society’s power relations and hierarchical structures ▪ turning away from the Broadway’s commercial interests o ‘Open Theatre’: Joseph Chaikin ▪ former member of the Living Theatre but felt they had become too politically activist o ‘Bread and Puppet Theatre’: Peter Schumann ▪ politically radical ▪ activist and protest-orientated o Off / Off-Off-Broadway − New Realism (1980s/1990s – today) o middle class, American family, suburbia o migration o social issues, city life o violence o new regionalism o historical novels o life, lifestyle, youth o neo-slave narratives ▪ Toni Morrison: ‘Beloved’ excessive kinds of love: religious, motherly, romantic, love of God discusses the history of oppression rewriting of slave narratives discusses the question how life is still affected by slavery even today re-memory and magic realism: magical and non-believable elements express and symbolise real circumstances ▪ Margaret Walker ▪ Octavia Butler ▪ Edward P. Jones − more sample movements o responses to 9/11 o graphic novels (1980s onwards) o global and transnational fiction (1990s/2000s onwards) o performance poetry and poetry slams