Modernity and Modernism PDF

The notion of modernity / the notion of modernism *Opposite. Departure from modernity to modernism in the 20th century. Modernity: Age of Reason (late 17th-18th). Reason (like god, with capital, cannot be questioned.), rationality. Positivism Empiricism / Didactic tone of voice Linearity,...

The notion of modernity / the notion of modernism *Opposite. Departure from modernity to modernism in the 20th century. Modernity: Age of Reason (late 17th-18th). Reason (like god, with capital, cannot be questioned.), rationality. Positivism Empiricism / Didactic tone of voice Linearity, clock time. “In the very beginning, there was the word, the word was the God.” Truth like a god, you cannot question it. Descartes, Plato, John Locke, Saussure Binary Oppositions One understanding of ultimate truth Descartes : “I think, therefore I am.” *Mind and body duality. Mind is superior to the body (corporeality). Hierarchy between mind and body, body is the inferior of mind. Bertha(body)/Jane(mind) , Man/Women– it’s an illusion, was accepted until the 20th century. Categorisation of all notions in binary oppositions. Plato: World of ideas and World of shadows. Two portlite understanding of the world / idea. World of ideas is superior to the world of shadows. Again binary thinking. You can either belong in one world or another. Black/White view. → Queer characters in postmodern fiction as a reaction to this binary thinking. Either/or trap. John Locke: Empiricism, does not believe in anything he does not see. Senses foregrounded. Freud’s unconscious as a reaction to this understanding as it cannot be seen. Bertha → madwoman in the attic. Invisible, irrational, uncontrollable figure. *for him she cannot be seen then. Jane → visible, rational figure. Victorian works - realism. Saussure → Structuralism. : The notion of the Sign. Divides meaning into two. Signifier(inferior, world of shadows) and Signified(superior, world of ideas). They make up Sign (meaning). Arbitrary relationship between them. Only one notion of truth that cannot be questioned and bended. Only one transcendental Signified to which each signifier is destined to arrive. (Like Plato) A Binary opposition again. One-to-one correspondence between the word and the world. Modernity - Early 17th and 18th Centuries Plato, Descartes, Locke → Saussure (structuralism) can be traced back to these. Modernity reflected in literature as realism. Realism as a literary movement. One unquestionable truth. (Univocal) Reason is on the foreground, Linear temporality*or time*(clock time), Familiar characters, familiar space, Order, unity : *clear beginning, middle and end* Unconscious, imagination and irrational as threats to the binary mode of thinking. Didactic tone of voice. Shaped by linearity. Plot. Nothing that could distribute the plot is included. Can be traced back to Aristotle’s tragedy. Oedipus’ punishment → he is out of linearity as he sleeps with his mom. **according to modernity. There’s a message as well. Age of Modernism - 20th Century Move from social to individual/psyche, to the unconscious. Religious decline because of wars. No plot. No unified characterization. - Fragmentation. Dissociation of sensibility(T.S Eliot) – from nature. Meaning is fluid. No clock time (intuitive conception of time) Collapse of the metaphysics of presence (refers to binary mode of thinking) Epiphanic moments Crisis of linguistic representation, no longer a correspondence between the word and the world, Aristotle’s mimetic is an illusion. Dispelling the illusion of mimetic representation. Disconnection between the word and the world. Scepticism One understanding of reality shattered because of the world wars. In a universe which can be explained by Reason, the world is familiar. In a universe surrounded by illusions and lights*as in hope*man feels secure. But in a universe which is suddenly deprived of these illusions, man feels an alien. This sense of alienation opens a rupture between man and himself , man and nature and man and society. -Albert Camus. illusions and lights : what modernity offers, a transcendental truth, signified. Linearity, the idea of oneness, the idea of the one god. Sense of disappointment as they notice these notions are all emptied out. Waiting for Godot : Epitome of modernism. Characters lose faith in religion. Crisis of linguistic representation. Modernity’s vocabulary has no meaning in the 20th Century, they cannot communicate as they do not have enough words to express themselves. Collapse of memory. They cannot connect the past with the present. Linear understanding of modernity is broken with modernism. No familiar time. No familiar space. Pozzo, created in God’s image, has a watch, stands for modernity but these ordinary people do not understand this person because it's the 20th century now, God is dead. Boy : *for godot* he beats me, loves my brother : God is questioned. First one to challenge modernist, binary mode of thinking - Nietzsche, Freud and Bergson. Nietzsche → God is dead – referring to the binary mode of thinking, the ultimate unquestionable truth, dead. Language is rendered dysfunctional. Übermensch → a person who can live in the absence of logos. Without god, rationality. Freud → There’s an unconscious psychic realm Bergson → In contrast to clock time, we have an intuitive conception of time. Postmodernism: character cherises his/her distortion, surviving the absence of logos. They are still waiting for Godot, a modernist play.