Postmodernism, like modernism and romanticism before it, fetishised [ie placed supreme importance on] the author, even when the author chose to indict or pretended to abolish him or herself. But the culture we have now fetishises the recipient of the text to the degree that they become a partial or whole author of it.
Interesting to see this considering what I’m reading right now.
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I think they’re dead wrong, but in that reassuring way most modernist critics have been ever since they started grousing about postmodernism (or whatever you want to call the now).
To be somewhat fair, they’re right in that cultural production now is different from when PM began, but that has more to do with moving from the cusp between modernity and post-modernity into full-on post-modernity.
Especially telling was their take on the post-modern author. In my view, postmodernism was always about the reader, the one who does the experiencing. That was the entire point of denigrating not only the author/creator, but also the authored/created. I.e. not only was the concept of the author a bunch of bullshit, the concept of the author’s novel was bullshit was as well.
In the beginning, the focus on tearing at the concept of the Author and the Novel and the Story were just useful conceits to highlight the postmodern idea of personal experience being the one true thing.
Now that everyone has accepted those concepts, the railing can stop. In fact, it has stopped. This is the change in cultural production they write about.
But suggesting it’s gone is just silly. No one watching Lost or 24 can say those wildly popular shows are temples to the author telling a story that moves through a plot. Bullshit. It’s all experience. Each week is a new experience with the plot, its holes, and the jumps across them just fodder for communicating something to be experienced to viewers.
Shoot Em Up and Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Experiences. Is there some grand author telling us a grand story? No. Guns. Hot chicks. Shit blows up. The end to the Sopranos?
Personally I think this essay comes close to what’s actually happening, but still misses the mark. What seems to me to be happening is the next logical step: distribution of the authorial power. This is not what postmodernism aimed for, and I’m not certain it’s a concept many entrenched postmodernists would be comfortable with since it does grant respect and occasionally a certain deference to the original creator of a given work. And so I’m content to see a new term introduced to describe it; “pseudo-modernism”, with its hinting at a closer connection to what came before postmodernism, seems a good fit for that.
Perhaps only tangentially on-topic, but something in the Amazon.com blurb for Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture by Alan Sokal caught my attention (emphasis mine):
Ironically, true Vedic science asks exactly the same thing. It’s not a religion or philosophy even, rather it’s a means of knowledge, a notion Westerners generally find hard to deal with. Even more ironic is the fact that a Vedantin would never call himself a nationalist, or identify with any other isms, for that matter. Hindu nationalists are therefore missing the point, similar to certain Bible-wieldin’ groups in your country. Not that it matters…
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