Bernard Cohen's Snowdome: somewhere in a postmodern time
15 Nov 2007-Iss: 20, pp 185-194
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the representation of postmodernism and postmodernity in Bernard Cohen's experimental work, Snowdome, which can be conceived as a complex portrayal of contemporary existence and life in the city.
Abstract: Occidental societies, according to certain visions of a postmodern future as reflected in literature and arts, are heading towards a dystopian decadent world order. It is inside this perspective that I place the following essay with the aim to analyse the representation of Postmodernism and Postmodernity in Bernard Cohen’s experimental work, Snowdome. This novel can be conceived as a complex portrayal of contemporary existence and life in the city. By means of three different narrations and two stories separated by the unstable boundary of time, Cohen depicts contemporary Sidney from a nightmarish present of noise that leads to the complete isolation of the subject in a near future. The novel emphasises the multiplicity of information in contemporary society and the way in which that information becomes a constant noise flooding the city. The individual is unable to grasp a bit of that “pure reality” outside the simulacrum offered by the media and by the terrifying museum. Sidney and Australia become, in Cohen’s work, a prolongation of contemporary North-American invasive culture, based on the power of the TV screen and the falsehood of simulacrum, whereas individuals are plunged into a new time-space dimension which is placed somewhere in a postmodern time.
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: In this paper, a wide-ranging survey of postmodernism is presented, from high art to low art, from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
Abstract: Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
6,317 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the final, extraordinary flowering of a high modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logic.
Abstract: expressionism in painting, existentialism in philosophy, the final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great auteurs, or the modernist school of poetry (as institutionalized and canonized in the works of Wallace Stevens): all these are now seen as the final, extraordinary flowering of a high modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of
4,325 citations
148 citations
Book•
01 Dec 1992
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey of Semiology, gender, and postmodernism in the context of post-modernism and post-structuralism. But their focus is on the subjectivity of the postmodern condition.
Abstract: Section 1: Semiology Introduction 1.1 Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics 1.2 Roland Barthes, from Mythologies 1.3 Pierre Macherey, from A Theory of Literary Production 1.4 Umberto Eco, from The Narrative Structure in Fleming 1.5 Colin MacCabe, from Realism and the Cinema Section 2: Ideology Introduction 2.1 Karl Marx, from Preface to the Cinema 2.2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, from The German Ideology 2.3 Louis Althusser, from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus 2.4 Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex 2.5 Edward Said, from Orientalism 2.6 Homi K. Bhabha, from The Other Question 2.7 Slavoj Zizek, from The Sublime Object of Ideology Section 3: Subjectivity Introduction 3.1 Sigmund Freud, from Beyond the Pleasure Principle 3.2 Jacques Lacan, the Mirror Stage from Ecrits 3.3 Franz Fanon, from Black Skins, White Masks 3.4 Julia Kristevea, from The System and the Speaking Subject 3.5 Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish 3.6 Michel Foucault, from The History of Sexuality 3.7 Roland Barthes, from The Pleasure of the Text Section 4: Difference Introduction 4.1 Jacques Derrida Differance Section 5: Gender Introduction 5.1 Sigmund Freud, On the Universal Tendency... 5.2 Helene Cixous, from Sorties 5.3 Laura Mulvey, from Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema 5.4 Manthia Diawara, from Black Spectatorship 5.5 Kobena Mercer, from Reading Racial Fetishism 5.6 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, from Real and Imagined Women 5.7 Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble 5.8 Homi K. Bhabha, from "Race", Time and the Revision of Modernity Section 6: Postmodernism Introduction 6.1 Jean-Francois Lyotard, from The Postmodern Condition 6.2 Jean Baudrillard, from Simulations 6.3 Jean-Francois Lyotard, from The Inhuman 6.4 Jacques Derrida, from The Gift of Death 6.5 Jean Baudrillard, from The Spirit of Terrorism 6.6 Slavoj Zizek, from Welcome to the Desert of the Real Summaries Biographies References and Index
119 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1971
TL;DR: Hassan as discussed by the authors takes Orphic dismemberment and regeneration as his metaphor for a radical crisis in art and language, culture and consciousness, which prefigures postmodern literature.
Abstract: In this book, the first edition of which was published in 1971 by Oxford University Press, Ihab Hassan takes Orphic dismemberment and regeneration as his metaphor for a radical crisis in art and language, culture and consciousness, which prefigures postmodern literature. The modern Orpheus, he writes, sings on a lyre without strings. Thus, his sensitive critique traces a hypothetical line from Sade through four modern authors Hemingway, Kafka, Genet, and Beckett to a literature still to come. But the line also breaks into two Interludes, one concerning Pataphysics, Dada, and Surrealism, and the other concerning Existentialism and Aliterature. Combining literary history, brief biography, and critical analysis, Hassan surrounds these authors with a complement of avant-garde writers whose works also foreshadow the postmodern temper. These include Jarry, Apollinaire, Tzara, Breton, Sartre, Camus, Nathalie Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet, and in America, Cage, Salinger, Ginsberg, Barth, and Burroughs. Hassan takes account also of related contemporary developments in art, music, and philosophy, and of many works of literary theory and criticism. For this new edition, Hassan has added a new preface and postface on the developing character of postmodernism, a concept which has gained currency since the first edition of this work, and which he himself has done much to theorize."
111 citations