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The Politics of Postmodernism
01 Jan 1989-
TL;DR: In this article, the postmodernist representation is de-naturalized the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history, Re-presenting the past: 'total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text.
Abstract: General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Representing the postmodern: What is postmodernism? Representation and its politics, Whose postmodernism? Postmodernity, postmodernism, and modernism. 2. Postmodernist representation: De-naturalizing the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history. 3. Re-presenting the past: 'Total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text. 4. The politics of parody: Parodic postmodern representation, Double-coded politics, Postmodern film? 5. Text/image border tensions: The paradoxes of photography, The ideological arena of photo-graphy, The politics of address 6. Postmodernism and feminisms: Politicizing desire, Feminist postmodernist parody, The private and the public. Concluding note: some directed reading. Bibliography. Index.
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TL;DR: In this article, an attendee of a management seminar explicitly linking Shakespeare's text and its performance to the formal development of business skills for corporate executive officers, seminars now acquiring popularity among business communities internationally.
Abstract: "What's wonderful about Shakespeare is how universal his themes and stories are, how much they apply to so many situations."Our Inspirational Bard of DirectorsThe above bland epigraph might well be written or uttered in any undergraduate Shakespeare class. It is a familiar, conventional response of some students, at least until they have been exposed to the full force of literary theory and its "corrosive" effect on universals and taste. In the wider field of culture, however, the current explosion of "pop" uses of Shakespeare might seem evidence to confirm such a claim of universality. Paradoxically, the opposite might as well be argued from the same evidence, namely, that Shakespeare, by virtue of his status as high cultural capital, merely provides a tabula rasa of "greatness" upon which everyone applies some localized and particularized meaning, a meaning not "for all time" but for an age. Shakespeare remains, in any case, a chief site for all such paradoxes.What distinguishes the quotation from a student classroom response, however, is that it was made instead by a business executive, not in an academic setting, but as an attendee of a management seminar explicitly linking Shakespeare's text and its performance to the formal development of business skills for corporate executive officers, seminars now acquiring popularity among business communities internationally.1 What I want to attend to in the present study is the current popular conjunction of business and Shakespeare, to explore through this the nature of "popularization," and to suggest the cultural or even political effect on what might be called, following Pierre Bourdieu, the "literary field" (Bourdieu 1996) at the current historical moment. One significance of this conjunction is that it signals, as perhaps the tip of an iceberg, a possible sea-change in the very notion of the literary and of the humanities. To dismiss such a program, as a conventional liberal academic might, as merely one more amusing instance of modern "crass commercialism" (a Shakespeare beer, a Shakespeare credit card),2 would be to ignore, among other things, that this particular "appropriation" involves the heart of commerce itself-not merely the commodities we are invited to consume, but the very means of production itself in corporate capitalism.My present claim is that business popularizations-which like other pop uses might be assumed to produce a watering down, a misappropriation, or even a "termination" (Burt 1999) of Shakespeare-have the potential for something more rigorous and even progressive. As this particular popular usage develops, I argue, it begins to take on the sort of self-critique we know from literary studies and literary theory, if not from Shakespeare's works themselves. This evolved sophistication, moreover, has an affinity with the cultural form of film noir, understood for its characteristically shady world, its layered irony, and its ethics of complicity.Both business and Shakespeare are now coincidentally-if it is coincidence-under fire. For Shakespeare, the recent skepticism about the universality of the canon has resulted, at the high end, in the questioning of Shakespeare's literary and cultural authority, and, at the low end, in departmental disputes about how required, or how often offered, the Shakespeare course ought to be. Such disputes sometimes even arise to the place of national controversy, as in the case of Georgetown University's removal of its Shakespeare course requirement for majors (Albanese 2001, 207). The threat of a collapse in the Shakespeare "market," ever present, is used by political conservatives wishing to attack the "relativism" of the academy and its loss of a presumed set of "standards" and a common "cultural literacy." As such, the move to reinvest Shakespeare's cultural capital for the business world, as suggested by the proliferation of business manuals based on Shakespeare, might seem only to further a general conservative restoration of the public sphere in the U. …
5 citations
TL;DR: The socio-political contribution of Central European regional modernism in Čapek's work is increasingly vital to the contemporary Europe of Brexit and refugee and migrant crises, and beyond as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Abstract Virginia Woolf and Karel Čapek produced direct responses to the British Empire Exhibition in the forms of – in Woolf’s case – a scathing essay entitled ‘Thunder at Wembley’ and – in Čapek’s case – a (P)OstModernist travelogue later published as part of ‘Letters from England’ translated into English in 1925 and banned by the Nazis as well as the Communists. This research paper juxtaposes modernity in Central Europe with its ‘Other’ – that in Western Europe – by exploring Woolf and Čapek’s durée réelle between 1910 and 1924. It offers an analysis of Karel Čapek’s (P)OstModern legacies, placing Prague right on the modernist centre stage. The socio-political contribution of Central European regional modernism in Čapek’s work is increasingly vital to the contemporary Europe of Brexit and refugee and migrant crises, and beyond.
5 citations
TL;DR: Tripmaster Monkey as mentioned in this paper is a post-modern re-creation of an archetype with Asian features and an Asian last name, but with a significant difference -he is an American hero with Asian facial features and a Chinese last name.
Abstract: I am a naturalized citizen, your Excellency, of Charleston, South Carolina, and a Christian, too; and so hope you will stand corrected in your assertion "that none of the Asiatic class" as you are pleased to term them, have applied for benefits under our naturalization act. - To His Excellency Governor Bigler [of California] from Norman Asing (Jacobs and Landa 128)(2) Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1987) introduces into American literature a new national type. The hero, Tripmaster Monkey or Wittman Ah Sing, is a fifth generation Asian American male, a graduate from Berkeley in the 1960s, a liberal arts major, an actor, a writer, a musician, a "Yale Younger Poet of 1967 or 1968 or 1969," now a director of his own theater in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (Tripmaster Monkey 51). With his colorful features and a locomotive voice - Wit Man/Aaaaaieeeeee/Ah/IIIIII III/I Sing, Kingston's Monkey is an interestingly fabricated fictional character, a very complex aesthetic object, many-facaded, all-inclusive, and pluralistic. He is as fictional and theatrical as he is poetic. By appearance, he is a "Grub Street" wit in 1980s' America, an actor/activist, a King Kong on the Bay Bridge, a Cowboy in the city of San Francisco, a Chinatown Hamlet/Garrick. He is, in my opinion, the maker/magician created in the wake of Joyce's "bygmester," conceived in the mind's fancy of a metafictionist.(3) Tripmaster Monkey is Kingston's Idea - Kingston's Postmodern representation of a new "China Man," who redefines the national character of an American. Kingston speaks of him as an "archetype" (Moyers). The word "archetype" in modern literature reminds us of Joyce's Ulysses. Tripmaster Monkey is indeed Kingston's Postmodern re-creation of such an archetype, but with a significant difference - he is an American hero with Asian features and an Asian last name. Can a character, even a fictional character, with an Asian last name be an all-American hero? Wittman is an American hero, as he is born and educated in America and named after Walt Whitman, the poet who once created our national identity with the language of "en masse." But Ah Sing may also be named after a China Man, Norman Asing, a naturalized US citizen, who, as early as 1855, served as a spokesman of his people by writing to Governor Bigler of California claiming his identity as an American and protesting against racism and the exclusion of the Chinese in America (see epigraph). Governor Bigler was the first governmental official to advocate the Chinese Exclusion Act.(4) Norman Asing's letter, composed in a well controlled style of Mandarin English, was published in the Daily Alta California in 1855, the year Whitman published his Leaves of Grass. Thus conceived in the democratic tradition of American letters, Wittman Ah Sing is undeniably a spokesman of the common people, a singer of "Song of Myself," and a maker of American identity. But whether he will be accepted as such by his contemporaries, particularly readers, critics, reviewers, professors, and students of American literature, is another question; as we know, Whitman was not in his time. Whether he is accepted or not, Tripmaster Monkey advocates his own right. Kingston's book is quite a challenge. The volcanic eloquence of Ah Sing challenges the reader and critic: Can a Chinese be American and an American have Chinese features? Can a Chinese American writer create a character undeniably American? The most responsive and sympathetic voices, deeply touched by Ah Sing's eloquence, come from North Beach and Greenwich Village, recognizing Kingston's Monkey as "an extraordinary and unforgettable creation, indeed an American creation." Those who enjoy the "verbal rhythm," the body language of the text, sense the "verve" and share the "spirit" of Tripmaster Monkey, accept him as "a sixties Berkeley rebel, a self-conscious poet, an uneasy street stylist, an overwrought theatrical visionary," a "Jack Kerouac or James Baldwin or Allen Ginsberg," "a modern American hero. …
5 citations
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: This article examined how students' constructs of "self" are reflected in school genres and how their backgrounds, specific academic disciplines, and institutional goals affect those constructs, and how students negotiate various genres with which they come in contact.
Abstract: This qualitative research project, informed by ethnographic and feminist research methodologies, focuses on how students negotiate various genres with which they come in contact. Through the close analysis of a small, religious-affiliated, liberal arts college, this study examines how students' constructs of "self" are reflected in school genres and how their backgrounds, specific academic disciplines, and institutional goals affect those constructs. In order to conduct this analysis, activity theory is used to examine possible competing goals within the activity system (the college itself) and, in turn, how those goals can affect student writing. Since participant identity is an issue of activity systems, I examine identity through self-representation, as it has been theorized in autobiography studies. Combining activity theory and theories of self-representation and performance, I create a framework to explore how genres can simultaneously liberate and constrain and how students negotiate the various tensions they may encounter within an activity system. I identified myself completely with [my professor]…. I readily imitated his writing, took up in succession his pet phrases, adopted his tastes, his judgments, even imitated his voice and tender inflections, and in my papers presented him with an exact image of himself. (1993, p. 80)
5 citations
Cites background from "The Politics of Postmodernism"
...Within the various forms that autobiography takes, theorists have found that the subject is dynamic and changing over time, historically situated, and positioned within multiple discourses (Foucault, 1982; Hutcheon, 1989; Butler, 1990)....
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TL;DR: Ayni zamanda et al. as discussed by the authors have published an archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2010) with the title "Architectural Evolution: An Archicomic Viewpoint on Architecture Evolution".
Abstract: Kultur endustrisi tarafindan uretilen imgeler, icinde bulundugumuz gorsel iletisim caginda oldukca hizli cogaltilip yayilmaktadir. Imge yiginlarinin gunumuzdeki yukselisi, cagdas mimarlikta sus kavramini da etkilemektedir. Sus, temsil etme ozelligini geri kazanirken hizla uretilebilir ve cogaltilabilir olmustur. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) gibi bazi cagdas mimarlarin yapilarinda susun onemli bir yeri olmasina karsin bu yapilar mimarlik literaturunde susleme acisindan irdelenmemektedir. Bu yazida BIG’in Arlanda Oteli tasarimi (Stockholm, 2007), cagdas mimarlikta sus uzerinden tartisilmaktadir. Ayni zamanda, BIG’in Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution (2010) adli ilk monografini bir arac olarak kullanarak binanin metinsel ve gorsel temsiliyeti incelenmektedir. Arlanda Oteli’nin cepheleri, suslemeler araciligiyla Isvec kralligini temsil etmektedir. Cephelerin portre olusturacak bicimde tasarlanmasi, oncelikle BIG’in ironik tutumundan kaynaklanmaktadir. Yirminci yuzyilda postmodernizmin bir araci olan ironi, BIG ile yeniden gundeme gelmektedir. Projede tasarim girdisi olarak kullanilan ironi, rasyonel ve irrasyonel, olagan ve sira disilik, derinlik ve siglik arasinda gidip gelen bir dusunme dinamiginden olusur. Birbiriyle celisen anlamlari barindiran cok katmanli ironi kavrami, bu nedenle BIG’in mimarliginda kaygan bir zeminde gelisir. Cephelerin tasariminda Pop sanatcisi Andy Warhol’a yaptiklari gondermeler de BIG’in ironik durusunun bir parcasidir. Yapidaki suslemeler, prenses figurunu yeniden uretirken yapiyi saf gorsel bir imgeye ve seyirlik yuzeylere donusturur.
5 citations
Cites background from "The Politics of Postmodernism"
...Architects conceive irony as a double-coded parody, simultaneously justifying and undermining it (Hutcheon, 2002, 97; Petit, 2013, 8, 21, 40)....
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