Mapping Modernism / Postmodernism
This table is designed, in a very unpostmodern way, to lay out nice, neat binary oppositions between "modernisms" and "postmodernisms." It draws upon and synthesizes similar charts or lists in the works of Ihab Hassan, Donna Haraway, Frederic Jameson, David Harvey and Jean-Francois Lyotard, among others. Taken as a snapshot of a dynamic set of processes, it can perhaps be useful in setting up some initial definitions of the postmodern. But note that in one reading of pomo, modernism remains present even as it is posted. So watch the right column blur into, challenge, and momentarily obliterate the left column.Then watch the whole chart disappear, then reappear as historical materialism.
Modernism | Postmodernism | |
Socioeconomics | Monopoly Capital Production Goods / Things Centralized Semi-Autonomous Culture |
Multinational Capital Reproduction Services / Images / Information Decentralized Commodified Culture |
Poetics | Emotions Subjectivity Character Plot Parody Art Object Autonomy High / Pop Distinct Detective Model Historical Temporal Organization Original Closed Form / Product Epistemology Universalizing Individual Style Order Author Readerly Metaphor Paranoia |
Random Intensities Decentered Subject Caricature Labyrinth Pastiche Text Intertextuality Highpop Blend Sci Fi Model Historical(?) Spatial Organization Copy Process Ontology Localizing Free-Floating Codes Chance Discursive Field Writerly Metonomy Schizophrenia |
Representative Fields and Figures | ||
Architecture Music Film Painting Dance Psychology Philosophy Sociology |
Le Courbusier / Wright Stravinsky Hitchcock / Renoir Van Gogh / Expressionism Duncan Freud Sartre Marx |
Portman / Venturi Cage DePalma / Lynch Pop/ Photorealism Cunningham Lacan Derrida Baudrillard |
Miscellaneous Figurations | Representation Organism Biology TB Physiology Reproduction Mind Labor |
Simulation Cyborg Immunology AIDS Biotechnology Replication Artificial Intelligence Robotics |