in 1996, andrew c bulhak of monash university created a computer program called the postmodernism generator, which automatically produces imitations of postmodernist writing. “It’s a literally endless supply of randomly generated, syntactically correct nonsense that differs from the real thing only because it’s more fun to read,” wrote Richard Dawkins in his postmodernism disrobed article.
here, for example, is the real thing, written by postmodern psychoanalytic theorist felix guattari: “we can clearly see that there is no one-to-one correspondence between linear meaningful links or archi-writing, according to the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. the symmetry of scale, the transversality, the non-discursive pathic character of its expansion: all these dimensions distance us from the logic of the excluded third party and reinforce us in our rejection of the ontological binarism that we previously criticized.”
You are reading: Best books on postmodernism
for a long time I stopped writing about postmodernism, the elusive successor to modernism that seems to be an expression of neoliberal economics as much as an effort to dismantle cultural hierarchies. I didn’t want to waste time inside sentences like the ones quoted. even less did he want to inhabit its ugly buildings and formally playful novels. There’s so much James Stirling and Salman Rushdie that a man can take. but in the end I gave up, writing my new book Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern. I hope my book is about gibberish rather than an example of it.
Some of the 10 books below are full of high level nonsense and I’ve read several of them, dear reader, so you don’t have to. but some are magnificent writings that no generator of postmodernism could produce.
1. i love dick by chris kraus In this heroically unreliable memoir-novel, kraus follows her professor husband to california on sabbatical, falls in love with one of her colleagues, dick, and sends him lots of funny but unrequited letters. the rest of the book is the epistolary story of a woman, “chris kraus”, taking control of the narrative. This is despite the fact that in real life, postmodern critic Dick Hebdige sent Kraus a cease and desist letter, and compared her intrusion into her life to the harassment of Princess Diana by the press. what makes kraus’s book revolutionary is not only his recovery of female subjectivity and sexuality, but also his still shocking sense that truth and fiction are not opposites, but locked in a lubricious lambada.
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2. Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by FredRic JamesonThe Marxist theorist argues that art has been colonized by commerce. modernist art (think: van gogh transforming personal misery into beauty) sought to redeem the world, he suggests. postmodern art (think: jenny holzer putting up an electronic billboard over new york times square that says, “protect me from what i want” or damien hirst flagellating a diamond-encrusted skull for £50 million) was made by artists trapped in a world where they could barely change. “The image”, he writes, “is the commodity today, and for this reason it is vain to expect from it a negation of the logic of commodity production; That is why, finally, all beauty is meretricious.” all beauty is profanity, an incredible but plausible statement for our era.
3. The Problem of Gender: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler Is this randomly generated, syntactically correct nonsense or the book we need if we want to overthrow heteronormative patriarchy? it’s up to you. Postmodern artists like Cindy Sherman, David Bowie, and Madonna had already mocked the idea that gender is written and performed. Butler expanded on this theme in outrageously silly prose, praising drag for challenging “the exclusion of those who do not conform to the unspoken normative requirements of the subject.” what to say if someone dares you to watch danny la rue or rupaul.
4. The Postmodernist Always Rings Twice by Gilbert AdairIn the early 1990s, the Guardian’s arts editor had a brilliant idea. let’s have an intelligent critic steeped in postmodern French theory meditate on the production of cultural commodities of the week. Adair indulged with essays on theater, homosexuality, Umberto Eco, and more, the best of which are collected here. the title alone is worth the cover price. someone once asked him if he was the red adair of the texas tanker. no, adair unread, he replied sadly. let’s make him read again.
5. The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie The storm that resulted from the publication of this book typified the clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington would later argue was emerging after the Cold War. on the one hand, a pre-modern Islamic believer who believes in the absolute truth of the Koran. on the other, a godless sophisticated novelist who apparently betrays his heritage and mocks the Muslim saints. even if he’s not convinced that the satanic verses are postmodern, i hope he’ll admit that the larry david episode curbed his enthusiasm for the matter is sheer pomp. there larry produces a broadway musical called fatwa! which, before passing through innumerable veils of irony and pastiche, culminates in a duet of Rushdie and Ayatollah Khomeini on their clashing worldviews.
6. the language of postmodern architecture by charles jencks “boom, boom, boom,” wrote jencks, the basil brush of postmodern theory. he was writing about the moment the modern world died: at 3:32 p.m. m. in st. louis, missouri, on july 15, 1972. the blowing up of the notorious pruit-igoe housing scheme was a noise that echoed around the world. The 1977 book of his describes what arose from the dust of him.
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7. learning from las vegas by robert venturi, denise scott brown, and steven izenourthis 1972 book praised the architecture of the vegas strip, that ostensibly democratic conflagration of desert signs, that city financed through stupidity and human greed, i.e. gambling. the authors considered this postmodern sodom and gomorrah and saw it as a popular, commercial and fun replica to the largely socialist and completely unfunny patrician architecture of modernism.
8. A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Although even more unrepentantly incomprehensible than its anti-Oedipus companion, A Thousand Plateaus is valuable because it contains one of the key insights of postmodern theory. “it is strange”, the authors write, “how the tree has dominated western reality and all western thought, from botany to anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, all of philosophy: … the root-foundation, grund , racine, fondement.” they propose another network structure, the rhizome, to replace that of the tree as a model of culture. “the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system that traces causality along time lines and looks for the original source of ‘things’ and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those ‘things’”. There is more, much more, of this and all of it in Bloomsbury’s translation printed in an appropriately foul font as if they were intended to make the text even more inscrutable. enjoy!
9. the condition of postmodernity by david harveythe british marxist geographer argues that neoliberalism is either a utopian project to reorganize international capitalism or a political program to restore power to economic elites. He suggests that it is the latter, and that the role of postmodernism is to be the cultural servant of the political goals of Thatcher, Reagan and others. he demonstrates his thesis with the clear graphs, data, and arguments that postmodern theorists often disdain.
10. infinity joke by david foster wallace the title of this baggy monster of a 1058-page novel refers to an elusive movie that terrorists are trying to get their hands on because watching it is debilitating, even killing yourself for pleasure. maybe these terrorists can entertain Americans to death, destroying the evil empire with the same cultural weaponry it deployed on its own citizens and exported around the world. good luck with that, guys. “Entertainment’s main job is to make you so entranced you can’t look away, so advertisers can advertise,” Foster Wallace said in a 1996 interview to promote the novel. “and the tension of [the infinity joke] is trying to make it extremely entertaining and also a little distorted, and to wake the reader up to some of the things that are sinister in entertainment.” the tragedy of the book, as with much of postmodern culture, is that it managed to entertain, but did it awaken us to the sinister lure of entertainment? not so much.
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everything, all the time everywhere: how we became postmodern by stuart jeffries published by verse. to support the guardian and the observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. shipping charges may apply
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