Theories of Postmodernism
(Cultural Studies)
Schedule: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12 Noon – 2pm
Location:...
Instructor: Klaus J. Milich (MALS, American Studies)
Description:
Although Fredric Jameson considers postmodernism theory to be "the effort to take the temperature of the age without instruments and in a situation in which we are not even sure there is so coherent a thing as an 'age,' or 'zeitgeist' or 'system' or 'current situation' any longer," it has been claimed that the shift from modernism to postmodernism could be identified in a number of symptoms: from urban planning and architecture to various stylistic features of literature, theater, film, music, dance, and painting, to MTV, CNN, and the internet.
Cyberspace, and cyborg fantasies are deemed to be just as postmodern as the threat of nuclear and ecological self-destruction, globalization and deregulation, or the morbid projections of generation X. Given the plurality of interpretations, it is hardly surprising that "postmodernism" is often accused of being an arbitrary buzzword. More than any other term, it has provoked highly contradictory descriptions of its political goals, cultural functions, historical emergence, disciplinary location, and geopolitical realm.
By way of examining the most pertinent theories of postmodernism (Irving Howe, Susan Sontag, Leslie Fiedler, Fredric Jameson, Ihab Hassan, François Lyotard, Jürgen Habermas, Andreas Huyssen), this course tries to capture an understanding of whether the term designates a certain aesthetic strategy, a historical period, or a particular way of thinking most prominently associated with poststructuralism and deconstruction:
How can we understand the shift from modernism to postmodernism if all academic disciplines employ their own distinct understanding of discontinuity, periodization, and change?
What concept of modernism is at stake when we talk about a postmodern turn?
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