Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 14:48:40 -0800 Subject: Re: PMC: What is Postmodernism: A Demand Bayard G. Bell wrote: > Donald Turner wrote: > > > > What does art that presents a "stronger sense of the > unpresentable" (p.81) > > look like? Are there examples of this today? I think excerpting the full above gives us a clue to work with. The sentence that contains the passage you site says: "The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentation, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable. A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to a predetermining judgment, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for." Consider this paraphrase: "The postmodern would be that which that which denies itself the solace of good forms, that which does not rely on a consensus of taste. If it did rely on a consensus of taste, it could more easily share with the collective sense of nostalgia for the unattainable, perhaps a past economic dream, or a perhaps just a simpler time. But the postmodern does not use ready-at-hand devices to call attention to that which is unpresentable because that would be to pretend that the unpresentable is really presentable after all. Instead, the postmodern searches for new ways of presenting things, new rules of grammar, new concepts that will illuminate what has not been illuminated before." In other words, I believe that he is saying that the postmodern is not concerned with that which is forever unpresentable (as in pure thought thinking about itself) but rather that the postmodern invents new and creative ways to uncover what has been previously unpresentable. That is why he says (p.79) that "Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state..." In other words, postmodernism takes an undefined context and discovers new ways to make sense of it. Once it is made sense of, then this sense can be institutionalized through consensus and good taste. In this way, we can become "witnesses to the unpresentable." (p.82). ..Lois Shawver
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