“Postmodernism is ______” Project

As we continue to explore texts that could fall under the term “Postmodern,” students are investigating the notoriously ambiguous term / genre / movement / party / era / manifesto / belief system of postmodernism by compiling a list of other peoples ideas, which they will then post below.

In Klosterman’s collection of essays titled Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, he argues:

Without even trying, TV watchers have developed an amazingly sophisticated view of postmodernism, even if they would never use the word postmodern in any conversation (or even be able to define it) [. . .] This is partially because everyone who does use postmodern in casual conversation seems to define it differently, usually in accordance with whatever argument they’re trying to illustrate. I think the best definition is the simplest: “Any art that is conscious of the fact that it is, in fact art.”

And, in Posmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederick Jameson states:

The postmodernisms have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole “degraded” landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader’s Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy novel: materials they no longer simply “quote;” as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but incorporate into their very substance.

Postmodernism is _____________