Defamiliarization



Glossary of Literary Theory
by Greig E. Henderson & Christopher Brown

Defamiliarization:

A term used by the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky to describe the capacity of art to counter the deadening effect of habit and convention by investing the familiar with strangeness and thereby deautomatizing perception. Defamiliarization is not simply a question of perception; it is the essence of "literariness." Calling attention to its techniques and conventions ("baring the device"), literature exposes its autonomy and artificiality by foregrounding and defamiliarizing its devices.

sat·ire (săt'īr') pronunciation
n.
    1. A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
    2. The branch of literature constituting such works. See synonyms at caricature.
  1. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.

[Latin satira, probably alteration (influenced by Greek satur, satyr, and saturos, burlesque of a mythical episode), of (lanx) satura, fruit (plate) mixture, from feminine of satur, sated, well-fitted.]


car·i·ca·ture (kăr'ĭ-kə-chʊr', -chər) pronunciation
n.
    1. A representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect.
    2. The art of creating such representations.
  1. A grotesque imitation or misrepresentation: The trial was a caricature of justice.
tr.v., -tured, -tur·ing, -tures.

To represent or imitate in an exaggerated, distorted manner.

[French, from Italian caricatura, from caricare, to load, exaggerate, from Late Latin carricāre, from Latin carrus, a Gallic type of wagon.]

car'i·ca·tur'ist n.

SYNONYMS  caricature, burlesque, parody, travesty, satire, lampoon. These nouns denote artistic forms in which someone or something is imitated in an amusing and generally critical manner. A caricature grossly exaggerates a distinctive or striking feature with intent to ridicule: drew a caricature of the politician. Burlesque, which usually denotes a dramatic work, suggests outlandish mimicry and broad comedy to provoke laughter: a burlesque playing at the theater. Parody, travesty, and satire generally apply to written works. Parody employs the manner and style of a well-known work or writer for a ludicrous effect: wrote a parody of the famous novel. A travesty is a harshly distorted imitation: a travesty of morality. Satire usually involves ridiculing follies and vices: employs satire in her poetry. A lampoon is a malicious but broadly humorous satire: a lampoon authored by a standup comic.

WORD HISTORY   The history of the word caricature takes us back through the centuries to a time when the Romans occupied Gaul, offering the blessings of civilization to the Gauls but also borrowing from them as well. One such borrowing, the Gaulish word *karros, meaning “a wagon or cart,” became Latin carrus, “a Gallic type of wagon.” This Latin word has continued to roll through the English language, giving us car, career, cargo, carry, and charge, among others. Caricature, another offspring of carrus, came to us via French from Italian, in which caricatura, the source of the French word, was derived from Italian caricare, “to load, burden, or exaggerate.” Caricare in turn came from Late Latin carricāre, “to load,” derived from the Romans' Gaulish borrowing carrus.



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Thesaurus

caricature

noun

    A false, derisive, or impudent imitation of something: burlesque, farce, mock, mockery, parody, sham, travesty. Seerespect/contempt/standing, same/different/compare.

verb

    To copy (the manner or expression of another), especially in an exaggerated or mocking way: ape, burlesque, imitate, mimic, mock, p
post·mod·ern (pōst-mŏd'ərn) pronunciation
adj.

Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: “It [a roadhouse]is so architecturally interesting . . . with its postmodern wooden booths and sculptural clock” (Ruth Reichl).

post·mod'ern·ism n.
post·mod'ern·ist adj. & n.

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Encyclopedia

postmodernism, term used to designate a multitude of trends—in the arts, philosophy, religion, technology, and many other areas—that come after and deviate from the many 20th-cent. movements that constituted modernism. The term has become ubiquitous in contemporary discourse and has been employed as a catchall for various aspects of society, theory, and art. Widely debated with regard to its meaning and implications, postmodernism has also been said to relate to the culture of capitalism as it has developed since the 1960s. In general, the postmodern view is cool, ironic, and accepting of the fragmentation of contemporary existence. It tends to concentrate on surfaces rather than depths, to blur the distinctions between high and low culture, and as a whole to challenge a wide variety of traditional cultural values.

The term postmodernism is probably most specific and meaningful when used in relation to architecture, where it designates an international architectural movement that emerged in the 1960s, became prominent in the late 1970s and 80s, and remained a dominant force in the 1990s. The movement largely has been a reaction to the orthodoxy, austerity, and formal absolutism of the International Style. Postmodern architecture is characterized by the incorporation of historical details in a hybrid rather than a pure style, by the use of decorative elements, by a more personal and exaggerated style, and by references to popular modes of building.

Practitioners of postmodern architecture have tended to reemphasize elements of metaphor, symbol, and content in their credos and their work. They share an interest in mass, surface colors, and textures and frequently use unorthodox building materials. However, because postmodern architects have in common only a relatively vague ideology, the style is extremely varied. Greatly affected by the writings of Robert Venturi, postmodernism is evident in Venturi's buildings and, among others, in the work of Denise Scott Brown, Michael Graves, Robert A. M. Stern, Arata Isozaki, and the later work of Philip Johnson.

See also contemporary art.


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Fine Arts

postmodernism

A movement, particularly in architecture, that reacted against the pared-down modern school by reintroducing classical and traditional elements of style. An example of this style is Philip Johnson's AT&T Building in New York City.



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Obscure

postmodernism

genre of art and literature and especially architecture in reaction against the philosophy and practices of modern movements that is typically marked by revival of traditional elements and techniques (but virtually meaningless in other contexts)


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WordNet

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The adjective postmodern has one meaning:

Meaning #1: of or relating to postmodernism
  Synonym: postmodernist
  Pertains to noun: postmodernism (meaning #1)



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Wikipedia

postmodernism

Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.

In architecture, art, music and literature, postmodernism is a name for many stylistic reactions to, and developments from, modernism. Postmodern style is often characterized by eclecticism, digression, collage, pastiche, and irony. Some artistic movements commonly called postmodern are pop art, architectural deconstructivism, magical realism in literature, maximalism, and neo-romanticism. Postmodern theorists see postmodern art as a conflation or reversal of well-established modernist systems, such as the roles of artist versus audience, seriousness versus play, or high culture versus kitsch.

In sociology, postmodernism is described as being the result of economic, cultural and demographic changes, related terms in this context include post-industrial society, Late capitalism, and it is attributed to factors the rise of the service economy, the importance of the mass media and the rise of an increasingly interdependent world economy. (See also Postmodern, Information age, Globalization, Global village, Media theory).

As a cultural movement, postmodernism is an aspect of postmodernity, which is broadly defined as the condition of Western society after modernity. The adjective postmodern can refer to aspects of either postmodernism or postmodernity. According to postmodern theorist Jean-François Lyotard, postmodernity is characterized as an "incredulity toward metanarratives", meaning that in the era of postmodern culture, people have lost faith in grand, universal stories, and have instead begun to organize their cultural life around a variety of more local and subcultural myths and stories. See La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) in 1979, and the results of acceptance of postmodernism is the view that different realms of discourse are incomensurable and incapable of judging the results of other discourse, a conclusion he drew in La Differend (1983).

In philosophy, where the term is extensively used, it applies to movements that include post-structuralism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, gender studies and literary theory, sometimes called simply "theory". It emerged beginning in the 1950's as a critique of doctrines such as positivism and emphasizes the importance of power relationships, personalization and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. In this context it has been used by many critical theorists to assert that postmodernism is a break with the artistic and philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment, which they characterize as a quest for an ever-grander and more universal system of aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge. They present postmodernism as a radical criticism of Western philosophy. Postmodern philosophy draws on a number of approaches to criticize Western thought, including historicism, and psychoanalytic theory.

The term postmodernism is also used in a broader pejorative sense to describe attitudes, sometimes part of the general culture, and sometimes specifically aimed at postmodern critical theory, perceived as relativist, nihilist, counter-Enlightenment or antimodern, particularly in relationship to critiques of rationalism, universalism, or science. It is also sometimes used to describe social changes which are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality, particularly by evangelical Christians.

The role, proper usage, and meaning of postmodernism are matters of intense debate and vary widely with context.


Postmodernism series

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Postmodernity
Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern literature
Postmodern music
Critical theory
Globalization
Minimalism in Art
Minimalism in Music
Consumerism


The development of postmodernism

Features of postmodern culture begin to arise in the 1920s with the emergence of the dada movement, which featured collage and a focus on the framing of objects and discourse as being as important, or more important, than the work itself. Another strand which would have tremendous impact on post-modernism would be the existentialists, who placed the centrality of the individual narrative as being the source of morals and understanding. However, it is with the end of the Second World War that recognizably post-modernist attitudes begin to emerge.

Central to these is the focusing on the problems of any knowledge which is founded on anything external to an individual. Post-modernism, while widely diverse in its forms, almost invariably begins from the problem of knowledge which is broadly disseminated in its form, but not limited in its interpretation. Post-modernism rapidly developed a vocabulary of anti-enlightenment rhetoric, used to argue that rationality was neither as sure or as clear as rationalists supposed, and that knowledge was inherently linked to time, place, social position and other factors from which an individual constructs their view of knowledge. To escape from constructed knowledge, it then becomes necessary to critique it, and thus deconstruct the asserted knowledge. Jacques Derrida argued that to defend against the inevitable self-deconstruction of knowledge, systems of power, called hegemony would have to postulate an original utterance, the logos. This "privileging" of an original utterance is called "logocentrism". Instead of rooting knowledge in particular utterances, or "texts", the basis of knowledge was seen to be in the free play of discourse itself, an idea rooted in Wittgenstein's idea of a language game. This emphasis on the allowability of free play within the context of conversation and discourse leads postmodernism to adopt the stance of irony, paradox, textual manipulation, reference and tropes.

Armed with this process of questioning the social basis of assertions, postmodernist philosophers began to attack unities of modernism, and particularly unities seen as being rooted in the Enlightenment. Since Modernism had made the Enlightenment a central source of its superiority over the Victorian and Romantic periods, this attack amounted to an indirect attack on the establishment of modernism itself. Perhaps the most striking examples of this skepticism are to be found in the works of French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. In his book Simulacra and Simulation, he contends that social 'reality' no longer exists in the conventional sense, but has been supplanted by an endless procession of simulacra. The mass media, and other forms of mass cultural production, generate constant re-appropriation and re-contextualisation of familiar cultural symbols and images, fundamentally shifting our experience away from 'reality', to 'hyperreality'. Along this line, it is significant that the beginning of postmodern architecture is not considered to be the construction of any great building, but the destruction of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe housing project (see Minoru Yamasaki).

Postmodernism therefore has an obvious distrust toward claims about truth, ethics, or beauty being rooted in anything other than individual perception and group construction. Utopian ideals of universally applicable truths or aesthetics give way to provisional, decentered, local petit recits which, rather than referencing an underlying universal truth or aesthetic, point only to other ideas and cultural artifacts, themselves subject to interpretation and re-interpretation. The "truth", since it can only be understood by all of its connections is perpetually "deferred", never reaching a point of fixed knowledge which can be called "the truth." This emphasis on construction and consensus is often used to attack science, as the Sokal Affair shows.

Postmodernism is often used in a larger sense, meaning the entire trend of thought in the late 20th century, and the social and philosophical realities of that period. Marxist critics argue that post-modernism is symptomatic of "late capitalism" and the decline of institutions, particularly the nation-state. Other thinkers assert that post-modernity is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting and a society conditioned to mass production and mass political decision making. The ability of knowledge to be endlessly copied defeats attempts to constrain interpretation, or to set "originality" by simple means such as the production of a work. From this perspective, the schools of thought labelled "postmodern" are not as widely at odds with their time period as the polemics and arguments appear, pointing, for example, to the shift of the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional consensus of scientists, as posited by Thomas Kuhn. Post-modernism is seen, in this view, as being conscious of the nature of the discontinuity between modern and post-modern periods which is generally present.

Postmodernism has manifestations in many modern academic and non-academic disciplines: philosophy, theology, art, architecture, film, television, music, theatre, sociology, fashion, technology, literature, and communications are all heavily influenced by postmodern trends and ideas, and are thoroughly scrutinised from postmodern perspectives. Crucial to these are the denial of customary expectations, the use of non-orthogonal angles in buildings such as the work of Frank Gehry, and the shift in arts exemplified by the rise of minimalism in art and music. Post-modern philosophy often labels itself as critical theory and grounds the construction of identity in the mass media.

(Note: "post-modern" tends to be used by critics, "postmodern" by supporters. This may be because postmodern is considered merely a symbol and its meaning (as obtained through simple linguistic analysis) can be ignored.)

Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the 1980s, but as a cultural movement it predates them by many years. Exactly when modernism began to give way to postmodernism is difficult to pinpoint, if not simply impossible. Some theorists reject that such a distinction even exists, viewing postmodernism, for all its claims of fragmentation and plurality, as still existing within a larger 'modernist' framework. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas is a strong proponent of this view, which has aspects of a lumpers/splitters problem: is the entire 20th century one period, or two distinct periods?

The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French academia. In 1979 Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short but influential work The Postmodern Condition : a report on knowledge. Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes (in his more post-structural work) are also strongly influential in postmodern theory. Postmodernism is closely allied with several contemporary academic disciplines, most notably those connected with sociology. Many of its assumptions are integral to feminist and post-colonial theory.

Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s as the earliest trend out of cultural modernity toward postmodernism.

Tracing it further back, some identify its roots in the breakdown of Hegelian idealism, and the impact of both World Wars (perhaps even the concept of a World War). Heidegger and Derrida were influential in re-examining the fundamentals of knowledge, together with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of action, Soren Kierkegaard's and Karl Barth's important fideist approach to theology, and even the nihilism of Nietzsche's philosophy. Michel Foucault's application of Hegel to thinking about the body is also identified as an important landmark. While it is rare to pin down the specific origins of any large cultural shift, it is fair to assume that postmodernism represents an accumulated disillusionment with the promises of the Enlightenment project and its progress of science, so central to modern thinking.

The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological insights appear conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism, even the peace movement and various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. Unsurprisingly, none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement, but reflect or, in true postmodern style, borrow from some of its core ideas.

Early usage of the term

In an essay From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global Context, [1] (http://www.ihabhassan.com/postmodernism_to_postmodernity.htm) Ihab Hassan points out a number of instances in which the term postmodernism was used before the term became popular:

Also, many cite Charles Jencks' 1977 "The Language of Postmodern Architecture" among the earliest works which shaped the use of the term today.

Postmodernism's manifestations

Postmodernism in language

Postmodern philosophers are often regarded as difficult to read, and the critical theory that has sprung up in the wake of postmodernism has often been ridiculed for its stilted syntax and attempts to combine polemical tone and a vast array of new coinages. However, similar charges could be levelled at the works of previous eras, such as the works of Immanuel Kant, as well as at the entire tradition of Greek thought in antiquity.

More important to postmodernism's role in language is the focus on the implied meaning of words and forms, the power structures that are accepted as part of the way words are used, from the use of the word "Man" with a capital "M" to refer to the collective humanity, to the default of the word "he" in English as a pronoun for a person of gender unknown to the speaker, or as a casual replacement for the word "one". This, however, is merely the most obvious example of the changing relationship between diction and discourse which postmodernism presents.

An important concept in postmodernism's view of language is the idea of "play". In the context of postmodernism, play means changing the framework which connects ideas, and thus allows the troping, or turning, of a metaphor or word from one context to another, or from one frame of reference to another. Since, in postmodern thought, the "text" is a series of "markings" whose meaning is imputed by the reader, and not by the author, this play is the means by which the reader constructs or interprets the text, and the means by which the author gains a presence in the reader's mind. Play then involves invoking words in a manner which undermines their authority, by mocking their assumptions or style, or by layers of misdirection as to the intention of the author.

This view of writing is not without harsh detractors, who regard it as needlessly difficult and obscure, and a violation of the implicit contract of lucidity between author and reader: that an author has something to communicate, and shall choose words which transmit the idea as transparently as possible to the reader. Thus postmodernism in language has often been identified with poor writing and communication skills. The term pomobabble came to be within pop culture to illustrate this trend.

Postmodernism in art

Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art, postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction. A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and high art forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favors eclecticism, the mixing of ideas and forms. Partly due to this rejection, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness, commonly referred to as jouissance by postmodern theorists. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not approach this fragmentation as somehow faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates it. As the gravity of the search for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced with 'play'. As postmodern icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said: 'Stop making sense'.

Post-modernity, in attacking the perceived elitist approach of Modernism, sought greater connection with broader audiences. This is often labelled 'accessibility' and is a central point of dispute in the question of the value of postmodern art. It has also embraced the mixing of words with art, collage and other movements in modernity, in an attempt to create more multiplicity of medium and message. Much of this centers on a shift of basic subject matter: postmodern artists regard the mass media as a fundamental subject for art, and use forms, tropes, and materials - such as banks of video monitors, found art, and depictions of media objects - as focal points for their art. Andy Warhol is an early example of postmodern art in action, with his appropriation of common popular symbols and "ready-made" cultural artifacts, bringing the previously mundane or trivial onto the previously hallowed ground of high art.

Postmodernism's critical stance is interlinked with presenting new appraisals of previous works. As implied above the works of the "Dada" movement received greater attention, as did collagists such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works were initially considered unimportant in the context of the modernism of the 1950s, but who, by the 1980s, began to be seen as seminal. Post-modernism also elevated the importance of cinema in artistic discussions, placing it on a peer level with the other fine arts. This is both because of the blurring of distinctions between "high" and "low" forms, and because of the recognition that cinema represented the creation of simulacra which was later duplicated in the other arts.

Postmodernism in architecture

Main Article Postmodern architecture

As with many cultural movements, one of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional, and formalized, shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics; styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

Postmodern architects include: Philip Johnson (later works), John Burgee, Robert Venturi, Ricardo Boffil, James Stirling and Frank Gehry.

Postmodernism in literature

Main article Postmodern literature

Postmodern literature argues for expansion, the return of reference, the celebration of fragmentation rather than the fear of it, and the role of reference itself in literature. While drawing on the experimental tendencies of authors such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in English, and Borges in Spanish, who were taken as influences by American postmodern works by authors such as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Don Delillo, David Foster Wallace and Paul Auster, the advocates of post-modern literature argue that the present is fundamentally different from the modern period, and therefore requires a new literary sensibility.

Postmodernism in music

Main article: Postmodern music

Deconstruction

Main article: Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a tool of postmodernism that was itself constructed by the philosopher and textual artist Jacques Derrida. His work argues that all texts are polysemous (have more than one 'meaning') and that this can be demonstrated by close textual analysis. To 'deconstruct' a text, therefore, is to show the internal tensions and contradictions within it, as it attempts (and inevitably fails) to provide one coherent and singular 'meaning'. Most people use deconstruction simply to mean the analysis of the binaries within an idea.

Postmodernism in philosophy

Main article: Postmodern philosophy

Many figures in the 20th century philosophy of mathematics are identified as "postmodern" due to their rejection of mathematics as a strictly neutral point of view. Some figures in the philosophy of science, especially Thomas Samuel Kuhn and David Bohm, are also so viewed. Some see the ultimate expression of postmodernism in science and mathematics in the cognitive science of mathematics, which seeks to characterize the habit of mathematics itself as strictly human, and based in human cognitive bias.

The term "Neo-liberalism" has been used in a theological sense (http://www.adrian.warnock.info/2004/12/why-neo-liberal.htm,) as a drive to deliberately modify the beliefs and practices of the church (especially evangelical) to conform to post-modernism

Postmodernism and post-structuralism

In terms of frequently cited works, postmodernism and post-structuralism overlap quite significantly. Some philosophers, such as Francois Lyotard, can legitimately be classified into both groups. This is partly due to the fact that both modernism and structuralism owe much to the Enlightenment project.

Structuralism has a strong tendency to be scientific in seeking out stable patterns in observed phenomena - an epistemological attitude which is quite compatible with Enlightenment thinking, and incompatible with postmodernists. At the same time, findings from structuralist analysis carried a somewhat anti-Enlightenment message, revealing that rationality can be found in the minds of 'savage' people, just in forms differing from those that people from 'civilized' societies are used to seeing. Implicit here is a critique of the practice of colonialism, which was partly justified as a 'civilizing' process by which wealthier societies bring knowledge, manners, and reason to less 'civilized' ones.

Post-structuralism, emerging as a response to the structuralists' scientific orientation, has kept the cultural relativism in structuralism, while discarding the scientific orientations.

One clear difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism is found in their respective attitudes towards the demise of the project of the Enlightenment: post-structuralism is fundamentally ambivalent, while postmodernism is decidedly celebratory.

Another difference is the nature of the two positions. While post-structuralism is a position in philosophy, encompassing views on human beings, language, body, society, and many other issues, it is not a name of an era. Post-modernism, on the other hand, is closely associated with "post-modern" era, a period in the history coming after the modern age.

Postmodernity and digital communications

Technological utopianism is a common trait in Western history - from the 1700's when Adam Smith essentially labelled technological progress as the source of the Wealth of Nations, through the novels of Jules Verne in the late 1800's, through Winston Churchill's belief that there was little an inventor could not achieve. Its manifestation in the post-modernity was first through the explosion of analog mass broadcasting of television. Strongly associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan who argued that "the medium is the message", the ability of mass broadcasting to create visual symbols and mass action was seen as a liberating force in human affairs, even at the same time others were calling television "a vast wasteland".

The second wave of technological utopianism associated with post-modern thought came with the introduction of digital internetworking, and became identified with Esther Dyson and such popular outlets as Wired Magazine. According to this view digital communications makes the fragmentation of modern society a positive feature, since individuals can seek out those artistic, cultural and community experiences which they regard as being correct for themselves.

The common thread is that the fragmentation of society and communication gives the individual more autonomy to create their own environment and narrative. This links into the post-modern novel, which deals with the experience of structuring "truth" from fragments.

Postmodernism and its critics

The term postmodernism is often used pejoratively to describe tendencies perceived of as Relativist, Counter-enlightenment or antimodern. Particularly in relationship to critiques of Rationalism, Universalism or Science. Sometimes used to describe tendencies in the society which are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality, particularly by Evangelical Christians.

Charles Murray, a strong critic of postmodernism, defines the term:

"By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the overarching label that is attached to this perspective." [1]

Though Murray's arguments against postmodernism are far from facile, critics have cautioned that Murray's own work in The Bell Curve arrives at racist conclusions through research and argumentation that show flagrant disregard for the very standards he defends.

One example is the figure of Harold Bloom, who has simultaneously been hailed as being against multiculturalism and contemporary "fads" in literature, and also placed as an important figure in postmodernism. If even the critics cannot keep score as to which side of a supposedly clear line figures stand on, the best conclusion that can be drawn is that conclusions about membership in the post-modern club are provisional.

Central to the debate is the role of the concept of "objectivity" and what it means. In the broadest sense, denial of objectivity is held to be the post-modern position, and a hostility towards claims advanced on the basis of objectivity its defining feature. It is this underlying hostility toward the concept of objectivity, evident in many contemporary critical theorists, that is the common point of attack for critics of postmodernism. Many critics characterise postmodernism as an ephemeral phenomenon that cannot be adequately defined simply because, as a philosophy at least, it represents nothing more substantial than a series of disparate conjectures allied only in their distrust of modernism.

This antipathy of postmodernists towards modernism, and their consequent tendency to define themselves against it, has also attracted criticism. It has been argued that modernity was not actually a lumbering, totalizing monolith at all, but in fact was itself dynamic and ever-changing; the evolution, therefore, between 'modern' and 'postmodern' should be seen as one of degree, rather than of kind - a continuation rather than a 'break'. One theorist who takes this view is Marshall Berman, whose book All That is Solid Melts into Air (a quote from Marx) reflects in its title the fluid nature of 'the experience of modernity'.

As noted above (see History of postmodernism), some theorists such as Habermas even argue that the supposed distinction between the 'modern' and the 'postmodern' does not exist at all, but that the latter is really no more than a development within a larger, still-current, 'modern' framework. Many who make this argument are left academics with Marxist leanings, such as Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and David Harvey (social geographer), who are concerned that postmodernism's undermining of Enlightenment values makes a progressive cultural politics difficult, if not impossible. How can we effect any change in people's poor living conditions, in inequality and injustice, if we don't accept the validity of underlying universals such as the 'real world' and 'justice' in the first place? How is any progress to be made through a philosophy so profoundly skeptical of the very notion of progress, and of unified perspectives? The critics charge that the postmodern vision of a tolerant, pluralist society in which every political ideology is perceived to be as valid, or as redundant, as the other; may ultimately encourage individuals to lead lives of a rather disastrous apathetic quietism. This reasoning leads Habermas to compare postmodernism with conservatism and the preservation of the status quo.

Such critics often argue that, in actual fact, such postmodern premises are rarely, if ever, actually embraced — that if they were, we would be left with nothing more than a crippling radical subjectivism. That the projects of the Enlightenment and modernity are alive and well can be seen in the justice system, in science, in political rights movements, in the very idea of universities; and so on.

To some critics, there seems, indeed, to be a glaring contradiction in maintaining the death of objectivity and privileged position on one hand, while the scientific community continues a project of unprecedented scope to unify various scientific disciplines into a theory of everything, on the other. Hostility toward hierarchies of value and objectivity becomes similarly problematic when postmodernity itself attempts to analyse such hierarchies with, apparently, some measure of objectivity and make categorical statements concerning them.

Such critics see postmodernism as, essentially, a kind of semantic gamesmanship, more sophistry than substance. Postmodernism's proponents are often criticised for a tendency to indulge in exhausting, verbose stretches of rhetorical gymnastics, which critics feel sound important but are ultimately meaningless. (Some postmodernists may argue that this is precisely the point.) In the Sokal Affair, Alan Sokal, a physicist, wrote a deliberately nonsensical article purportedly about interpreting physics and mathematics in terms of postmodern theory, which was nevertheless published by the Left-leaning Social Text, a journal which he and most of the scientific community considered as postmodernist. Notable among Sokal's false arguments published in Social Text was that the value of π changed over time and that the strength of Earth's gravity was relative to the observer. Sokal claimed this highlighted the postmodern tendency to value rhetoric and verbal gamesmanship over serious meaning. Sokal also co-wrote Fashionable Nonsense, which criticizes the inaccurate use of scientific terminology in intellectual writing and finishes with a critique of some forms of postmodernism. Ironically, postmodern literature often self-consciously plays on the format and structure of scientific writing, emphasizing the distinction between the complex content of the world and its understanding in written form. To borrow a phrase from René Magritte, some postmodern literature and art says "This is not a pipe", pointing out that the form of technical writing is not necessarily connected to its content. The Sokal affair also generated political controversy, with conservative pundits parading it as proof of the irrelevance of the academic left, while leftists criticized Sokal of serving a conservative agenda. Sokal, meanwhile, identified himself as an "unabashed Old Leftist."

Some critics feel that postmodernism is so strongly linked to politics that it does not qualify as a philosophy. These critics claim that, inasmuch as many postmodernist arguments rely on charges of racism and ethnocentrism in traditional Western science, it is little more than an attempt by postmodernists to impose their own political agenda on the sciences. Meanwhile, other critics claim that postmodernism is nothing but a new trend of solipsism, and a complete withdrawal from the political sphere.

Whatever its philosophical value, postmodern phenomena can be observed in nearly all areas of Western capitalist cultures, and a postmodern theoretical approach can help explain much of this cultural condition, irrespective of whether it offers a coherent, functional epistemology.

Further reading

See also

Postmodern art

Theoretical postmodernism

neo-romanticism

(Disambiguation: you may be looking for Neoromanticism (music) or New Romantic (British pop music))

The term neo-romanticism is synonymous with post-Romanticism or late Romanticism. It is a long-lived movement in the arts and literature.

It is considered to be a reaction to naturalism. The naturalist in art stresses external observation, whereas the neo-romanticist adds feeling and internal observation. These artists tend to draw their inspiration from artists of the age of high romanticism, and from the sense of place they perceive in historic rural landscapes; and in this they react in general to the 'ugly' modern world of machines, new cities, and profit. Characteristic themes include longing for perfect love, utopian landscapes, nature reclaiming ruins, romantic death, and history-in-landscape. Neo-romanticism is often accused by critics of being too insular, too interested in figurative painting and beauty, too fond of intuition, too distrustful of ideological & theoretical ways of comprehending art, and too in love with the past and the idealised / spiritual / haunted landscape. A more persuasive criticism is that neo-romanticism lacks an adequate conception of evil in the modern world.

Neo-romanticism tended to shed somewhat the emphasis of Romanticism on 'the hero' and romantic nationalism. This was particularly so in the decades after both of the world wars


Cultural and political postmodernism

External links





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Translations

Translations for: Post-modern

Français (French)
post-moderne

Deutsch (German)
adj. - postmodern

Italiano (Italian)
postmoderno

Português (Portuguese)
adj. - pós-moderno

Español (Spanish)
adj. - posmoderno

Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - konstnärlig stilriktning

中国话 (Simplified Chinese)
adj. - 后现代主义的, 后现代派的

中國話 (Traditional Chinese)
adj. - 後現代主義的, 後現代派的

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - ポストモダニズムの

עברית‬ (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮חדיש במיוחד, פוסט-מודרני‬




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Mentioned In

postmodern is mentioned in the following topics:
pomo Polystylism
postmodern dance Churchill, Caryl (British playwright)
Postmodern art postmodern philosophy
Venturi, Robert Charles



maximalism

Maximalism is a term used in literature, art, and music to apply to post-minimalist movements or works, named in analogy with minimalism. It is not currently in wide use, though it has become more prominent as of 2004.

Maximalism as a genre in the plastic arts emphasises work-intensive practices and concentrates on the process of creation itself. Works from this genre are generally bright, sensual, and visually rich. Artists who do work described as maximalist tend to come from Asian countries, in particular China.

Maximalism is used to describe the very extended post-modern novels, such as those by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, where digression, reference, and elaboration of detail occupy a greater and greater fraction of the text. It is also called hysterical realism, a term coined by James Wood, who argues that it is a genre similar to magical realism.

Maximalism is used by some to describe composers such as John Luther Adams, who have "gone beyond" the origins of minimalist music.

In the more general sense "maximalism" is applied to any doctrine or school of thought that extends its basic principles to the largest possible area. For example a "maximalist" vision of a nation state is one that encompasses all of the areas where the nationality is abundant, a "maximalist" program in science asserts the strongest possible form of its axioms.

External links

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user

Paranoiac-critical method

From Wikipedia

The Paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s and often employed in the production of paintings and other artworks.

Origins

The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. In the mid-1930s Andre Breton wrote about a ‘fundamental crisis of the object’. The object began being thought of not as a fixed external object but also as an extension of our subjective self. One of the types of objects manifested in Surrealism was the phantom object.

According to Dali, these objects have a minimum of mechanical meaning, but when viewed the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious acts.

The paranoiac-critical arose from similar Surrealistic experiments with psychology and the creation of images such as Max Ernst’s frottage technique, which involved rubbing pencil or chalk over on paper over a textured surface and interpreting the phantom images visible in the texture on the paper.

Description

The aspect of paranoia that Dalí was interested in and which helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked. Dalí described the paranoiac-critical method as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

When employing the method when creating a work of art, an active process of the mind is used to visualise images in the work and incorporate these into the final product. An example of the resulting work is a double image or multiple image in which an ambiguous image can be interpreted in different ways.

André Breton hailed the method, saying that Dalí's paranoiac-critical method was an "instrument of primary importance" and that it "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis."

External links

Mise en scène

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(Redirected from Mise-en-scene)

In film theory, mise en scène [mizA~sEn] refers to everything that is to appear before the camera and its arrangement – sets, props, actors, costumes, camera movements and performances. The term was coined by early French film critics and means literally "put into the scene" or "setting in scene." In auteur theory, less creative directors are sometimes disparagingly called "metteurs en scène".

German filmmaking in the 1920s excelled at conveying tone, meaning, and information through mise en scène. Perhaps the most famous example of this was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari where the doctor's internal state of mind was represented in the sets and lighting.

It has also come to represent a style of conveying the information of a scene primarily through a single shot – often accompanied by camera movement. It is to be contrasted with multiple angles pieced together through editing.

In philosophy, where the term is extensively used, it applies to movements that include post-structuralism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, gender studies and literary theory, sometimes called simply "theory". It emerged beginning in the 1950s as a critique of doctrines such as positivism and emphasizes the importance of power relationships, personalization and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. In this context it has been used by many critical theorists to assert that postmodernism is a break with the artistic and philosophical tradition of the Enlightenment, which they characterize as a quest for an ever-grander and more universal system of aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge. They present postmodernism as a radical criticism of Western philosophy. Postmodern philosophy draws on a number of approaches to criticize Western thought, including historicism, and psychoanalytic theory.

The term postmodernism is also used in a broader pejorative sense to describe attitudes, sometimes part of the general culture, and sometimes specifically aimed at postmodern critical theory, perceived as relativist, nihilist, counter-Enlightenment or antimodern, particularly in relationship to critiques of rationalism, universalism, or science. It is also sometimes used to describe social changes which are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality, particularly by evangelical Christians.

Postmodernism in art

Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art, postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction. A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and high art forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favors eclecticism, the mixing of ideas and forms. Partly due to this rejection, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness, commonly referred to as jouissance by postmodern theorists. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not approach this fragmentation as somehow faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates it. As the gravity of the search for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced with 'play'. As postmodern icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said: 'Stop making sense'.

Post-modernity, in attacking the perceived elitist approach of Modernism, sought greater connection with broader audiences. This is often labelled 'accessibility' and is a central point of dispute in the question of the value of postmodern art. It has also embraced the mixing of words with art, collage and other movements in modernity, in an attempt to create more multiplicity of medium and message. Much of this centers on a shift of basic subject matter: postmodern artists regard the mass media as a fundamental subject for art, and use forms, tropes, and materials - such as banks of video monitors, found art, and depictions of media objects - as focal points for their art. Andy Warhol is an early example of postmodern art in action, with his appropriation of common popular symbols and "ready-made" cultural artifacts, bringing the previously mundane or trivial onto the previously hallowed ground of high art.

Postmodernism's critical stance is interlinked with presenting new appraisals of previous works. As implied above the works of the "Dada" movement received greater attention, as did collagists such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works were initially considered unimportant in the context of the modernism of the 1950s, but who, by the 1980s, began to be seen as seminal. Post-modernism also elevated the importance of cinema in artistic discussions, placing it on a peer level with the other fine arts. This is both because of the blurring of distinctions between "high" and "low" forms, and because of the recognition that cinema represented the creation of simulacra which was later duplicated in the other arts.

Postmodernism and its critics

The term postmodernism is often used pejoratively to describe tendencies perceived of as Relativist, Counter-enlightenment or antimodern. Particularly in relationship to critiques of Rationalism, Universalism or Science. Sometimes used to describe tendencies in the society which are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality, particularly by Evangelical Christians.

Charles Murray, a strong critic of postmodernism, defines the term:

"By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the overarching label that is attached to this perspective." [1]

Critical theory

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This article is a discussion of critical theory in its most general sense. For the more specific use of the term, see: critical theory (Frankfurt School)


Postmodernism series

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Critical theory
Globalization
Minimalism in Art
Minimalism in Music
Consumerism

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is a general term for new theoretical developments (roughly since the 1960s) in a variety of fields, informed by structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, Marxist theory, and several other areas of thought. It encompasses many related developments in literary theory (which is often a rough synonym) and cultural studies, aesthetics, theoretical sociology and social theory, continental philosophy more generally.

History of the Term

The term critical theory was first used by the Frankfurt School (i.e. members of the Institute for Social Research of the University of Frankfurt, their intellectual and social network, and those influenced by them intellectually), to describe their own work. Since then, it has become a broad term, encompassing work done across the disciplines grouped as the humanities. Among the fields grouped within the designation are Marxist theory such as the Frankfurt School, psychoanalytic theory such as the work of Jacques Lacan, semiotic and linguistic theory such as Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, queer theory, gender studies, cultural studies, and critical race theory. However, the boundaries of critical theory are far from clear.

It is difficult to say with any firmness when critical theory began as a concept. Some argue that it began with the Frankfurt School, since that was, after all, where the term was first used. Others argue that the term as currently used corresponds with Jacques Derrida's presentation of "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University. Others claim that this is an oversimplification for the purpose of having a clear beginning point to something that doesn't have one, and point out that Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan had been writing for decades when Derrida presented his paper, and are clearly now considered part of critical theory. Still others point out that the roots of all of these works lies in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Ferdinand de Saussure. Others go back even further. Herbert Marcuse in Reason and Revolution (London, 1941) argues that critical thought began with the "negative philosophy" of G.W.F. Hegel. Others see the origins in the thought of Immanuel Kant, or even in ancient philosophy.

Characteristics of Critical Theory

Despite the difficulties in defining its boundaries or its origins, some statements can be made about critical theory. It is often informed by postmodern and post-structuralist theory, though it is not strictly postmodernist. Its major concerns are questions of identity, both within the private sphere and within the public sphere, and particularly in questions of dissonance between those two identities. A major focus of critical theory, then, is on the process through which these identities are developed. Major thinkers on this question include Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Martin Heidegger.

The second major focus of critical theory is on specific ways that cultural institutions - ranging from media to religion to scientific and academic work - are used to shape identities, dictating what is accepted as true, normal, or acceptable within a culture, offering privilege to some, and marginalizing or denying others. Critical theory looks at the mechanics of this process of privilege and marginalization, and often thinks about the possibility of political action against this process. Major thinkers within this aspect of critical theory include Derrida, Foucault, and the Frankfurt School.

See also

An accessible primer for novices is Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction ISBN 019285383X



List of works in critical theory

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This is a list of important and seminal works in the field of critical theory.


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory"

Literary theory is the theory (or the philosophy) of the interpretation of literature and literary criticism. Its history begins with classical Greek poetics and rhetoric and includes, since the 18th century, aesthetics and hermeneutics. In the 20th century, "theory" has become an umbrella term for a variety of scholarly approaches to reading texts, most of which are informed by various strands of Continental philosophy. (In much academic discussion, the terms "literary theory" and "Continental philosophy" are nearly synonymous, though some scholars would argue that a clear distinction can be drawn between the two.)


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Literary theory and literature

One of the fundamental questions of literary theory is "What is literature?", though many contemporary theorists and literary scholars believe either that the term "literature" is undefinable or that it can potentially refer to any use of language. Specific theories are distinguished not only by their methods and conclusions, but even by how they define a "text." For some scholars of literature, "texts" means "books belonging to the literary canon". But the principles and methods of literary theory have been applied to non-fiction, popular fiction, film, historical documents, law, advertising, etc., in the related field of cultural studies. In fact, some scholars within cultural studies treat cultural events like fashion, football, riots, etc. as "texts" to be interpreted. Taken broadly, then, literary theory can be thought of as the general theory of interpretation.

Since theorists of literature often draw on a very heterogeneous tradition of Continental philosophy and the philosophy of language, any classification of their approaches is only an approximation. There are many "schools" or types of literary theory, which take different approaches to understanding texts. Most theorists, even among those listed below, combine methods from more than one of these approaches (for instance, the deconstructive approach of Paul de Man drew on a long tradition of close reading pioneered by the New Critics, and de Man was trained in the European hermeneutic tradition).

Broad schools of theory that have historically been important include the New Criticism, formalism, Russian formalism, and structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism and French feminism, new historicism, deconstruction, reader-response criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism.

History

The practice of literary theory became a profession in the 20th century, but it has historical roots that run as far back as ancient Greece (Longinus' On the Sublime is an often cited early example as is Aristotle's Poetics), and the aesthetic theories of philosophers from ancient philosophy through the 18th and 19th centuries are important influences on current literary study. The theory and criticism of literature are, of course, also closely tied to the history of literature.

The modern sense of "literary theory," however, dates only to approximately the 1950s, when the structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure began strongly to influence English language literary criticism. The New Critics and various European-influenced formalists (particularly the Russian Formalists) had described some of their more abstract efforts as "theoretical" as well. But it was not until the broad impact of structuralism began to be felt in the English-speaking academic world that "literary theory" was thought of as a unified domain.

In the academic world of the United Kingdom and the United States, literary theory was at its most popular from the late 1960s (when its influence was beginning to spread outward from elite universities like Johns Hopkins and Yale) through the 1980s (by which time it was taught nearly everywhere in some form). During this span of time, literary theory was perceived as academically cutting-edge research, and most university literature departments sought to teach and study theory and incorporate it into their curricula. Because of its meteoric rise in popularity and the difficult language of its key texts, theory was also often criticized as faddish or trendy obscurantism (and many academic satire novels of the period, such as those by David Lodge, feature theory prominently). Some scholars, both theoretical and anti-theoretical, refer to the 1970s and 1980s debates on the academic merits of theory as "the theory wars."

By the early 1990s, the popularity of "theory" as a subject of interest by itself was declining slightly (along with job openings for pure "theorists") even as the texts of literary theory were incorporated into the study of almost all literature. Since then, and as of 2004, the controversy over the use of theory in literary studies has all but died out, and discussions on the topic within literary and cultural studies tend now to be considerably milder and less acrimonious. Some scholars draw heavily on theory in their work, while others only mention it in passing or not at all; but it is an acknowledged, important part of the study of literature.

Differences among schools

The intellectual traditions and priorities of the various kinds of literary theory are often radically different. Some differ so strongly that even finding a set of common terms upon which to compare them is not a trivial effort.

For instance, the work of the New Critics often contained an implicit moral dimension, and sometimes even a religious one: a New Critic might read a poem by T.S. Eliot or Gerard Manley Hopkins for its degree of honesty in expressing the torment and contradiction of a serious search for belief in the modern world. Meanwhile a Marxist critic might find such judgments merely ideological rather than critical; the Marxist would say that the New Critical reading did not keep enough critical distance from the poem's religious stance to be able to understand it. Or a post-structuralist critic might simply avoid the issue by understanding the religious meaning of a poem as an allegory of meaning, treating the poem's references to "God" by discussing their referential nature rather than what they refer to.

Such a disagreement cannot be easily resolved, because it is inherent in the radically different terms and goals (that is, the theories) of the critics. Their theories of reading derive from vastly different intellectual traditions: the New Critic bases his work on an East-Coast American scholarly and religious tradition, while the Marxist derives her thought from a body of critical social and economic thought, and the post-structuralist's work emerges from twentieth-century Continental philosophy of language. To expect such different approaches to have much in common would be naïve; so calling them all "theories of literature" without acknowledging their heterogeneity is itself a reduction of their differences.

For some theories of literature (especially certain kinds of formalism), the distinction between 'literary' and other sorts of texts is of paramount importance. Other schools (particuarly post-structuralism in its various forms: new historicism, deconstruction, some strains of Marxism and feminism) have sought to break down distinctions between the two and have applied the tools of textual interpretation to a wide range of 'texts', including film, non-fiction, historical writing, and even cultural events.

Another crucial distinction among the various theories of literary interpretation is intentionality, the amount of weight given to the author's own opinions about and intentions for a work. For most pre-20th century approaches, the author's intentions are a guiding factor and an important determiner of the 'correct' interpretation of texts. The New Criticism was the first school to disavow the role of the author in interpreting texts, preferring to focus on "the text itself" in a close reading. In fact, as much contention as there is between formalism and later schools, they share the tenet that the author's interpretation of a work is no more inherently meaningful than any other.

Schools of literary theory

Listed below are some of the most commonly identified schools of literary theory, along with their major authors. (In many of these cases, such as those of the historian and philosopher Michel Foucault and the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, these authors were not literary critics and did not primarily write about literature; but, since their work has been broadly influential in literary theory, they are nonetheless listed here.)

External links

Magic realism

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(Redirected from Magical Realism)

Magic realism (or magical realism) is a literary genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realist setting. The term was coined in the 1920s by a German art critic to describe certain American paintings (see History below), but it is most often associated with the Latin American literary boom of the twentieth century, marked by the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967, which is considered the seminal magical realist text. Magical realism can be detected in the supernatural tales of E.T.A. Hoffman, which are related in the down-to-earth tone of confessional journalism. Magical realism may be viewed as more than a specific historical-geographical literary movement; it is an element of style that can be located in a large variety of novels, poetry, painting, and even film.

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Common aspects of magical realist novels

The following elements are found in many magical realist novels, but not all are found in each novel and many are found in novels that fall under other genres.

Relation to other genres and movements

As a literary style, magical realism often overlaps or is confused with other genres and movements.

History

The term magic realism was first used by the German art critic Franz Roh to describe the unusual realism of primarily American painters such as Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1920s, under whom traditional realism became subtly infused with overtones of the surreal and fantastical. The term grew popular in the 20th century with the rise of such authors as Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernst Jünger, and many Latin American writers, most notably Jorge Luis Borges,Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez, who confessed, "My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic." The most widely read of the South American magical realism narratives is García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The term was first revived and applied to the realm of fiction in the 1960s by a Venezuelan essayist and critic Arturo Uslar-Pietri, who applied it to a very specific South American genre; it only came in vogue after Nobel prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias used the expression to define the style of his novels. Today, magical realism is perhaps too broadly used, to characterize all realistic fictions with an eerie, otherworldly component, such as the tales of Edgar Allen Poe.

Painting

In painting, magical realism is a term often used interchangeably with post-expressionism. In 1925, art critic Franz Roh used this term to describe painting which signalled a return to realism after expressionism's extravagances which sought to redesign objects to reveal the spirits of those objects. Magical realism, according to Roh, instead faithfully portrays the exterior of an object, and in doing so the spirit, or magic, of the object reveals itself.

Other important aspects of magical realist painting, according to Roh, include:

External links to magical realist paintings

Magical Realist Painting and Franz Roh (http://www.uh.edu/~englmi/gallery.php?mygal=franzRoh&title=Magical%20Realist%20Painting%20and%20Franz%20Roh)

Film

A minority of theorists, such as Wendy B. Faris, argue that certain films, such as The Witches of Eastwick and Field of Dreams could be described as magical realist, but the term is still primarily used to describe literature.

Magical realist authors

References

See also

: Film theory | Narratology | Postmodernism


Hysterical realism

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Hysterical realism, also called recherché postmodernism or maximalism is a literary genre characterized by chronic length, manic characters, madding action, and frequent digressions on topics secondary to the story.

The term hysterical realism was coined by James Wood in an essay on Zadie Smith's White Teeth, titled "The Smallness of the 'Big' Novel: Human, All Too Inhuman", which appeared in the July 17, 2000 issue of The New Republic and was later reprinted in Wood's 2004 book, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. Wood used the term to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues vitality "at all costs". In response, Zadie Smith described hysterical realism as a "painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth. . . "

Candidates for inclusion in the genre include: Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Powers, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, Robert Clark Young, Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace, and Tom Wolfe.

In their works the "hysterical" prose style is often mated to "realistic", almost journalistic, effects, such as Pynchon's depiction of 18th century land surveys in Mason & Dixon, DeLillo's treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald in Libra, or Young's treatment of the arcana of U.S. Navy life in One of the Guys. This literary technique of extravagant treatment of everyday events can be found in earlier authors, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Herman Melville's The Confidence Man and Moby-Dick.

Related topics

External links

James Wood on hysterical realism:

Genre studies

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Genre studies is a structuralist approach to literary criticism, film criticism and other cultural criticism. It looks at the structural elements that combine in the telling of a story and find patterns in collections of stories. When these elements (or codes) begin to carry inherent information, a genre is emerging. A simple example of this is a Western movie where two men face each other on a dusty and empty road; one dons a black hat, the other white. Independent of any external meaning, there is no way to tell what the situation might mean, but due to the long development of the Western genre, it is clearn to the audience that it is a gunfight showdown between a good guy and a bad guy.

It has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the short-hand communication, as well as nature of genres to shift with public mores. Many have considered genre storytelling as lesser forms of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions. However, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, combinations, and evolution of the codes.

Genre studies has perhaps gained the most recognition in cinema theory, where it directly contrasts with the auteur theory of film criticism.

See also

Auteur

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Auteur (French for 'author') is a word used to describe film directors who are considered to be artists with their own unique vision. The style of an auteur is recognisable in his/her films regardless of their genre and subject matter. However, this style does not need to be purely visual — any unique point-of-view or obsession could be considered the mark of an auteur. It's more a stamp of the director's personality that marks a body of work as auteurist.

Some directors only work in one genre, and are still seen as auteurs (hence the somewhat derogatory phrases, schlock-auteur and horror-auteur, for those who work exclusively in those genres).

A director may of course be talented without being an auteur; directors such as Michael Curtiz and John Huston were great filmmakers but they are not usually considered auteurs because they did not have a recognisable style that appeared in all their films.


 This film-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auteur&action=edit).

List of auteurs

Well known auteurs include:

American auteurs

Australian auteurs

British auteurs

Canadian auteurs

French auteurs

German auteurs

Greek auteurs

Italian auteurs

Spanish auteurs