Sometimes
we have discussions. On February 18, 2002 somebody posted this
story to cloudcuckooland. The author's intentions are made pretty clear. You
can judge for yourself. As to the reliability of the content, draw your own conclusions.
I drew mine. Eventually, our discussion
went here (edited for privacy):
"Maybe
post- modernism isn't so post- modern,"
There
is more (or maybe, less) to postmodernism than cut and paste.
The
word "syncretic" has several meanings that are relevant (from the OED):
syncretic,
a. (n.)
1.
a. Characterized by syncretism; aiming at a union or reconciliation of diverse
beliefs, practices, or systems.
1840
F. Barham Alist 17 The Syncretic Society which we founded for the advancement
of literature. 1853 Fraser's Mag. XLVII. 293 The philosophy which at the time
Minucius was writing arrayed itself against Christianity, was+syncretic. 1884
Sayce Anc. Empires East 204 The syncretic spirit of Phœnician art.
b.
n. = syncretist. (Ogilvie, 1883.)
2.
Psychol. Relating to or characterized by the fusion of concepts or sensations.
Cf. syncretism 3.
1932
M. Gabain tr. Piaget's Moral Judgment of Child ii. 192 Since every word obtains
its meaning as a function of these syncretic schemas, words end by acquiring a
substance of their own independently of reality. 1952 Werner & Kaplan Acquisition
of Word Meanings ii. 48 The conclusion can be drawn+that syncretic concepts are
more characteristic of the younger children. 1962 I. Sarnoff Personality Dynamics
& Devel. vi. 126 One variety of syncretic perception+involves a synthesis of sensations
that pertain to several different sense modalities. 1969 T. Freeman Psychopathol.
of Psychoses viii. 126 This thinking defect consists in the re-emergence of condensing
or syncretic trends, fusing concepts that in normal circumstances are discrete
and autonomous.
Meaning 1.a. is at the center of the article and some of my earlier comments about
the relationship between religions. You will notice that the reference to the
Syncretic Society is from 1840...long before postmodernism. There are writings
from the ancient Greeks that attempt to reconcile different traditions. In the
Middle ages, some scholars made efforts to save Socrates from Hell because was
born too early to know Jesus and was therefore damned. This was syncretic. One
could make a strong argument that the Biblical story of creation (Genesis) was
along these lines. It is obviously a combination of two texts from different traditions.
Meaning
2 is more recent (1932) and more close to postmodernism in spirit.
Anyway,
the "recontextualizing" of literary works (and the attendant confusion about plagiarism)
goes back to antiquity. Virgil's Aeneid is close to being Homer's Odyssey...the
remix version (as is Joyce's Ulysses). Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
and other plays about antiquity were taken from Plutarch's Parallel Lives.
This has always been common in literature, art and music. Bela Bartok incorporated
Eastern European Folk music in his classical compositions, Gershwin used elements
from Jazz.
Many
of you are more educated about art history and literary history than I am...please
feel free to correct and expand on these remarks.
How
is postmodernism different? I don't know. But that won't stop me from writing
about it. I'd start by saying that the examples I mention above (ancient and modern)
were recontextualization. That is they were either an effort to reconcile traditions
or comment on one tradition from the perspective of another. Postmodernism seems
to be decontectulization. That is, modernism itself entailed a rejection
of tradition...not just a particular tradition, but tradition itself. Mao's China
and the cultural revolution was modernist as was the Soviet experiment. One could
argue that the fascists and Nazis were modernists in drag as nostalgics.
Postmodernism
by definition is after the break with tradition. So, cultural images become
objects to play with...devoid of any inherent attachment to traditional meaning.
Sometimes they are fetishized (Warhol's soup cans) in a way that transforms an
object into an image that is "pure art" and sometimes they are fetishized in a
more complex way. Neo-tribalism (Celtic tattoos) transforms culture itself into
a fetish object...what a strange echo of cargo
cults...which are themselves cultures that fetishize other cultures in a pre-modern
way.
Did
you notice how much words like "itself" and "themselves" appear as soon as we
start to talk about postmodernism? I think that all of this fetishizing transforms
things (soup cans) into comments about the authors of the images (isn't Warhol
clever?)...there is something essentially self-referential about postmodernism
and this self-referential trait replaces the earlier syncretic aspect of interacting
cultural objects.
Perhaps
postmodernism = remix+narcissism.