Postmodernism’s Abundance

No one, I think it’s safe to say (it has always been safe to say), likes the term postmodern. As Tadd Adcox notes, “It’s a terrible word. It sounds silly, for one thing.” I myself often like silly things, but I agree that postmodern is too silly, and (more problematically) too uninformative; the term simply means too many things, including:

1. a loose grouping of formal literary devices, a la Brian McHale’s (excellently useful) Postmodernist Fiction;
2. an architecture movement, a la Eric Owen Moss‘s monstrosities;
3. a dance movement, a la Yvonne Rainer;
4. a branch of philosophy, a la Jean Baudrillard, often conflated with post-structuralism and deconstruction;
5. a cultural logic or global economic condition, a la Frederick Jameson).

…among much else as well, no doubt. And while these things share certain similarities, they are not the same things—and yet I rarely see people taking the time to distinguish between them. The tendency is toward conflation. And so you get stuff like:

“Shrek 4 is so postmodern.”

“Really? How so? Aesthetically? Economically? In terms of its identity politics? All three? Just one?”

“Uh…Well, it’s, like, so glib.”

Postmodern has long been a default word that no longer means much of anything.

Here’s another problem with postmodernism. I’ll try listing all of the major fiction, poetry, film, comics, visual art, theater, and music movements I can at the moment think of, from 1930 to the present. No doubt I’ll miss a lot (and reveal my biases), but consider this a start then—I’m not trying to create any kind of definitive list:

1931–1935 Objectivist Poetry (William Carlos Williams, Lorine Niedecker)

1933–1964 Classic Hollywood Cinema (Howard Hawks, George Cukor)

1938–1948 Golden Age of Comics (Bob Kane, Carl Barks, Will Eisner)

1938–1960 Existentialism II (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus)

I’d define “Existentialism I” as Husserl/Kierkegaard/Nietzsche.

1941–1949 Bebop (Chet Baker, Art Blakey)

1941–1959 Film Noir (Jacques Tourneur, Anthony Mann)

1942–1957 Lettrism (Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître)

1946–1960 Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock)

1947–1960 San Francisco Renaissance (Kenneth Rexroth, Paul Duncan, Jack Spicer)

1947–1964 Theater of the Absurd (Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet)

(This is a much later adaptation of a Genet novel, not a play—but I love this film so much I wanted to include it.)

1948–1958 Beat poetry (Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs)

1949–1957 Black Mountain College (Ed Dorn, Charles Olson)

1950s New York School (poetry) (John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch)

1950–1959 Cool Jazz (Miles Davis)

1951–1961 Method Realism (Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan)

1951–1965 Angry Young Men/Kitchen Sink Realism (John Osborne, Harold Pinter)

1954—1965 Camp Art (Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith)

1954–1967 Pop Art (Warhol, Lichtenstein)

1955–1962 1950s Melodramas (Douglas Sirk)

1955–1980 Mail Art (Mark Bloch, On Kawara)

1955–1985 Magic Realism (Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie)

1956–1964 Nouveau Roman (Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute)

1956–1970 Silver Age of comics (Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko)

1956–present Systems Novel (William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Joseph McElroy, David Foster Wallace)

1957–1966 The Black Comedy (Lenny Bruce, Joseph Heller, Nichols and May, Philip Roth)

1957–1968 Happenings (Allan Kaprow)

1957–1968/1972 Situationist International (Guy Debord)

1959–1965 Confessional Poetry (Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton)

1960s Conceptual Art (Henry Flynt, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Piero Manzoni)

1960s Free Jazz (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra)

1960–1962 Nouveau réalisme (Pierre Restany, Yves Klein)

1960–1967 French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda)

1960–2009 The OuLiPo (Harry Mathews, François Le Lionnais, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud)

1961–1970 Op Art (Josef Albers, John McHale, Bridget Riley)

1961–1971 Motown (The Temptations, Jackson 5)

1962–1965 Folk Revival (Joan Baez, Bob Dylan)

1963–1967 The British Invasion (Beatles, Stones)

1963–1978 FLUXUS (George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles)

1966–1971 Concrete Poetry (Emmett Williams, John Furnival)

1966–1978 Metafiction (William H. Gass, John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut)

1968–1972 Tropicália (Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso)

1967–1975 Prog Rock (King Crimson, Pink Floyd)

1967–1976 Minimalist music (Philip Glass, Steve Reich)

1967–1978 Jazz Fusion (Miles Davis, Chick Corea)

1967–1979 Funk (James Brown, Parliament)

1967–1979 Electric Folk (Fairport Convention, The Byrds)

1967–1980 Heavy Metal I (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath)

1967–1980 New Hollywood (Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman)

1967–present Walking Art (Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Andy Goldsworthy, Francis Alÿs)

1968–1973 Land Art (Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta Clark, Ana Mendieta)

1968–1974 Krautrock (Can, Kraftwerk)

1970s Performance Art (Carolee Schneemann, Joseph Beuys)

1970–1986 Bronze Age of Comics (Neal Adams, Chris Claremont)

1972–1975 Glam Rock (Bowie, Roxy Music)

1974–1978 Punk (The Ramones, Patti Smith)

1975 Surfiction (Raymond Federman)

1975–1980 Disco (Donna Summer, The Bee Gees)

1976–1987 New Wave (Television, Talking Heads, Blondie)

1978–1984 Post-Punk (The Fall, Joy Division)

1978–1979 No Wave (Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, The Contortions)

1977–1983 New Narrative (Kathy Acker, Gail Scott)

1978–present Hip Hop (Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash)

Hip hop of course splits off into a million different sub-genres…

1978–1983 Oi! (Angelic Upstarts, The Business)

1978–1998 Language poetry (Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman)

1980s Avant-Jazz (John Zorn, Lounge Lizards)

1980–1986 Hardcore (Black Flag, Bad Brains)

1980–1990 Noise Rock (Lydia Lunch, Swans, Boredoms)

1980–1991 Alternative Rock (R.E.M., Pixies)

1982–1988 Second British Invasion (Culture Club, Duran Duran, U2)

1982–1995 Tweepop (Television Personalities, beat happening, Magnetic Fields)

1985–1994 Gothic Rock (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure)

1985–1995 New Formalism (poetry) (Mark Jarman, Robert McDowell)

1986–1990 Gangsta Rap (Schoolly D, Ice T, N.W.A.)

1986–1990 Hair Metal (Van Halen, Poison, Twisted Sister)

1986–1992 Modern Age of Comics (Gritty Realism) (Frank Miller, Alan Moore)

1988–1994 New New Hollywood (Spike Lee, Wayne Wang, Leslie Harris)

1991–1996 Grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam)

1993–2000 The Bristol Sound (Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky)

1992–1996 Image Age of Comics (Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane)

1992–1999 Riot-Grrl (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Miranda July)

1994–1997 Britpop (Blur, Pulp)

1996–2003 Alt-Country (Wilco, Son Volt)

1996–present Chamber Pop (Belle & Sebastian, Arcade Fire, Los Campesinos!)

1998–2007 Post-Language (Juliana Spahr, Lisa Jarnot)

1998–2009 Elliptical Poetry (C. D. Wright)

1999–2008 Metafiction Revival (Dave Eggers)

2000–2007 Garage Band Revival (The Strokes, The Killers, Interpol)

2001–2008 Conceptual Poetics (Kenny G)

2009 The New Thing (poetry)

This last one is too new for me to even know what it is.

…Well, no doubt I’ve missed several things (music’s especially impossible to categorize in this way); note too that I fudged some of the dates (because it’s impossible, really, to date these kinds of things).

But my point is this: At one point or another, I’ve seen everything on this list (with the exception of maybe the first couple of things, and that last thing) described as postmodern.

What an amazing little term to mean so much!