Re: [microsound] neo-modermism

["The pHarmanaut" <pharmanaut@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Phil. I'm hoping other folks will join in, or maybe we should take this
conversation offline?

> >To me it's redundant, as postmodernism is new-modernism, but it's
> modernism that had finally gotten over its obsession with the new. It just
reeks
> of ruptures and breaks, discoveries and ideals, the novel of all things.
> New modernism, new generation (ad slogan), new aesthetics (come again?),
>>new age ..... oh brother (where art thou?).
>
> Again, I need clarification. You say that postmodernism has gotten over
> its obsession with the new, and then you give examples of the ways in
> which postmodernism obsessively talks about the "new". And, as above, I
> wonder if this is the only way we can talk about "new"ness.

I thought that the chorus of the "new" being used by Manovich was a very
modern symptom, not postmodern. I wasn't clear there, as I was getting
carried away by rhetorical flourish .... which is only slightly better than
rhetorical flouride, though it doesn't keep your teeth as sparkling white.

>
> >>>>>>>>>phil:
> >And why equate the contingent with the postmodern?
>
> Not an equation, but to the extent that postmodernism is about
> contingency, a contingent use of "new," in a way that doesn't drive
> dialectically towards some goal of perfection, could be useful for
> postmodernism. I guess I'm thinking about D & G's essay on concept,
> percept, affect for example, in which they say (basically) that the role
> of the philosopher is to create new concepts, and the role of the artist
> is to create new sensory experiences. But in neither case is anything to
> be resolved; both the artist and the philosopher should create new
> questions, not supply new answers in anything but a contingent sense.
> I'm not specifically arguing for this, just giving it (maybe not the
> best example) of ways in which we can engage with "new" in a productive
> way.
>
> Part of the reason why I ask is because if we more or less deliberately
> avoid "new" in cultural practice, it may come back to haunt us; "new"
> becomes postmodernism's abject (in the Kristevan sense) and becomes
> reified as such (not that reification is always a bad thing). But if we
> can engage with "new" in a provisional way, then I wonder what the
> possibilties are.
>

These are all good points, really, and I hadn't thought of it that way. I
especially like how you're bringing D&G into the picture, and I appreciate
your summary of their idea as a kind of ongoing revitalization of the
imagination in the forms of philosophy and art. I think THAT's the agenda in
which I'm interested, much more so than Manovich's new modernism and what
not. I'd rather carry on the conversation without those terms, and I'm
certainly not interested in positioning either modernism or postmodernism as
schools of thought with their specific and consistent territories or, much
less, with specific historical moments that depend on each other in terms of
an evolving or progressing movement of a collective ideal or world spirit.
Though I do feel myself sometimes thinking of imagination in terms of a
collective force, I feel it's more rhizomic in nature and tendency.

-=Trace

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