Re: Foucault a postmodernist?

> I can see a kind of metaphorical linkage between, on the one hand, the
> way New Wave musicians used earlier forms of rock and roll and, on the
> other way, the way Johnson uses earlier forms of architecture. But is there
> any way at all to connect the postmodernism of Foucault with the
> postmodernism of Talking Heads?

I think so. This approach to the creation of new forms
-- through the direct appropriation of already-existing forms --
pitches itself against the view of art as some kind of a transcendent
expression of a creative subject. It mocks the instrumentality of the
things which are being appropriated: staircases, balustrades,
musical phrases, fragments of text are taken out of the context in
which they served a purpose, and made into what could be called
"ornaments". Contemplative viewing, which is allied with the notion
of art as being in touch with some kind of truth, is replaced with
Benjamin's "distracted viewing"; there are "truth effects" and "beauty
effects", but no allegiance to any kind of Truth or Beauty.


- malgosia


------------------

Partial thread listing: