Certain modernist precursors already contained what became postmodern

Evidence

The “classics” of the modern can certainly be postmodernized, or transformed into “texts,” if not into precursors of “textuality”: the two operations are relatively different, insofar as the precursors — Raymond Roussel, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp — always fit uneasily into some modernist canon anyway. They are the exemplars and the eyewitness exhibits in some cases for the identity between modernism and Postmodernism, since, in them, the slightest modification, the merest breath of perversity in shifting the chairs around, makes what ought to be the most classical high modernist aesthetic values into something uncomfortable and remote (but closer to us!). It is as though they constituted some opposition within the opposition, an aesthetic negation of the negation; against the already anti-hegemonic minority art of the modern, they staged their own even more minoritarian and private rebellion, which will of course itself become canonical when the modern freezes over and becomes a drafty set of museums. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 661

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘postmodernizing the classics’ from finding ‘precursors of textuality’ — a precise conceptual distinction useful for explaining the modern/postmodern boundary.
• XREF: Relevant to the parody-vs-pastiche distinction: these precursors show the thin line between high-modernist seriousness and postmodern play. — connects to: Postmodernity’s signature multiplicity was already common among 1900s Modernist thinkers; So-called postmodern trends merely continue capitalist processes begun under modernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 574; The Frankfurt School resists simple classification as a precursor to postmodernism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 21 (+14 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Postmodernity’s signature multiplicity was already common among 1900s Modernist thinkers; So-called postmodern trends merely continue capitalist processes begun under modernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 574; The Frankfurt School resists simple classification as a precursor to postmodernism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 21 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor #corroborates (0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236