Contemporary pop’s return to modernism may overcome the postmodernism it recycles

Evidence

As we awake from the dreary dream of entryism, we can start to see that what kept us slumbering in the last twenty-five years was indeed a programme of controlled, if not quite repressive, desublimation. No doubt, the signs of any awakening are fitful as yet. In pop, they are perhaps most evident in a groping backwards, a paradoxical return to modernism. Could it be that the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Rapture will prompt a self-overcoming of the very postmodern revivalism of which they are a symptom? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 983

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether the late-2000s pop modernist turn genuinely escaped postmodernism or re-absorbed it is worth chasing: the prediction only partially came true.
• XREF: connects to: Contemporary pop is trapped between a vacuous present and an unrecoverable past — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1314; Contemporary pop lacks forward momentum because the present is crowded out by the past — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 381; Twenty-first-century pop culture stagnated as artists mined the past rather than the future — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 381 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Contemporary pop is trapped between a vacuous present and an unrecoverable past #contradicts (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1314
• Twenty-first-century pop culture stagnated as artists mined the past rather than the future #complicates (0.78) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 381
• Modernism reacts to lost totality with nostalgia while postmodernism stops looking backward. #qualifies (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 98
• Modernism pursues the New substantively while postmodernism only clocks variations #corroborates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 8
• Contemporary pop lacks forward momentum because the present is crowded out by the past #complicates (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 381
• Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture #qualifies (0.72) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271
• Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor #complicates (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236
• Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic #qualifies (0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216
• Postmodernity may be evolving toward its own dissolution #expands (0.70) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2224