Democratization as a core commitment makes avant-garde practice postmodern, not modernist

Evidence

An important, persuasive case for the crucial impact of the early-sixties Greenwich Village avant-garde renaissance (rather than the Beats, as Russell Jacoby argues in The Last Intellectuals) on the subsequent formation of the counterculture. Covering a wide range of what we now call performance art, Banes also argues that this avant-garde, which she dates from 1963, had a historical significance comparable to the Civil Rights march on Washington of the same year. The crucial link between the two is democratization, which itself gives the avant-garde direct political significance and ramifications. Banes also argues that the avant-garde’s primary commitment to democracy made it postmodern rather than modernist, and in fact itself marked the end of the modernist avant-gardes and the inception of postmodernism. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 1095

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter 22 discussion of postmodernity extending modernity’s egalitarianism and to Bauman’s crowds-of-individuals reading of democracy. — connects to: Burroughs’s work spans both modernist and postmodern positions simultaneously — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 607; Avant-garde art depends on concrete political conditions, not just aesthetic logic — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 243; Postmodernism abolishes the inside-outside distinction that modernism still presupposed — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 259 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism abolishes the inside-outside distinction that modernism still presupposed #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 259
• Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor #contradicts (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236
• Defining Postmodernism as internal to Modernism abandons its periodizing claim #contradicts (0.80)
• Postmodernism fuses changes in the arts with poststructuralist philosophy #expands (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 27
• Avant-garde art depends on concrete political conditions, not just aesthetic logic #qualifies (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 243
• Avant-garde art communicates by breaking the propositional structure of discourse itself #qualifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 313
• The nouveau roman’s stylization functions as democratic equipment for modern lived experience #qualifies (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 349
• Defining postmodernism as one movement among others differs from calling it a cultural dominant #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 934