Jencks’ ‘double-coding’ criterion fails because montage already defines Modernism

Evidence

‘To this day I would define Postmodernism as … double-coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects.’ This definition gets its purchase from the attempts by architects over the last couple of decades to get away from the elongated slabs characteristic of the International Style, with which architectural Modernism is identified. But if (as it is intended to be) it is taken as a general characterization of Postmodern art, then it is hopelessly inadequate. ‘Double-coding’ — what Lunn calls ‘Simultaneity, Juxtaposition, or “Montage” ’ - is a defining feature of Modernism. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 81

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows that the supposedly distinguishing feature of postmodernism (double-coding/Jencks) is borrowed unchanged from Modernism’s montage principle — a key definitional move in the book’s argument.
• XREF: Connects to Jameson’s thesis on postmodernism’s relationship to late capitalism — the book is presumably building toward the claim that postmodernism misreads montage as new. — connects to: Defining Postmodernism as internal to Modernism abandons its periodizing claim; Jencks defined postmodern architecture as stylistic double-coding of old and new, high and low — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 61; Two further positions reject the modern-postmodern break, dissolving postmodernism into modernism (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Jencks defined postmodern architecture as stylistic double-coding of old and new, high and low #responds-to (0.92) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 61
• Postmodernism can only be defined relative to the equally confused term modernism #corroborates (0.85) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 92
• Two further positions reject the modern-postmodern break, dissolving postmodernism into modernism #corroborates (0.82)
• Postmodern manifestos secretly still depend on the modernist tropes they reject #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 312
• Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty #corroborates (0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 128