Modernist parody persists in Eliot and Joyce, so parody cannot distinguish Postmodernism

Evidence

This conjoining of political and aesthetic revolution makes it difficult to see the Surrealists as precursors of Postmodernism. For most accounts of Postmodern art tend to emphasize its rejection of revolutionary political change. Lyotard associates ‘the nostalgia of the whole and one, … the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience’ with ‘terror, … the fantasy to seize reality’. The thought is presumably the traditional liberal one that any attempt at total social change will lead straight to the Gulag. One consideration behind the frequent claims’made for Postmodern ‘wit’ and ‘irony’ seems to be that the collapse of belief in the possibility or desirability of global political transformation leaves us with nothing better to do than playfully to parody what we can no longer take seriously. Parody is, however, so pervasively present in the great Modernists — Eliot and Joyce, for example — that any attempt to claim it exclusively for Postmodernism just seems implausible … Jameson suggests that matters have gone a stage further — that while Modernist parody retains some conception of a norm from which one is deviating, Postmodernism is distinguished by pastiche, the ‘neutral practice of mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Jameson’s parody/pastiche distinction — the core of the counterargument this reader is building. — connects to: Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 128; Postmodern manifestos secretly still depend on the modernist tropes they reject — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 312; Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 236 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Quotes Jameson’s own definition contrasting Modernist parody with Postmodern pastiche.

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor #corroborates (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236
• Two further positions reject the modern-postmodern break, dissolving postmodernism into modernism #corroborates (0.80)
• Defining Postmodernism as internal to Modernism abandons its periodizing claim #corroborates (0.80)
• Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty #complicates (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 128
• Postmodern manifestos secretly still depend on the modernist tropes they reject #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 312