Postmodern theory inherited sixties process aesthetics stripped of their revolutionary grit

Evidence

Rooted in the modernist/avant-garde notion of authenticity, fidelity to the medium, and living in/expressing the present moment, epitomized perhaps by Gertrude Stein’s notion of the ”continuous present” and by Ginsberg’s Beat aesthetic, this aesthetic of process, wryly taken for granted, made smooth, largely relieved of its ”griminess”—its history of revolutionary breakthrough in struggle against aesthetic linearity and the valorization of the end product—becomes a key tenet of postmodern theory (especially in work derived from Derridean deconstruction) as well as art forms. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 646

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The utopian attack on dualism pivoted into postmodern philosophy — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 685; Sixties male texts commodified women yet produced proto-feminist representations — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 276; The New Left’s cultural-political self-conception drove postmodernism’s turn to aesthetics. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2200

Broader Connections

• The New Left’s cultural-political self-conception drove postmodernism’s turn to aesthetics. #expands (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2200