Pulp modernism fuses high-modernist technique with popular-fiction riffs
Evidence
Whereas Sinclair transforms pop-cultural material into something opaque, obscure and hermetic, Ballard innovated a kind of pulp modernism in which the techniques of high modernism and the riffs of popular fiction intensified one another, avoiding both high cultural obscurantism and middlebrow populism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 205
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines ‘pulp modernism’ as a distinct aesthetic position between hermetic high modernism and middlebrow populism.
- SEED: Pulp modernism is a usable analytic lens for genre-boundary fiction — science fiction, horror, crime that carries modernist technique.
- XREF: connects to: Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 128; Popular modernism was eclipsed by heritage kitsch and US corporate culture — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 502; Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Popular modernism was eclipsed by heritage kitsch and US corporate culture
#qualifies(0.75) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 502 - Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty
#expands(0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 128 - Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture
#complicates(0.70) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271