Two further positions reject the modern-postmodern break, dissolving postmodernism into modernism
Evidence
Both of the previous positions — antimodern/propostmodern, and promodern/antipostmodern -are characterized by an acceptance of the new term, which is tantamount to an agreement on the fundamental nature of some decisive break between the modern and the postmodern moments, however these last are evaluated. There remain, however, two final logical possibilities, both of which depend on the repudiation of any conception of such a historical break and which therefore, implicitly or explicitly, call into question the usefulness of the very category of Postmodernism. As for the works associated with the latter, they will then be assimilated back into classical modernism proper, so that the “postmodern” becomes little more than the form taken by the authentically modern in our own period, and a mere dialectical intensification of the old modernist impulse toward innovation. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 185
Categorization
- DEFINE: Completes the logical taxonomy of positions on postmodernism — the two that affirm a break versus the two that deny it, dissolving postmodern into modern.
- QUESTION: Key for testing falsifiability of the cultural-dominant thesis: if postmodernism is just intensified modernism, the whole periodizing project collapses.
- XREF: connects to: Modernist parody persists in Eliot and Joyce, so parody cannot distinguish Postmodernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 115; Jencks’ ‘double-coding’ criterion fails because montage already defines Modernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 81; Postmodernity’s signature multiplicity was already common among 1900s Modernist thinkers (+10 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Modernist parody persists in Eliot and Joyce, so parody cannot distinguish Postmodernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 115; Jencks’ ‘double-coding’ criterion fails because montage already defines Modernism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 81; Postmodernity’s signature multiplicity was already common among 1900s Modernist thinkers (+10 more)
Broader Connections
- Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor
#exemplifies(0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236