Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- 1 Introduction: postmodernity and the political
- Part I Modernity and its vicissitudes
- Part II The critique of modernist political thought
- Part III Technology and the politics of culture
- 9 Technology, modernity, politics
- 10 Surrogates and substitutes: new practices for old?
- 11 Postmodernism, the sublime and ethics
- Index
11 - Postmodernism, the sublime and ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- 1 Introduction: postmodernity and the political
- Part I Modernity and its vicissitudes
- Part II The critique of modernist political thought
- Part III Technology and the politics of culture
- 9 Technology, modernity, politics
- 10 Surrogates and substitutes: new practices for old?
- 11 Postmodernism, the sublime and ethics
- Index
Summary
It has been suggested that the postmodern task is the presentation of the unpresentable, that the postmodern condition is crystallised most positively in the avant-garde's resistance to metalinguistic dictatorship. It may seem unlikely that the mere forward exploration towards extension of stylistic reach and expansion of discursive articulation is the principal challenge of our era. Surely Lyotard's construction of the postmodern task as the realisation of the sublime is aimed at more than the artistic and poetic encounter with difference? It is difficult to be so certain.
If postmodernity is only about a garrulous, splattering confrontation with the difference that is the sublime, then its key style will be that of the sprawling intersection: leading perhaps to complex compromise and plural reconciliation as an essentially fuzzy mode which is nevertheless beyond conflict and confrontation. This is a tempting view. It may even be part of the story. It certainly seems the case that the main lines of Western political culture seem to have been moving towards negotiation as the principal junction rather than towards the crossed wire of obdurate opposition. However, there is something more. There is an aspiration. What can be found in the work of theorists like Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard, in the work of novelists like Umberto Eco, and in the work of many artists is the strong feeling that there is a hidden dimension of present culture that is inexpressible but crucially important.
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- The Politics of Postmodernity , pp. 210 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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