Epoch in the arts (1970-1990) defined by a radical questioning of absolute truth and metaphysical key concepts which led to relativism, apathy and ironic distancing.
In Rethinking Postmodernism(s) Katrin Amian declares that “Postmodernism, it seems, is history”[1] for the simple reason that “the term appears to have exhausted its potential as a means of describing and understanding the shifting alliances of literary and cultural production in the new millennium.”[2] I, too, believe contemporary literature can not be understood as …
By the end of the 1980s, one term had become the magic word in political theory and a mainstay of social politics in many liberal, western states: Multiculturalism. Between the numerous attempts of political, legal and cultural theory to combine the project of state liberalism with a recognition of cultural plurality, even announcements of a …
In the late 1980s, Joost Zwagerman’s (1963) debut novel Gimmick[1] caused a sensation in press and public as a novel that defined the Zeitgeist and spoke for a generation, the postmodern generation. Recently he wrote Duel[2] (2010), a shorter novel published as the traditional gift of the annual week-of-books, which can be considered as a …
Locked Room Scenario, an exhibition constructed within an exhibition, could most certainly be regarded as ‘meta’, but is there also a metamodernist sensibility at play? I must confess, I came to see Ryan Gander’s show rather late on during it’s two-month long run. I had by this stage read many a review of this, the …
Postmodernism announced the death of the subject, but recent developments in literature, philosophy and political agency suggest that it is alive and kicking as ever. Not in form of the modern Cartesian ego though and also not in denial of all the subjectivity-disrupting forces that postmodern theory pointed out. It returns with a great leap …
Under postmodernism, cyberspace served as the most prominent cultural example of the sublime. Today, however, the concept of opacity has emerged which negates the corrosive effect of web links, providing a way “out” of the otherwise never-ending link labyrinth. Moreover, this opacity provides us with a notion that negotiates between beauty and sublimity – the …
