Comments on: Jean-François Lyotard’s dead http://blog.voyou.org/2008/02/04/jean-francois-lyotards-dead/ Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:01:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Owen http://blog.voyou.org/2008/02/04/jean-francois-lyotards-dead/comment-page-1/#comment-19281 Owen Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:41:56 +0000 http://blog.voyou.org/2008/02/04/jean-francois-lyotards-dead/#comment-19281 Interesting...I wouldn't necessarily agree with his idea of what constitutes Postmodernism however - Pynchon or Gibson are Modernists in my book, Rushdie or Amis postmodernists. But in architecture it's certainly the case that everywhere other than in spec housing (neo-Victorian still pretty big outside of London) postmodernist buildings, in the Jencks/Venturi sense of historically allusive, 'witty', eclectic etc, simply don't get built anywhere anymore - old postmodernists like Terry Farrell now make a jollier Modernism. I'd often thought of this trend (exemplified by the total dominance of Norman Foster) vas Marc Auge's 'supermodernism', but 'pseudomodernism' is probably better - Modernism without the politics or the utopianism. This seems to me to suggestively link with how neoliberalism is now so often administered by ex-socialists rather than its natural functionaries, the fundamentalist Right. Pomo as the aesthetic of neoliberalism has been replaced, much as the face of neoliberalism is now concerned and compassionate, Caroline Flint rather than Norman Tebbit. Postmodernism as vanishing mediator, anyone...? Interesting…I wouldn’t necessarily agree with his idea of what constitutes Postmodernism however – Pynchon or Gibson are Modernists in my book, Rushdie or Amis postmodernists. But in architecture it’s certainly the case that everywhere other than in spec housing (neo-Victorian still pretty big outside of London) postmodernist buildings, in the Jencks/Venturi sense of historically allusive, ‘witty’, eclectic etc, simply don’t get built anywhere anymore – old postmodernists like Terry Farrell now make a jollier Modernism. I’d often thought of this trend (exemplified by the total dominance of Norman Foster) vas Marc Auge’s ‘supermodernism’, but ‘pseudomodernism’ is probably better – Modernism without the politics or the utopianism.

This seems to me to suggestively link with how neoliberalism is now so often administered by ex-socialists rather than its natural functionaries, the fundamentalist Right. Pomo as the aesthetic of neoliberalism has been replaced, much as the face of neoliberalism is now concerned and compassionate, Caroline Flint rather than Norman Tebbit.

Postmodernism as vanishing mediator, anyone…?

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