by Ben Spatz
My friend asked me what I thought would come after postmodernism. I could think of three things:
1. Postmodernism is not going to be a short fad. Right now everyone is fed up with annoying postmodern buzzwords, with the rhetoric of postmodernism, so that stuff will soon pass away. But postmodernism itself (here I mean the splintering of movements so that there is no one big movement) might be here to stay. In that case nothing "comes after" postmodernism, or rather, lots of different things, but no single movement, certainly nothing epic or important enough to be compared to "modernism" or "classicism." This is especially clear given increased globalization--Movements like "modernism" and "classicism" can be seen as monolithic because of their limited cultural (and geographic) scope. In a cultural field as large as the world, there can be no such monolithic movement, except maybe the postmodern lack of such a thing.
2. Another possibility is that a single monolithic Americanized culture of pop music, Hollywood movies, McDonalds and the Gap will increasingly take over the planet. This would suck, and I consider it the duty of all good people to fight against it.
3. If there is any sort of post-postmodern movement, I expect it will
have to do with a return to an aesthetic of romanticism while retaining
the methodology of postmodernism. In other words, an attitude which
remains postmodernly skeptical and deterritorialized while returning to
some older sources of hope, such as community, art, and politics,
which have been discredited by postmodern funk..