Tuesday, October 31, 2006
That Modernism Is Characterised By A Set Of Techniques
Characterization relies upon the drawing together of similarities, usually techniques, that are present throughout all work that make up a movement or era. To characterize modernism then would be to sift through work and by a process of elimination be left with a handful of techniques that are ever present in modernist works. The task at hand is impossible. Modernism refuses to be characterized. Modernism does not own techniques but uses techniques. There is a momentum within modernism that is more base, of a higher nature, than techniques. Modernism is pulled together by its refusal to be classified, for its upturned nature, and outright disregard for all that has come before that has relied so heavily on technique.
The works of William Butler Yeats sit on an illusory line between Modernism and Romanticism, while earlier works illustrate Victorian techniques. The unique position that Yeats occupies allows an examination of techniques specifying genre and techniques being recontextualised as a tool. The shift in writing Romantic lyrics in technique and form to abandoning formal use of technique is shown in the differences between the early and late works of W.B. Yeats.
The strategic decision to radically break away from tradition, to tear apart the existing moral and social order in the hope to create a new one, saw the birth of a dichotomy. A dichotomy that has come part way to characterizing modernism exists between high art and mass culture. Traditionally the Church, as a bastion of authority, created a conduit between art and the masses, by way of imposing a system upon creation. The modernist determination to oppose this tradition destroys a system of values that allows access to what is “good”. A conscious exclusion of mass culture can be seen as the greatest spanning (pseudo)stylistic technique used among all modernists.
The conscious effort to exclude the masses by way of subverting the traditional is present in the poetry of W.B. Yeats. Clearly in the poem “When You Are Old” there is a strict sense of stylistic choice and adherence to a set of Romantic techniques. There exists a structured and repeating rhyme scheme of ABBA. There are four regular lines to every stanza, of which there are three, a biblically important number. Each line has a regular ten syllables and conforms to a form of iambic meter. The theme itself continues to support the rigidity of the poem, and clearly there is a set of values here that are being upheld, which can be recognized. In contrast “Leda and the Swan” immediately upturns the system that “When You Are Old” upholds. At first glance “Leda and the Swan” appears to conform to the same structure and techniques as “When You Are Old”. There exists a rhyming structure, ABAB. Three stanzas, starting with four lines per aA? stanza, and the lines are usually an iambic meter. All of these poetic techniques are being subverted and traumatized so as to make the work inaccessible to the mass culture who can only understand art via a rigid system. In closer inspection the rhyming structure is broken in the third stanza. The third stanza itself is broken in two with a harsh indiscriminate line break, and consists of an irregular seven lines. The iambic meter is broken in every second line by an extra syllable, which enforces a slightly stilted rhythm to the entire poem. This conscious act of subversion immediately excludes the traditionally indoctrinated viewer by setting up expectations of traditional poetic technique and then dashing them.
Modernism has carved itself out in opposition to the traditional values of art, and in doing so it has excluded everyone who submits themselves to that tradition. The stance of opposition in itself does not necessitate techniques or a style to overarch the modernist movement. Truly the Modernist approach to technique is to subvert and discard. The overarching metaphysics of Kant were replaced by the epistemological philosophies of Nietzsche. The lack of an over-arching modernist metaphysic or polemic allowed a system of perspectivism and pluralism to form in modernist manifestos and modernist works. Bürger points out that such a pluralistic approach to art allowed the works to be separated from the institutional and have an opportunity to reintegrate into life.
A reintegration into life consists of an insightful exploration into the individual and the internal world in which all men and women view the world. This emphasis placed on the individual, the subject, in no opposition to an other, creates diverse esotericism within the modernist world. The internal world had never been characterized by the institution, tradition, and it remained a true bastion of life where the creative writer were free to roam unimpeded by precedence or structure. Any use of techniques in order to appear stylised or of the same character is completely absent in such internal writing.
“Finnegan’s Wake” is one such text that uses the unchartered territories of the interior subjective world to creative ends. The internal world is self-sustaining, it does not need to draw upon the outside world of tradition to exist, and exists for the sole purpose for itself. Joyce uses the focus upon the subjective of the individual to create an esoteric and multi-layered work that remains inaccessible. The novel insists rereading and an enormous amount of knowledge to be completely accessed, all without a distinct barometer of success. Every technique employed conjures a new passageway into unmeaning and a great lengthening of meaning, not in story or plot but in references, extrapolations, ambiguities, and pluralities. All of which separate the text “Finnegan’s Wake” far beyond the reach of the masses.
By way of creating a sense of coherence to itself, “Finnegan’s Wake” illustrates the autonomous nature that Modernist works endure. Internal coherence is not to be mistaken for the general term coherence. That is to say for a work to be coherent it is readily identifiable in its context and appropriates, if not uses, an accepted brand of logic to put forward its ideas. Whereas an internal coherence creates an autonomous work that exists out of contextual links with other work and may discard accepted logic for a logic of its own making. There is a strong argument that Joyce does create self autonomous works by creating whole world histories and metaphysics within texts, such as “Finnegan’s Wake”, building a new structure of symbols to the point that language develops within the work itself as though it were a society. The formulation of this technique has torn “Finnegan’s Wake” out of context, creating a solitary self propagating place for the text.
The production of autonomous and esoteric work set the modernist text high above the reader, forcing the reader to bring herself up to the work. This aloofness contradicts the traditional conduit of uniformity and standard that made art readily accessible to anyone who could familiarize themselves with the standard techniques. The works of tradition were merited on their stringent adherence and servitude to a standard. The techniques, and the use of techniques traditionally were an indicator of quality. An imposed arbitrary standard, handed down by the traditional power. Modernism had taken on a new world order, standards as developed by the artist, an art for art’s sake movement.
Theodore Adorno argues that this aloofness furthermore had political consequences to the modernist movement. The traditional political governance, an authoritarian dictate removed from the individual, had no place in the new values of a modern society. If the foundation of the Church had been undermined, the very death of God were to have consequences, it would be a new social and political power structure that would come to fruition. The modernist text became filled with political undercurrent and theme, not as a theme used for the first time, but one that could now effect reality in new ways. Technically the change existed in modernism not to write in a political theme but to write politically.
In opposition to religion as the traditional political body, the modernist finds an avenue within the secular state to develop the rights of the individual over the Church. For the Church occupies a place as bastion for an unchanging and stoic system of values that conflict directly with the modernist drive of continual change for improvement. The secular state can oppose: the system of techniques that are set by the church that act in a favouritist fashion and fail to benefit culture in and for itself, and is always for the work of god. A god that is dead, a god that is supremely nihilistic in the fact that it surpasses human life in this world for an afterworld that is superior in all aspects.
The life of W.B. Yeats cannot be ignored as an exemplar of the concern, awareness and activism modernists, generally speaking, had in the political arena. Yeats worked arduously on Irish Nationalism issues, working on the Irish constitution and within the senate. His life, as an artist, is inextricably bound to his work, but for the modernist one’s work could be used as a tool for one’s political/philosophical/spiritual life. Yeats’ “Under Ben Bulben” thematically contains political stance, and political reflection. In section three of the poem there is opinion of war, but not merely in a generic sense, but with specific relationship to the succession of an Irish Sate. Yeats is posing here that Irish nationalists should not lurch into war with the English. Via “Under Ben Bulben” Yeats is once again entering into a political debate, offering an opinion and perspective on a controversial subject. The fact that Yeats does this in his poetry, as published, allows it to the public sphere. However putting it in a poem forces the reader, who would traditionally be reading for enjoyment, to be faced again with pressing political issues. The reader would have to raise herself to the work, Yeats will not lower the quality of the work for the masses, but uses his influence in order to educate by way of prerequisite. Yeats’ personal understanding of world history is closely interrelated to politics, political history, and even spiritual understanding of the world. The poem has explicit reference to eternal recurrence, which is a philosophy termed by Nietzsche, in the lines:
Many times man live and dies
Between his two eternities
This dropping in of perspectives would not be meaningful to those who are not familiar with the texts and issues that Yeats, modernist writers, are dealing with. There is a political sensibility here which is polemic yet esoteric. In a similar fashion Yeats will continually elaborate on his personal philosophy, or epistemology, of human history. Outside of his poetry Yeats worked on a personal religion that tied into a conceptualisation of repetitions and cycles of time in the form of Gyres.
Gyres run on
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude
Other modernist writers, such as James Joyce, also wrote about such human histories, and references to these personal beliefs surfaced in their respective writings. James Joyce incorporated his perspective of history into “Finnegan’s Wake”. Where the form of the text took on four parts that directly corresponds to four cycles of human history. Joyce’s perspective on this history comes from Giambattista Vico’s philosophical works. The importance of these perspectives coming through in modernist works is as an illustration of the form modernism takes. That modernism does not restrict itself into a set of foundational set of values like its traditional counterparts throughout history, but rather takes on a shifting groundwork of intersecting axes.
The axes have a formation in which polar opposition may exist simultaneously. To elaborate two modernist strands of thought polarizing each other is the modern belief in science as an alternative to traditional, fundamentalist, truth as opposed to scepticism, which upholds the complete uncertainty and inability to validate truth claims. Modernism may potentially lay claim to, and present itself as anything that moves along these axes born from resentment and resistance to the traditional structures. Consequently there exists no criterion for techniques to be used in modernist literature. Modernism allows for the formation of autonomous movement of style and value structures within itself, in a pluralistic range. To this end notion may be constructed of modernism but not techniques.
Bibliography:
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary Terms, 7th Ed. Heinle &Heinle, Boston, 1999
Ellman, Richard Yeats – The Man and the Masks, Penguin: London. 1987
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F, 8th Ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2006
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1986.
Lamb, Winifred. Fundamentalism, modernity & postmodernity, North Fitzroy, Vic. : Zadok Institute, 1995.
Nietzsche, F The Nietzsche Reader, editors Ansell, P & Large, D, Blackwell, 2006
Smith, Stan The origins of modernism : Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the rhetorics of renewal, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire ; New York : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Stern, J A Study Of Nietzsche, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c1995.
endnotes
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary Terms Pg167
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture
Nietzsche, F The Nietzsche Reader,
Ibid.
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture & Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
Smith, Stan The origins of modernism : Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the rhetorics of renewal
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
Ibid.
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Adorno.
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
sourced from: Norton Anthology as in Bibliography
Ibid.
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F
Ibid.
Lamb, Winifred. Fundamentalism, modernity & postmodernity
Ibid.
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
This is in reference to Huyssen’s loose construction of ideal notions of modernism that ‘categorize’ modernists. Quote:
- the work is autonomous and totally separate from the realism of mass culture and everyday life.
- It is self-referential, self conscious, frequently ironic, ambiguous, and rigorously experimental.
- It is the expression of a purely individual consciousness rather than of a Zeitgeist or a collective state of mind.
- Its experimental nature makes it analogous to science, and like science it produces and carries knowledge.
- It is a persistent exploration of and encounter with tools.
- The major premise of the modernist work is the rejection of all classical systems of representation, the effacement of “content”, the erasure of subjectivity and authoritive voice, the repudiation of likeness and verisimilitude, the exorcism of any demand for realism of whatever kind.
- Only by fortifying its boundaries, by maintaining its purity and autonomy, and by avoiding any contamination with mass culture and with signifying systems of everyday life can the art work maintain its adversary stance: adversary to the bourgeois culture of everyday life as well as adversary to mass culture and entertainment which are seen as the primary focus of bourgeois cultural articulation.
(Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture) ¶ 11:07 pm
The works of William Butler Yeats sit on an illusory line between Modernism and Romanticism, while earlier works illustrate Victorian techniques. The unique position that Yeats occupies allows an examination of techniques specifying genre and techniques being recontextualised as a tool. The shift in writing Romantic lyrics in technique and form to abandoning formal use of technique is shown in the differences between the early and late works of W.B. Yeats.
The strategic decision to radically break away from tradition, to tear apart the existing moral and social order in the hope to create a new one, saw the birth of a dichotomy. A dichotomy that has come part way to characterizing modernism exists between high art and mass culture. Traditionally the Church, as a bastion of authority, created a conduit between art and the masses, by way of imposing a system upon creation. The modernist determination to oppose this tradition destroys a system of values that allows access to what is “good”. A conscious exclusion of mass culture can be seen as the greatest spanning (pseudo)stylistic technique used among all modernists.
The conscious effort to exclude the masses by way of subverting the traditional is present in the poetry of W.B. Yeats. Clearly in the poem “When You Are Old” there is a strict sense of stylistic choice and adherence to a set of Romantic techniques. There exists a structured and repeating rhyme scheme of ABBA. There are four regular lines to every stanza, of which there are three, a biblically important number. Each line has a regular ten syllables and conforms to a form of iambic meter. The theme itself continues to support the rigidity of the poem, and clearly there is a set of values here that are being upheld, which can be recognized. In contrast “Leda and the Swan” immediately upturns the system that “When You Are Old” upholds. At first glance “Leda and the Swan” appears to conform to the same structure and techniques as “When You Are Old”. There exists a rhyming structure, ABAB. Three stanzas, starting with four lines per aA? stanza, and the lines are usually an iambic meter. All of these poetic techniques are being subverted and traumatized so as to make the work inaccessible to the mass culture who can only understand art via a rigid system. In closer inspection the rhyming structure is broken in the third stanza. The third stanza itself is broken in two with a harsh indiscriminate line break, and consists of an irregular seven lines. The iambic meter is broken in every second line by an extra syllable, which enforces a slightly stilted rhythm to the entire poem. This conscious act of subversion immediately excludes the traditionally indoctrinated viewer by setting up expectations of traditional poetic technique and then dashing them.
Modernism has carved itself out in opposition to the traditional values of art, and in doing so it has excluded everyone who submits themselves to that tradition. The stance of opposition in itself does not necessitate techniques or a style to overarch the modernist movement. Truly the Modernist approach to technique is to subvert and discard. The overarching metaphysics of Kant were replaced by the epistemological philosophies of Nietzsche. The lack of an over-arching modernist metaphysic or polemic allowed a system of perspectivism and pluralism to form in modernist manifestos and modernist works. Bürger points out that such a pluralistic approach to art allowed the works to be separated from the institutional and have an opportunity to reintegrate into life.
A reintegration into life consists of an insightful exploration into the individual and the internal world in which all men and women view the world. This emphasis placed on the individual, the subject, in no opposition to an other, creates diverse esotericism within the modernist world. The internal world had never been characterized by the institution, tradition, and it remained a true bastion of life where the creative writer were free to roam unimpeded by precedence or structure. Any use of techniques in order to appear stylised or of the same character is completely absent in such internal writing.
“Finnegan’s Wake” is one such text that uses the unchartered territories of the interior subjective world to creative ends. The internal world is self-sustaining, it does not need to draw upon the outside world of tradition to exist, and exists for the sole purpose for itself. Joyce uses the focus upon the subjective of the individual to create an esoteric and multi-layered work that remains inaccessible. The novel insists rereading and an enormous amount of knowledge to be completely accessed, all without a distinct barometer of success. Every technique employed conjures a new passageway into unmeaning and a great lengthening of meaning, not in story or plot but in references, extrapolations, ambiguities, and pluralities. All of which separate the text “Finnegan’s Wake” far beyond the reach of the masses.
By way of creating a sense of coherence to itself, “Finnegan’s Wake” illustrates the autonomous nature that Modernist works endure. Internal coherence is not to be mistaken for the general term coherence. That is to say for a work to be coherent it is readily identifiable in its context and appropriates, if not uses, an accepted brand of logic to put forward its ideas. Whereas an internal coherence creates an autonomous work that exists out of contextual links with other work and may discard accepted logic for a logic of its own making. There is a strong argument that Joyce does create self autonomous works by creating whole world histories and metaphysics within texts, such as “Finnegan’s Wake”, building a new structure of symbols to the point that language develops within the work itself as though it were a society. The formulation of this technique has torn “Finnegan’s Wake” out of context, creating a solitary self propagating place for the text.
The production of autonomous and esoteric work set the modernist text high above the reader, forcing the reader to bring herself up to the work. This aloofness contradicts the traditional conduit of uniformity and standard that made art readily accessible to anyone who could familiarize themselves with the standard techniques. The works of tradition were merited on their stringent adherence and servitude to a standard. The techniques, and the use of techniques traditionally were an indicator of quality. An imposed arbitrary standard, handed down by the traditional power. Modernism had taken on a new world order, standards as developed by the artist, an art for art’s sake movement.
Theodore Adorno argues that this aloofness furthermore had political consequences to the modernist movement. The traditional political governance, an authoritarian dictate removed from the individual, had no place in the new values of a modern society. If the foundation of the Church had been undermined, the very death of God were to have consequences, it would be a new social and political power structure that would come to fruition. The modernist text became filled with political undercurrent and theme, not as a theme used for the first time, but one that could now effect reality in new ways. Technically the change existed in modernism not to write in a political theme but to write politically.
In opposition to religion as the traditional political body, the modernist finds an avenue within the secular state to develop the rights of the individual over the Church. For the Church occupies a place as bastion for an unchanging and stoic system of values that conflict directly with the modernist drive of continual change for improvement. The secular state can oppose: the system of techniques that are set by the church that act in a favouritist fashion and fail to benefit culture in and for itself, and is always for the work of god. A god that is dead, a god that is supremely nihilistic in the fact that it surpasses human life in this world for an afterworld that is superior in all aspects.
The life of W.B. Yeats cannot be ignored as an exemplar of the concern, awareness and activism modernists, generally speaking, had in the political arena. Yeats worked arduously on Irish Nationalism issues, working on the Irish constitution and within the senate. His life, as an artist, is inextricably bound to his work, but for the modernist one’s work could be used as a tool for one’s political/philosophical/spiritual life. Yeats’ “Under Ben Bulben” thematically contains political stance, and political reflection. In section three of the poem there is opinion of war, but not merely in a generic sense, but with specific relationship to the succession of an Irish Sate. Yeats is posing here that Irish nationalists should not lurch into war with the English. Via “Under Ben Bulben” Yeats is once again entering into a political debate, offering an opinion and perspective on a controversial subject. The fact that Yeats does this in his poetry, as published, allows it to the public sphere. However putting it in a poem forces the reader, who would traditionally be reading for enjoyment, to be faced again with pressing political issues. The reader would have to raise herself to the work, Yeats will not lower the quality of the work for the masses, but uses his influence in order to educate by way of prerequisite. Yeats’ personal understanding of world history is closely interrelated to politics, political history, and even spiritual understanding of the world. The poem has explicit reference to eternal recurrence, which is a philosophy termed by Nietzsche, in the lines:
Many times man live and dies
Between his two eternities
This dropping in of perspectives would not be meaningful to those who are not familiar with the texts and issues that Yeats, modernist writers, are dealing with. There is a political sensibility here which is polemic yet esoteric. In a similar fashion Yeats will continually elaborate on his personal philosophy, or epistemology, of human history. Outside of his poetry Yeats worked on a personal religion that tied into a conceptualisation of repetitions and cycles of time in the form of Gyres.
Gyres run on
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude
Other modernist writers, such as James Joyce, also wrote about such human histories, and references to these personal beliefs surfaced in their respective writings. James Joyce incorporated his perspective of history into “Finnegan’s Wake”. Where the form of the text took on four parts that directly corresponds to four cycles of human history. Joyce’s perspective on this history comes from Giambattista Vico’s philosophical works. The importance of these perspectives coming through in modernist works is as an illustration of the form modernism takes. That modernism does not restrict itself into a set of foundational set of values like its traditional counterparts throughout history, but rather takes on a shifting groundwork of intersecting axes.
The axes have a formation in which polar opposition may exist simultaneously. To elaborate two modernist strands of thought polarizing each other is the modern belief in science as an alternative to traditional, fundamentalist, truth as opposed to scepticism, which upholds the complete uncertainty and inability to validate truth claims. Modernism may potentially lay claim to, and present itself as anything that moves along these axes born from resentment and resistance to the traditional structures. Consequently there exists no criterion for techniques to be used in modernist literature. Modernism allows for the formation of autonomous movement of style and value structures within itself, in a pluralistic range. To this end notion may be constructed of modernism but not techniques.
Bibliography:
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary Terms, 7th Ed. Heinle &Heinle, Boston, 1999
Ellman, Richard Yeats – The Man and the Masks, Penguin: London. 1987
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F, 8th Ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2006
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1986.
Lamb, Winifred. Fundamentalism, modernity & postmodernity, North Fitzroy, Vic. : Zadok Institute, 1995.
Nietzsche, F The Nietzsche Reader, editors Ansell, P & Large, D, Blackwell, 2006
Smith, Stan The origins of modernism : Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the rhetorics of renewal, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire ; New York : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Stern, J A Study Of Nietzsche, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c1995.
endnotes
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary Terms Pg167
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture
Nietzsche, F The Nietzsche Reader,
Ibid.
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture & Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
Smith, Stan The origins of modernism : Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the rhetorics of renewal
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
Ibid.
Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Adorno.
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
sourced from: Norton Anthology as in Bibliography
Ibid.
Greenblat, Stephen (ed) The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume F
Ibid.
Lamb, Winifred. Fundamentalism, modernity & postmodernity
Ibid.
Tratner, Michael Modernism and mass politics : Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats
This is in reference to Huyssen’s loose construction of ideal notions of modernism that ‘categorize’ modernists. Quote:
- the work is autonomous and totally separate from the realism of mass culture and everyday life.
- It is self-referential, self conscious, frequently ironic, ambiguous, and rigorously experimental.
- It is the expression of a purely individual consciousness rather than of a Zeitgeist or a collective state of mind.
- Its experimental nature makes it analogous to science, and like science it produces and carries knowledge.
- It is a persistent exploration of and encounter with tools.
- The major premise of the modernist work is the rejection of all classical systems of representation, the effacement of “content”, the erasure of subjectivity and authoritive voice, the repudiation of likeness and verisimilitude, the exorcism of any demand for realism of whatever kind.
- Only by fortifying its boundaries, by maintaining its purity and autonomy, and by avoiding any contamination with mass culture and with signifying systems of everyday life can the art work maintain its adversary stance: adversary to the bourgeois culture of everyday life as well as adversary to mass culture and entertainment which are seen as the primary focus of bourgeois cultural articulation.
(Huyssen, Andreas After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture) ¶ 11:07 pm