postmodernity,history,andtheassassinationofjfk.docVIP

Postmodernity, History, and the Assassination of JFK Jeff Schwartz. M.A.thesis in Popular Culture Studies. Bowling Green State University, 1992. no. 5927. Dr. Ellen E. Berry, advisor. CHAPTER 1. Introduction Postmodernity... Is it enough, to define postmodernity, to say that, during the twentieth century, something changed? Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.[1] The works of John Cage and LaMonte Young in music, G?del in mathematics, Einstein and Heisenberg in physics, Artaud, Beckett, and Ionesco in theatre, Lacan in psychoanalysis, Derrida in philosophy, Surrealism, Dada, Situationism, Pop Art...these can be read as part of the discontinuous set of discontinuities marking the move into postmodernity. I prefer this word postmodernity to postmodernism or the postmodern since it refers only to a time period, not an aesthetic, a school of thought, or an artistic style, which would require some sort of ruling principle, teleology, or metanarrative. The loss of these things is exactly what constitutes a basic definition of postmodernity: Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.[2] This loss is often described as the end of or the death of various traditional metanarrative concepts, such as God, Man, Progress, Society, and History.[3] Jean Baudrillard is the master of this apocalyptic type of cultural theory, but even he backs away from proclaiming the death of history. History isnt over, it is in a state of simulation, like a body thats been kept in a state of hibernation. In this irreversible coma everything continues to function all the same, and eventually can even seem to amount to history.[4] I maintain that this hibernation of history is not an irreversible coma, but a metamorphosis. Baudrillards apocalypse is only the end of the world that he (we) can imagine; history