Upload
michael-broder
View
378
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Citation preview
World Literature II Renaissance to the Present
Dr. Michael Broder University of South Carolina
April 19, 2012
The ^Twentieth Century
POSTMODERNISM
Late
“Half-suffocated summer gods grope in the sea mist.”
Tomas Tranströmer “Evening—Morning”
Edgar Varèse (1883 – 1965)
The Holocaust, 1933-1945
German invasion of Poland, September 1939
German “Blitz” of Britain and Northern Ireland, September 1940 – May 1941
Japanese attack on US naval base in Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
Liberation of the camps, 1944-45
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
“No poetry after Auschwitz”
T.W. Adorno (1903 – 1969), German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist
and composer
Jackson Pollock Shimmering Substance (1946)
John Cage (1912 – 1992)
Berlin Blockade & Airlift, 1948-49
Jasper Johns Flag (1954-5)
East German border guard Conrad Schumann leaps into the French Sector of West Berlin over barbed wire on
August 15, 1961.
Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962)
Vietnam War, 1955-1975
Tom Wesselmann Still Life #20 (1962)
Buddhist monk burns himself on a Saigon street to protest persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government
(1963)
James Rosenquist President Elect (1960-1, 1964)
Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, 1968
Roy Lichtenstein Whaam! (1963)
Paris, May 1968
• Massive confrontations between police and students brought workers out on a general strike and brought the government to the point of collapse
• Clashes followed between police and students on countries all around the world, and would have a lasting political impact
Jean-Luc Godard La Chinoise (1967)
Apollo 11 lands on the moon, 1969
Girl running down a road after a South Vietnamese napalm attack, 1972
The Polish trade union Solidarity emerged on August 31, 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard under the
leadership of Lech Lech Wałęsa
Jean-Michel Basquiat Mona Lisa (1983)
President Reagan speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987
David Hockney Pearblossom Highway (1986)
On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western from Eastern Germany was
effectively opened.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980)
• Being and Nothingness (1943)
• Existentialism • Existence precedes
essence • That is, you are a
material body before you are a thinking, feeling person
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – 2009)
• Structuralism • The human mind is
structured according to binary oppositions like male/female, high/low, raw/cooked
• The members of the binary are defined in terms of each other
• All of these binaries for a structure, each part of which is defined in terms of every other part
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
• Critiqued Enlightenment concepts of freedom, liberation, self-determination as socially constructed rather than natural
• Focused on the ways in which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and exclusion
• That is, those in power get to determine what human nature is and who gets to be classified as “human” (as well as who does not)
Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004)
• Deconstruction • The binary oppositions of
structuralism are inherently instable
• The privileged pole of the binary requires the devalued pole of the binary for its own definition
• The devalued pole of the binary presents a constant threat to the centrality of the privileged pole
The Civil Rights Movement
Resisted oppression on the basis of RACE
The Feminist Movement
Resisted oppression on the basis of GENDER
The Gay Rights Movement
Resisted oppression on the basis of SEXUALITY
The Postcolonial Movement
Fought for the independence of colonies and the end of IMPERIALISM
I dreamt that I was to start school but arrived late. Everyone in the room wore white masks on their faces. It was impossibe to know which was the teacher.
Tomas Tranströmer “Grief Gondola #2”
World Literature II Renaissance to the Present
Dr. Michael Broder University of South Carolina
April 19, 2012