Psst! Let's Talk Postmodernism

Some of my best friends are scientists. Naturally, I take this is as an opportunity to settle the grand issues of time, space and everything else that I slept through in kindergarten.

"Does lighting come from the sky or the ground?" I quiz a physicist hurrying home in the rain. "Are people more like monkeys or apes?" I ask a biologist finishing off a banana. "How do you get stuff to explode?" I query a chemist shooting-'em-up on a Super Nintendo. This is great fun--and occasionally even educational when I stay awake long enough for the answers ("Both," "Apes" and "Shut up! I'm at the end of the %#@$! level," respectively).

Yet all is not joy in humanities-ville. With one question of their own, my comrades and classmates in the sciences sadistically wreak their revenge. "Tell me," they entreat innocently, "what's postmodernism?"

My brow burns. My shorts shrink. My toes turn over in their sockets. If I'm lucky, I pass out.

After this happens for the fifth time, my podiatrist strongly suggests that I come up with an answer.

So I look it up. Postmodernism is "literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles," page 1069 of my dictionary boldly asserts. Modernism, it tells me back on ol' 876, is "the use of nontraditional innovative forms of expression." All the way over on 1434, I find that traditionalism is--drum roll, please--"adherence to tradition." If I connect the dots correctly, that means postmodernism is literature that reacts against rebellion to tradition. This would be what exactly? The Pope's latest book? Pamphlets from the Daughters of the American Revolution? Alan Keyes campaign posters?

Maybe I shouldn't expect a straight answer from a book that defines one as "not two or more."

I decide to try the next best authority on all matters erudite: the Harvard University English Department. A few cold calls later and a sage, sonorous voice greets me at the other end of the line.

"Yes?"

"Let's talk postmodernism."

"Not now," the voice drops to a whisper. "I'm in tutorial." Ah. Witnesses. Then, conspiratorially: "E-mail me."

I do, and the reply comes a few hours later. Everything I'm about to learn, the note begins, is "not for attribution." Immediately, I dub my source Deep Thought and check my ethernet connection for taps. Anonymity, D.T. continues, "is already a pomo move. No one wants to take responsibility." I start worrying.

If a tenured Harvard professor is afraid to speak on the record, might I be in for more than I bargained? Has the Ivory Tower Mafia put the kibosh on chit-chat for secret, sordid reasons best left unexplored? More important, can tweed coats carry switchblades? Do corduroy patches cover gang signs? Are the cops going to find my mangled remains in a cement factory down the road from the next Modern Language Association convention?

Nah--but D.T.'s on the Q.T. nonetheless. I can dig it. The important thing is to get the info out to the masses. Without further ado, then, four "attributes of literary pomoism" from DT to me to you:

"1) Absence of authority. Not the same as rejection of authority, but rather nobody knows who's in charge, like of the UN or USA or Harvard, for example. Or [absence of authority] in the story.

"2) Lack of master narratives like Marxism, Darwinism, religious creeds, etc. that explain everything. Instead there are a bunch of competing mini-narratives striving to be heard.

"3) Pastiche replaces parody. In parody, it is clear what is being laughed at. In pastiche, the target is manifold or uncertain.

"4) Stress on reproducibility rather than originality. That is, Xerox, Andy Warhol, photography, etc. turn the concept of the unique and original object into question."

Got that? We've got institutions but no leader, messages but no point, laughter but no joke and copies but no original. Next time my friends ask what postmodernism is, I'll have my answer ready.

"Both. Apes. Shut up! I'm at the end of the %#@$! level!"

Jeremy N. Smith '00 is a history and literature concentrator in Pforzheimer House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.