The Scatterbrained Syncretist
Sometimes we have discussions. On February 18, 2002 somebody posted this story to cloudcuckooland. The author's intentions are made pretty clear. You can judge for yourself. As to the reliability of the content, draw your own conclusions. I drew mine. Eventually, our discussion went here (edited for privacy):
"Maybe post- modernism isn't so post- modern,"
There is more (or maybe, less) to postmodernism than cut and paste.
The word "syncretic" has several meanings that are relevant (from the OED):
syncretic, a. (n.)
1. a. Characterized by syncretism; aiming at a union or reconciliation of diverse beliefs, practices, or systems.
1840 F. Barham Alist 17 The Syncretic Society which we founded for the advancement of literature. 1853 Fraser's Mag. XLVII. 293 The philosophy which at the time Minucius was writing arrayed itself against Christianity, was+syncretic. 1884 Sayce Anc. Empires East 204 The syncretic spirit of Phœnician art.
b. n. = syncretist. (Ogilvie, 1883.)
2. Psychol. Relating to or characterized by the fusion of concepts or sensations. Cf. syncretism 3.
1932 M. Gabain tr. Piaget's Moral Judgment of Child ii. 192 Since every word obtains its meaning as a function of these syncretic schemas, words end by acquiring a substance of their own independently of reality. 1952 Werner & Kaplan Acquisition of Word Meanings ii. 48 The conclusion can be drawn+that syncretic concepts are more characteristic of the younger children. 1962 I. Sarnoff Personality Dynamics & Devel. vi. 126 One variety of syncretic perception+involves a synthesis of sensations that pertain to several different sense modalities. 1969 T. Freeman Psychopathol. of Psychoses viii. 126 This thinking defect consists in the re-emergence of condensing or syncretic trends, fusing concepts that in normal circumstances are discrete and autonomous.
Meaning 1.a. is at the center of the article and some of my earlier comments about the relationship between religions. You will notice that the reference to the Syncretic Society is from 1840...long before postmodernism. There are writings from the ancient Greeks that attempt to reconcile different traditions. In the Middle ages, some scholars made efforts to save Socrates from Hell because was born too early to know Jesus and was therefore damned. This was syncretic. One could make a strong argument that the Biblical story of creation (Genesis) was along these lines. It is obviously a combination of two texts from different traditions.
Meaning 2 is more recent (1932) and more close to postmodernism in spirit.
Anyway, the "recontextualizing" of literary works (and the attendant confusion about plagiarism) goes back to antiquity. Virgil's Aeneid is close to being Homer's Odyssey...the remix version (as is Joyce's Ulysses). Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and other plays about antiquity were taken from Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This has always been common in literature, art and music. Bela Bartok incorporated Eastern European Folk music in his classical compositions, Gershwin used elements from Jazz.
Many of you are more educated about art history and literary history than I am...please feel free to correct and expand on these remarks.
How is postmodernism different? I don't know. But that won't stop me from writing about it. I'd start by saying that the examples I mention above (ancient and modern) were recontextualization. That is they were either an effort to reconcile traditions or comment on one tradition from the perspective of another. Postmodernism seems to be decontectulization. That is, modernism itself entailed a rejection of tradition...not just a particular tradition, but tradition itself. Mao's China and the cultural revolution was modernist as was the Soviet experiment. One could argue that the fascists and Nazis were modernists in drag as nostalgics.
Postmodernism by definition is after the break with tradition. So, cultural images become objects to play with...devoid of any inherent attachment to traditional meaning. Sometimes they are fetishized (Warhol's soup cans) in a way that transforms an object into an image that is "pure art" and sometimes they are fetishized in a more complex way. Neo-tribalism (Celtic tattoos) transforms culture itself into a fetish object...what a strange echo of cargo cults...which are themselves cultures that fetishize other cultures in a pre-modern way.
Did you notice how much words like "itself" and "themselves" appear as soon as we start to talk about postmodernism? I think that all of this fetishizing transforms things (soup cans) into comments about the authors of the images (isn't Warhol clever?)...there is something essentially self-referential about postmodernism and this self-referential trait replaces the earlier syncretic aspect of interacting cultural objects.
Perhaps postmodernism = remix+narcissism.
