Quote:
Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus
There's nothing pretentious about the term 'postmodernism'. If anything, it's the least pretentious of all the words that could be contrived to describe the intellectual and artistic movement that succeeded modernism.
To feel deconstructionism or the other trends that characterize postmodernism are pretentious is your prerogative, as idiotic as you might be in exercising that prerogative. However, you can't deny that those trends are perceptible and invite discussion-- they need to be called something, 'postmodernism' is as good a name as any.
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This. Without post-structuralism, broadly speaking, we wouldn't still be studying Shakespeare in any sense that managed to transcend the Elizabethan context or "universal" (generic) assertions of universality on very basic themes such as jealousy, passion, love & hatred. Oedipal-libidinal interpretations of Hamlet, feminist readings of King Lear, and the awareness that Richard III's "Now is the winter" monologue is themtically and imagistically akin to Richmond's public wank in the name of victory (the latter being the grandfather of S's dominatrix queen) would be heavily diluted to say the least.
Post-structuralism isn't the hallmark of thinking outside the box, but it did help to advance the cause rapidly. It's no coincidence that it can be correlated with social change on a global level.