It self-consciously splices genres, attitudes, styles. It neither embraces nor criticizes, but beholds the world blankly, with a knowingness that dissolves feeling and commitment into irony. It pulls the rug out from under itself, displaying an acute self-consciousness about the work's constructed nature. It takes pleasure in the play of surfaces and derides the search for depth as mere nostalgia for an unmoved mover. The Counterlife,'' only to live again.
High culture speaks the same language as popular culture, even blurs into it.
Aboriginal influences, vaudeville, Chinese acrobatics, Japanese martial arts, fireman's balances, Indonesian instruments and rhythms, video, Middle Eastern tunes, B-grade detective movies, modern dance, Irish jigs, and the ubiquitous present of corporate marketing.'' Consider the student who walks into my office dressed in green jersey, orange skirt and black tights. There are important differences, of course. But whether disassembling or dissembling, postmodernists know that they, we, are living hip-deep in debris. True enough, for all the fanfare, post-modernism is, by definition, known by the company it follows. A phenomenon this sweeping cannot be traced to a single cause.