Literature - Postmodernism, Economic Domination, and the Function of Art

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Recommended: Essays on Aesthetics

Postmodernism: Economic Domination and the Function of Art Does aesthetic creativity relate to or influence reality? Does art possess the capacity to heal society? These questions seem implicit to Walker Percy's understanding of literature and art in general. Literature is a thought-involved process concerned with communication; it selves as a moral guidepost to commend society as well as correct it. Literature represents and describes; it presents readers with a method of articulating and resolving problems in society. "So it is clear that redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it" (Rushdie 18). Art, in one sense, creates its own political agenda. Percy pursues his diagnostic theory of literature having reckoned with the basic relationship between language and life. Percy seems to answer the initial two questions posed with a resounding yes. The issue of art's impact upon a society is not quite so easily resolved, however. Not every person writes or thinks about art with the same set of assumptions. In order to strike at the heart of the question "what is the purpose of art?" we must first identify, understand and appreciate certain fundamental assumptions inquiries, mediating contexts, surrounding the political nature of art and the role of the artist in authentic creativity. I would like to frame my discussion within the apparent struggle between two ideological contexts: modernism and postmodernism. Using Percy's diagnostic theory of literature to facilitate the discussion, we can examine how modem and postmodern assumptions attempt to shape the purpose of aesthetic creativity. Percy's approach to art is inherently modern. He is concerned with unity and truth and achieving them through the creative process. Modernism claims to Speak to some form of ideological absolute, a universal quality. All things ultimately move to reveal a unified whole, a universe bathed in Truth. Reason is the primary tool of the modernist. It is privileged above all other human faculties. Reason allows humanity to possess knowledge, to know, to assimilate, to unify. Truth and knowledge are hopelessly intertwined. The search for knowledge is thus the search for truth as well. Percy mirrors this modern reverence for the power of human thought, when he claims that literature is essentially cognitive. Art is an expansion and extension of the mind. Art is thus actively involved in the search for Truth.

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