Sweet irony. This table presents postmodernism as a movement pretending to avoid (or to be critical of) form, hierarchy, centering etc. Yet, it defines this very same postmodernism using binary oppositions.

In 1983, when asked about the postmodern movement, here’s what Michel Foucault answered:

“I must say that I have trouble answering this. First, because I’ve never clearly understood what was meant in France by the word “modernity”. In the case of Baudelaire, yes, but thereafter I think the sense begins to get lost. I do not know what Germans mean by modernity. The Americans were planning a kind of seminar with Habermas and myself. Habermas had suggested the theme of “modernity” for the seminar. I feel trouble here because I do not grasp clearly what that might mean, though the word itself is unimportant; we can always use any arbitrary label. But neither do I grasp the kind of problems intended by this term ― or how they would be common to people thought of as being “post-modern.” While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism, there was a certain problem ― broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject ― I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist.”

(“Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault”, interview by Gérard Raulet, translated by Jeremy Harding, Telos, vol. 55, Spring 1983, pp. 195-211; reproduced in Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984 edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman and Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge, [1988]1990, p. 34; Amazon, Google Books)

Previously on Skandalon.

Artist’s statement: “Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, which was about 8 years before I was born, so I have no firsthand knowledge of how it was received. I do not know if people genuinely believed we’d be living in space in 2001. If we’d have robot butlers and flying cars, geodesic lunar homes with sustainable gardens, and genetically reconstituted dinosaurs helping or eating the human population. But from Lost in Space to the Jetsons to Jurassic Park, it seems that popular culture craved and fomented this space-age perception of the future. Generations raised on these programs, movies, comic books, and novels are now grown and living in a future filled with mini vans, Starbucks, iMacs, and Hip Hop videos. In many ways, the year 2001, like 1984 before it, failed to live up to expectations. In hindsight, these expectations appear almost comical. And yet the world today is strange and unusual in ways unimagined in 1957, when Sputnik was launched, or in 1968, when 2001 was released, or even in 1990 at the dawn of the world wide web. The present is in fact a very unusual place, and it’s strangest in the ubiquity of things we take for granted. The astronaut in my paintings is simply here to explore the present.”

Artist’s bio: “Scott Listfield is known for his paintings featuring a lone exploratory astronaut lost in a landscape cluttered with pop culture icons, corporate logos, and tongue-in-cheek science fiction references. (Read more).