Canonically Postmodern
“These canons are not universally held by postmodernists, and some are contingent upon the momentary historical situation arising after Modernism. Thus they contrast with the older notion of classical rules in being understood as relative rather than absolute, responses to a world of fragmentation, pluralism and inflation rather than formulae to be applied indiscriminately.”
(An except from Charles Jencks’s essay “The Emergent Rules”)
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I found the above quote fascinating, and it’s at the crux of Jencks’s argument in this particular work. He goes on to cover “a selection of eleven of the most significant” canons—disharmonious harmony; pluralism; urbane urbanism; anthropomorphism; the historical continuum and past-present relationship—involving the concept of anamnesis which Avery has so brilliantly wrestled with in her blog post; the return to content; double-coding, irony, ambiguity, and contradiction; multivalence; tradition reinterpreted/the displacement of conventions; the elaboration of new rhetorical figures and their stylistic formulae; and the return to the absent center.
All of these canons which he elaborates are key to understanding the postmodern state of art and media (his focus is generally on architecture specifically, but his words can be applied to a range of diverse art forms). However, certain concepts derived from the eleven canons—such as the historical continuum which underlies the relationship that postmodernism has with interpreting and reinterpreting the past, establishes new rhetorical figures that derive their formulaic styles from the reinterpreted traditions of the past, and ultimately determines where the “absent center” might be found by maintaining a sense of ‘schizophrenia’ about the past by simultaneously invoking nostalgia and revival, partly through “tradition reinterpreted” (e.g., 80s fashions transformed for the contemporary age)—seem to connect more canons together than others, and therefore might be read as carrying more canonical weight.
But Jencks notes that there are still other “generative values” which are “in a state of evolution” and “partly inconsistent,” which leads me back to the aforementioned “fascinating” quote. The term “canon” to describe these general ‘guidelines’ of sorts stuck out to me, so I decided to pinpoint the definition of ‘canon’ and analyze its usage here. The word can take on many meanings but is generally taken to mean a law, rule, or principle, and, most importantly, it was historically tied to the laws of the Church—a then-standard of all that was set-in-stone and immovable. Canons have therefore been historically predetermined, clearly defined, unchanging forms— “dead.” Since the eleven (and continuously evolving) canons in this essay are in a constant state of flux—‘not universal’ and ‘situational’—the canons of the postmodern era can ultimately be seen as primarily structural but not formal. Thus, Jencks’s redefining of the term is in and of itself an application of his canons—it is the encapsulation of “traditions reinvented,” and it is clearly "alive" in canonically contemporary times.
Docherty, T., and Charles Jencks. “The Emergent Rules.” Postmodernism: A Reader, Routledge, London, 1993.
“canon, n.1.” OED Online, Oxford English Dictionary, June 2022, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27148?rskey=BjQpfv&result=1#eid (accessed 6 September 2022).
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