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Andreas Huyssen

Andreas Huyssen's 'After the Great Divide' explores the cultural transformation from modernism to postmodernism, highlighting the shift from elitist modernist attitudes to the embrace of mass culture in postmodern art. The book is divided into three parts, analyzing the relationship between technology and avant-garde art, interpreting specific works that challenge modernist theories, and tracing the history of postmodernism's integration of high art and popular culture. While Huyssen's insights are thought-provoking, the coherence of his thesis and the classification of certain concepts are questioned.

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32 views2 pages

Andreas Huyssen

Andreas Huyssen's 'After the Great Divide' explores the cultural transformation from modernism to postmodernism, highlighting the shift from elitist modernist attitudes to the embrace of mass culture in postmodern art. The book is divided into three parts, analyzing the relationship between technology and avant-garde art, interpreting specific works that challenge modernist theories, and tracing the history of postmodernism's integration of high art and popular culture. While Huyssen's insights are thought-provoking, the coherence of his thesis and the classification of certain concepts are questioned.

Uploaded by

Tatiana Pacheco
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Andreas Huyssen.

After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass

Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington. Indiana University

Press. 1986. xii 4- 244 pages. $29.95 ($9.95 paper).

Andreas Huyssen announces, in sanguine and almost

prophetic terms, that "what appears on one level as the

latest fad, advertising pitch, and hollow spectacle is part of a

slowly emerging cultural transformation in Western socie-

ties"; the transformation is called "postmodernism." The

"modernist" attitude (in, for example, Flaubert, T. S. Eliot,

or Adorno) is elitist and antibourgeois; it structures a "great

divide" between itself and mass culture. By contrast, post-

modernist art, open to mass culture (for instance, in Warhol's

soup cans or the Living Theatre), is experimental and prom-

ising. The contemporary cultural scene is enormously com-

plex, and at times Huyssen concedes that some artworks

elude the modernist/postmodernist scheme. In general,

however, he adheres to that scheme and deftly makes his way

through European (principally German) and American cul-

tural happenings.

The study is composed of three parts. In the first, "The

Vanishing Other: Mass Culture," Huyssen offers an analysis

of how technology has been appropriated by avant-garde

artists. He also offers a shrewd critique of Adorno's theory of

modernism and, perhaps most interestingly, considerable

evidence as to how modernists, with their patriarchal ideolo-

gies, have persistently viewed mass culture as feminine-

and threatening. He shows how feminist criticism becomes a

strong ally of postmodernist art in its challenge to modernist

styles. In part 2 Huyssen attempts interpretations of specific

works (Lang's Metropolis, the TV program "Holocaust," and


Peter Weiss's three-volume Asthetik des Widerstandes; see

WLT 56:2, p. 328), showing how they undercut modernist

theories and have had a definite effect on German culture.

Finally, in the third part of his book Huyssen attempts to

chart the history of postmodernism as it moves, in specific

stages, toward an intertwining of high art and popular cul-

ture.

Huyssen's account is well-informed, but its various chap-

ters, originally written as separate essays, are not always

clearly related to his main thesis. Neither is that thesis itself

entirely convincing, particularly in part 3, where he attempts

to combine evaluative opinions of specific works or tenden-

cies with sweeping historical generalizations. He alleges, for

instance, that the "success" of Fassbinder's films in the U.S.

"can be explained precisely" by their mixing of mass-cultural

genres with avant-gardist/modernist tactics; such terms as

success and explained, however, are surely arguable. Also,

his classification of "poststructuralism" as "modernist" takes

no account of Derrida's and de Man's critical readings of

Kantian esthetics. One wonders indeed how well the mod-

ernist/postmodernist paradigm works and whether other

terms should perhaps be tried out.

Despite its shortcomings, Huyssen's work is challenging

and astute. After the Great Divide is worthy of sustained

reflection.

Ralph Flores

Washington State University

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