1st Edition

Critical Vices The Myths of Postmodern Theory

By Nicholas Zurbrugg, Warren Burt Copyright 2000
    274 Pages
    by Routledge

    274 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book of Nicholas Zurbrugg's challenging and provocative essays charts the most exciting developments in late 20th-century multimedia art. Zurbrugg challenges Jean Baudrillard's, Fredric Jameson's, and Achille Bonito-Oliva's unfavorable accounts of postmodern techno-culture. Interweaving literary and cultural theory, and visual studies, Zurbrugg demonstrates how multimedia visionaries such as Bill Viola and Robert Wilson are notable exceptions to the neutering of mass-media culture, bringing together the modernist and postmodern avant-garde.

    Introduction to the Series. One or Two Final Thoughts (A Retrospective Preface) Essays 1 Marinetti, Boccioni and Electroacoustic Poetry: Futurism and After 2 The Limits of Intertextuality: Barthes, Burroughs, Gysin, Culler 3 Postmodernity, Métaphore Manquée and the Myth of the Trans-avant-garde 4 Baudrillard’s Amérique and the “Abyss of Modernity” 5 Jameson’s Complaint: Video Art and the Intertextual “Time-Wall” 6 Postmodernism and the Multimedia Sensibility: Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine and the Art of Robert Wilson 7 Baudrillard, Modernism, and Postmodernism 8 “Apocalyptic”? “Negative”? “Pessimistic”?: Baudrillard, Virilio, and Technoculture 9 Baudrillard, Giorno, Viola and the Technologies of Radical Illusion 10 Zurbrugg’s Complaint, or How an Artist Came to Criticize a Critic’s Criticism of the Critics

    Biography

    Nicholas Zurbrugg (series editor), Warren Burt

    "Nicholas Zurbrugg is a superb guide to that confusing adventure-playground called postmodernism. Critical Vices reveals all Professor Zurbrugg's critical virtues at their best, in a witty, lucid and always accessible prose. Highly recommended." -- J.G. Ballard
    "Zurbrugg is an informed and intelligent critic; he is as knowledgeable about the theorists he criticizes as he is about the artists and poets he chooses to celebrate, and he brings considerable intellectual flair to his arguments." -- Art Monthly