postmodernity, métaphore manquée, and the myth of the trans-avant-garde

THE ERAS OF MODERNISM AND OF POST-modernism are eras of conceptual, existential, and technological transition. Both in the years between the 1880s and the 1930s, and the years between the 1930s and the 1980s, cultural critics have been embarrassed by the proliferation of the new; by new ways of conceiving cultural reality, new ways of evaluating existence, and new ways of mechanizing cultural reality.1