A notion of the avant-garde presupposes a teleological notion of history. No wonder that such movements died with May 68 (not being American, I don't have to define things in American referents) and the advent of post-structuralism, which annihiliated the latter. Perhaps poets who have a thing for Deleuze and Guattari are onto something. Since history no longer has a vector pointing at a certain direction, what remains is the rhizome.

Anyway, even in its wording, "post-avant" is an extremely conservative term. It is defining itself (or not) in reaction to an idea that has been dead for a while.

Insert Nietzschean paraphrase here.
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CivilizeMe said…
What set you to writing on this topic? More at Harriet and at The Wooden Spoon (check Feb 11th), as well as at the forthcoming ALSC conference.
9:32 AM
François Luong said…
The Harriet post by Christian Bök and Reginald Shepherd played a part into this, yes, but this is also an ongoing conversation I've had with Johannes Göransson (hence the references to Deleuze & Guattari, and Walter Benjamin).
4:40 PM
Sasha said…
ugg... not that this hasn´t been plowed a thousand times over, but i think of the 18th Brumaire when I think of the modern ´avant garde´. The ´bohemians´ who think of themselves as the style of the times (achem.. hipsters.. ahem..) are of such totalitarian minds that in their dizzied heads, they would celebrate imposture over subtlety in a movement of bad faith and self deception that would land them at the top of the mountain of shit that is the capitalist bourgeoisie. You are right, françois, when you mention that effect of ´68 of nullifying the global anti-capitalist movement as a monolith. The hippies in the US, after ´68, found themselves frightened of their own, and ducked out in the same manner as I expect the hipsters to do soon. But, there are still some philosophers who are called avant garde (Raunig for 1) who look back at ´68 as an epochal moment of positive force, and call out for deleuzian revolutionary machines to effect more ´68s! what are we to do with these folks who mush all of this garbage together and eat it with the knife and fork of philosophy? bah, lump em...
8:02 AM
Sasha said…
by the way, i mean 18th brumaire of louis napoleon - the marx thing... sorry if there was confusion.
3:05 PM
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