This was a difficult exchange to unravel. I am well aware of how the things one person says trigger thoughts that we are not entirely clear ourselves how they relate. When this happens and I think there is something from the vague connection we are making, I preface by saying some thing like “this reminds me of…” or “this makes me think of…”
One thing to notice is that Bucky_Wood’s first post was responding to SkovandOfMitaze rather than Christy. Though this still didn’t clear up very much. I struggled with understanding the meaning of Bucky’s response from the very first sentence. He seems to be treating “Modernism” and “postmodernism” as eras of history and I had not thought that is what they were. I wanted to see what Wikipedia has to say… but it quickly became obvious that the word is used in a great many different ways…
Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound’s 1934 injunction to “Make it New” was the touchstone of the movement’s approach.
Following the connection to Ezra Pound, I found… from here
‘Make It New’ refers to Ezra Pound’s (1885–1972) modernist imperative and his 1934 collection of essays of the same name.
The first thing I notice is that this is not from the renaissance, enlightenment or even post-enlightenment eras at all and thus making it out to be so looks very revisionist to me. So modernism has followed post-enlightenment, to be followed by post-modernism. Considering the timing it makes me think of the roaring twenties. It was an interesting time following not only the women’s vote but also a de facto-woman president after Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke. How sobering it was when this was followed by the stock market crash, the great depression, and the horrors of WW II. Perhaps it is an era more than anything else… the thinking of people from that era and I suppose people are linking it up with that of the renaissance and enlightenment.