Poetics 17 (1988) 49-56 49

North-Holland

PARODY/POST-MODERNISM

Margaret A. ROSE *

The study of the role played in parody in modernist art, literature and theory made in Rose’s
Parody/meta-fiction (1979) is extended in this article to a study of the contrasting roles attributed
to reflexive parody in post-modernism by Fredric Jameson (1984) and Charles Jencks (1986).
Firstly Jameson’s claim that modem reflexive parody has ‘degenerated’ into an unreflexive form
of pastiche in post-modernism is criticised and contrasted with Jencks’ criticisms of the char-
acterisation of post-modernist art as pastiche. Secondly, it is argued with Jencks that many
post-modernist works contain a number of dual or multiple codings, and it is suggested that these
are also characteristic of a new development of the reflexive parody found in modernism. Finally
it is argued that if modernist parody would be transcended in post-modernism as an out-dated
modernist form as Jameson suggests, then pastiche must also be as ripe for such a transcendence
given that it too is as old as the modernist parody which Jameson sees it as replacing, but that the
most likely scenario for the immediate future will be that both parody and pastiche will be given
new functions by their post-modernist owners, and that these new functions will continue to
co-exist with the older forms of parody still being used by modernist writers and artists.

1.

My interest in parody was first developed in the 1960s at Monash University

where research into the theory and practice of satire, irony, parody and the
grotesque was being undertaken by Leslie Bodi, Douglas Muecke, David
Roberts and Philip Thomson. After writing on some of the functions of
parody in nineteenth century Germany (Rose (1976, 1978)) my attention was
drawn to the increasingly central role taken by parody in both modernist art
and contemporary cultural theory. In particular I was struck by the way in
which some of the central characteristics of modern parody - of, for instance,
intertextuality and discontinuity - had come to function as norms in the
structuralist and post-structuralist analysis of texts. After tracing these norms
back to the Russian Formalists and to their ‘canonisation’ of Don Quixote and
Tristram Shandy as paradigms of the modern novel, Parody/meta-fiction

* Author’s address: M.A. Rose, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, Parkville VIC 3052,
Australia.

0304-422X/88/$3.50 0 1988, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

50 MA. Rose / Parody/post-modernism

(1979) also sought to give a history of the term from its usage by the Ancients
to contemporary times. ’
While Parody/meta-fiction looked at late modernist theory up to the
post-structuralists, deconstructionists and reception theorists, this paper will
begin by considering the attempts of such as Fredric Jameson to see post-mod-
ernism as a break from modernism and its use of parody.
According to the argument of Jameson’s article ‘Postmodernism, or the
cultural logic of late capitalism’ (1984), the parody recognized in Parody/
meta-fiction as characteristic of modernism has been replaced by both a new
aesthetic populism based in the dominance of the mass-produced image and
by pastiche. But just as it can be argued that the mixture of high and low
images found by Jameson in post-modernism may not be part of a genuine
populist abolition of the distinctions between high and low art, * so it may be
questioned that parody in post-modernism has been reduced to the lower and
less reflexive form of imitation known as pastiche, or that the latter is only a
recent ‘post-modernist’ development, as suggested by Jameson in the follow-
ing passages:

‘In this situation (that is, that of a late capitalism “devoid OS stylistic norms”) parody finds
itself without a vocation; it has lived, and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take
its place. .Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead
language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives,
amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the
abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still
exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs: it is to parody what that
other interesting and historically original modem thing, the practice of a kind of blank irony,
is to what Wayne Booth calls the “stable ironies” of the 18th century.’ (Jameson (1984 : 65))

Ironically, Jameson’s account of parody’s degeneration into pastiche in post-

modernism in the section entitled ‘Pastiche eclipses parody’ itself appears to

1 Parody/m&z-fiction (1979) has recently been used in other studies of modem parody as
meta-fiction, as in, for example, Patricia Waugh’s Metafiction. The theory and practice of
self-conscious fiction (1984), and Linda Hutcheon, A theory of parody. The teachings of twentieth
century art forms (1985). While extensive use is made of Parody/metalfiction by Hutcheon, my
arguments are, however, frequently misunderstood by her. Hence the history of the idea and use
of parody from the Ancients to Foucault is misunderstood as representing ‘a Foucaldian belief in
the equation of parody with meta-fiction or self-reference (Hutcheon (1985 : 20)) even though
Hutcheon has also used some of the history of the non-metafictional uses of parody given in
Parody/meta-fiction in other sections of her book (e.g., 1985 : 32). Other uses made of Parody/
meta-fiction include discussions of the role of parody in modem art by Linda Hicks, and inclusion
of its arguments on self-reflexive and modem art in post-modernist art works by the artist Peter
Tyndall.
* Ironically, one of the most frequent charges against the post-modernist revival of decoration has
been that of elitism. Even when high and low art are mixed in post-modernism, the ironies
produced by this mixture (as for example, in Stirling’s Stuttgart State Art Gallery) also require a
knowledge of both high and low art and their histories which is hardly ‘populist’ in the traditional
sense of the word.
 MA. Rose / Parody/post-modernism 51

confuse the characteristics of both modernism and post-modernism and of

parody and pastiche while attempting to differentiate the two pairs. Hence it
is, according to Jameson, the ‘disappearance of the subject’ (a thesis of the
modernist structuralist theory which based itself in parody) which produces
the pastiche of post-modernism:

‘The disappearance of the individual subject, along with its formal consequence, the increasing
unavailability of the personal style, engender the wellmgh universal practice today of what
may be called pastiche.’ (Jameson (1984: 64))

The ‘post-modernity’ of Jameson’s concept of ‘pastiche’ might, however, be

questioned when we note that the origin of the term ‘pastiche’ is found by
Jameson in the writings of Thomas Mann and Adomo - who were both
modernist authors who also saw parody as characteristic of their age. While
Jameson uses Mann’s Dr. Faustus to locate the appearance of pastiche in
post-modernism, that novel has also been remembered by theorists of parody
for its characterisation of parody as representing a sympathetic attitude to the
text or work being imitated. 3
Etymologically speaking, the term pastiche may, moreover, be said to have
come from the painting term ‘pasticcio analogen’, meaning the compilation of
motifs from several sources and to have been in usage for several (modem)
centuries (Rose (1979 : 43; 1986)). (It has also come to stand for counterfeit in
some English uses and to have been used synonymously with ‘parody’ in
French.) Although the term ‘pastiche’ has clearly co-existed with that of
parody in English for some time, Jarneson, as argued, has chosen to see it as a
new degeneration of parody into a blind or unreflexive form of imitation.
While this theory creates a new history for the term pastiche which has yet to
be substantiated, it also represents a simplification of the dialectic between
parody and pastiche which both Mann and Adomo might be said to have been
interested in in their modernist writings, and which may still be relevant to an
understanding of the function of some forms of post-modernist pastiche today.
Jameson also appears to want to differentiate post-modernist pastiche from
Adomo’s late aesthetic goal of an anti-mimetic self-critical form of parody
when he describes it as representing a loss of belief in the possibility of
establishing new values in the aesthetic sphere, although he also attaches this
to what he sees as post-modernism’s lack of ‘the normative character of the
modern’. This latter attachment is confusing not only because Adomo’s
modernist ‘negative aesthetics’ could also be described as an ‘anti-normative’
aesthetics, but because it can be argued that parody has already introduced a

3 See Rose (1979 : 30) for a discussion of this view of parody. Jameson also gives no specific
passage or page references in Dr. Faustus to back up his claim for its prediction of the form taken
by pastiche which Jameson finds in post-modernism. The subject is, moreover, a very complex
one.
52 M.A. Rose / Parody/post-modernism

new set of ‘anti-normative’ norms into modernism by means of which the

norms of the past are continuously questioned. Because of this, we not only
have the possibility of new norms being born from modernism but the
probability that the post-modernist pastiche described by Jameson as normless
may be closer to modernist parody than Jameson’s account suggests.
While presenting many imaginative thoughts on the nature of post-mod-
ernism Jameson also appears to present something of a caricature of it when
he sums it up as having substituted the ‘high-modernist ideology of style with
an imitation of dead styles’ (Jameson (1984: 65)). This is so because, as even
Habermas’ critique of post-modernist architecture suggests (1985b), its eclectic
combination of past styles is at least sometimes a part of its attempt to create
a decorative facade for what it perceives to be the ‘soulless’, or dead, steel and
concrete skeletons of functionalist modernist buildings. Clearly the differences
between post-modernist architecture, art, literature, and theory also demand
that a more differentiated, and historical analysis of the various forms now
named post-modernist be developed. In addition to differentiating between the
various theories and practices of ‘post-modernism’, such an analysis might
look at the way in which the modernist critiques of the mass production of
images in the ‘culture industry’ by such as Adorn0 have been taken up or
echoed in the critiques of the ‘society of the spectacle’ which have influenced
some post-modernist critiques of late capitalist culture. 4 Lyotard’s knowledge
of the early Frankfurt school is, for example, explicitly referred to in his The
postmodern condition (1984: 13) while others associated with the tradition of
Frankfurt School such as Albrecht Wellmer (1985) have also shown interest in
further pursuing the links between the German modernist theorists and the
French postmodernists. 5
Just as the example of Lyotard’s use of Adomo points to the existence of
similarities between the modernist critics of Western capitalist culture and the
post-modernist critics of late capitalist culture, so too similarities between
those cultures are to be found in the use made by each of ironic and
self-reflexive forms of writing or art. If one major difference between post-
modernist architecture and modern architecture is that the former uses pastiche
to criticise the functionalism of the latter, this might show that it is bemoaning
a lack of reflexivity and self-criticism in modernism while also using one of its
stylistic, and epistemological, tools for a new function. In other words, parody
does not degenerate into pastiche in all post-modernist works, but may, with

4 Jameson (1985:66) refers to Debord (1983) when speaking of the production of images for
pastiche in post-modernism but fails to mention that it is Debord’s criticism of the society of the
spectacle created by modernism which has inspired many post-modernist critiques of modernism.
’ I shall be commenting further on similarities between modernist and post-modernist critiques of
‘reification’ in a paper entitled ‘Myth in modem and post-modem theory’, to be presented at the
1987 symposium of the Australian Academy of Humanities (publication forthcoming).
 M.A. Rose / Parody/post-modernism 53

pastiche, be given further reflexive powers by being directed towards a critique

of modernism itself (Rose (1986 : 100; 1979)).
In addition to putting such post-modernist works into a more realistic
context whereby they are seen to be but some of a variety of art forms and
theories currently in vogue, we might add that they not only co-exist with the
modernist texts or art works they are supposed to have superceded, but
together with the targets of modernist parody and irony. Hence Umberto
Eco’s now famous description of the post-modernist attitude as that of a man
in love with ‘a very cultivated woman’ who knows he cannot say to her ‘I love
you madly’ without adding ‘as Barbara Cartland would put it.. . ’ (1984 : 67-68)
co-exists with both the modem popular Romantic novel which devalued the
language of love and those modernist parodies of popular romance which have
made the fact of the devaluation of those words inescapable for even those
‘high modernists’ who do not read popular fiction. Perhaps the really up-to-date
post-modernist writer might soon have to say: ‘As Umberto Eco says, . . .I
love you madly’, but the multi-dimensionality and referentiality of the state-
ment will still implicitly be present, despite any lack of specific reference to
either Cartland or the modernist rejection of popular realism. 6
In addition to acknowledging the fact that post-modernism may both
consist of several elements and styles which may differentiate it from mod-
ernism, and still co-exist with various pre-existent modernist and popular art
forms, it might be useful to separate the theories of the post-modern of such as
Lyotard, Hassan and Jencks from the practices of post-modernism, and
especially from those which have developed without cognisance of those
theories.
One of the problems with Jameson’s analysis of post-modernism is not just
that these distinctions are not made, but that post-modernism is attributed far
greater omnipotence then it yet has. One reason for Jameson’s treatment of it
in this way may moreover be found in his equally sweeping claim that
post-modernism might be a symptom of the breakdown of the ‘autonomy of
art in late capitalism’ (1984: 86-87). According to the logic of Jameson’s
argument, the loss of this supposed autonomy leads not to the socialisation of
art but to the transformation of the ‘real’ into a collection of pseudo-events -
which might also be described as the very opposite of the development which
the early Frankfurt School had wished to see eventuate from the breakdown of
the autonomisation of art in high modernism. Even the early Frankfurt School
had, however, seen Modernity as containing both an ‘autonomous’ form of art
and other popular forms.
Whether any one cultural movement can ever have the powers Jameson
attributes to the postmodem must also be doubted. As Charles Jencks writes

6 Cross fertilization between these different forms is, of course, also possible - modem realist and
romantic novels being as capable of some parody or self-parody as the modernist parody proper.
54 M.A. Rose / Parody/post-modernism

(1986 : 23) ‘there is moreover no one Post-Modern style’. Jencks then lists
thirty ‘definers’ to distinguish Post-modernism for Modern and Late-Modern
architecture involving differences ‘over symbolism, ornament, humour, tech-
nology and the relation of the architect to existing and past cultures’.
According to Jencks’ ‘Evolutionary tree of post-modem architecture,
1960-80 (1986 : 26) pastiche is also but one of the stylistic characteristics of
what he characterises as ‘Straight Revivalism’. (Ironically it is also the cate-
gory into which Jencks puts another Jameson, the architectural critic, Conrad
Jameson.) The Historicism which Fredric Jameson tries to link with the same
postmodernism which uses pastiche, Jencks places in a different though
connected category, while Stirling’s New Stuttgart State Gallery is placed in a
separate category named ‘Ad Hoc Urban&‘. Other categories in Jenck’s
post-modernist diagram include the ‘Metaphor/Metaphysical’ (including
semiotics and the Sydney Opera House) and ‘Post-Modern Space’ in which
‘Reverse Perspectives’ mix with ‘Layering and Ambiguity’ and ‘Frontality/
Rotation’.
To Jencks, Post-Modernism is also definitely much more than the pastiche
which Jameson describes as one of its central characteristics. In addition to
reducing pastiche to but a very small part of his diagram, Jencks had already
described it as a term of abuse in some accounts of post-modernism which
might be described as a negative or paranoid definition made by ‘Modernists
in retreat trying to hold the High Church together’ (1986 : 11).
While Jencks leaves us in no doubt as to his discomfort with the use of the
term pastiche to characterise post-modernism, his attitude to the role of
parody is, at first, less easy to discern. When Jencks begins his ‘What is
Post-Modernism? with a caption to Carlo Maria Mariani’s “La Mana Ubbi-
disce all’ Inteletto’ of 1983, which states that for Modernists ‘the subject of art
was often the process of art; for post-modernists it is often the history of art’,
it might seem that he has agreed with some of the critics of post-modernism
that it is less interested in self-reflexion than was modernism. This however is
not the necessary conclusion to make from Jencks’ caption. For he then goes
on to make it clear that he is not thereby saying that post-modernism is not
capable of reflecting on itself, but that it may do this through reflection on the
history of the art which has preceded it. In this way post-modernism may even
be able to carry out the ‘archeology’ of itself - and of its use of parody and
pastiche - which its forerunner, modernism, appears never to have fully
attempted.
Jencks’ own definition of post-modernism also appears to attribute to it one
of the main characteristics of modem meta-fictional parody in describing it as
‘that paradoxical dualism, or double coding, which its hybrid name
(post-modernism) entails’ (1986 : 14). ’ In addition to defining post-mod-

’ Jencks (1987) expands the concept of dual or double coding to include multiple codings
 M.A. Rose / Parody/post-modernism 55

ernism as a paradoxical form of double coding, reminiscent of the way in

which the parody may juxtapose two or more ‘text-worlds’ within itself, ’
Jencks speaks of post-modernism as ‘the continuation of Modernism and its
transcendence’ (1986 : 15). Given parody has been named by several as one of
the means by which Cervantes achieved both the continuance of the old
Romance and its transcendence in what had been termed the modern novel,
then its role in the transcendence of modernism in post-modernism should not
surprise us too much. While Jencks speaks of the transcendence of modernism
to distinguish his definition of post-modernism from those of others who see it
only as a development of modernism, he also recognises that the moment of
transcendence has not yet been reached. Parody may moreover still live on as
an agent of transformation in both modernism and post-modernism. Whether
it would have to ‘transcend’ itself for post-modernism to break with its
modernist past is a question which Jencks’ essay does not address explicitly,
but despite this it would not follow from Jencks’ argument that parody must
degenerate into pastiche as claimed by Jameson (1986 : 34). 9 Not only has
Jencks criticised those accusing postmodernism of being mere pastiche as
denigrating it from a Modernist view-point antipathetic to the ‘post-modem’,
but pastiche is, as we have seen, co-existent with parody in Modernism, and
must therefore be itself as ripe for transcendence as that parody.

2. Conclusion

Given parody is still clearly being used by such as James Stirling in works like
the New Stuttgart State Gallery, it must still be seen as being practised within
post-modernism. If it is to be transcended by the ‘double coding’ which Jencks
sees as the main characteristic of post-modernism (as well as of Stirling’s
Gallery) then it may also be seen to have contributed to the development of
that dual coding. Parody has however been with us now for over a millennium
and is more likely to remain with us in different functions and forms rather
than disappear altogether. Already parody is being used by post-modernists to
comment on the failings of Modernism and to distinguish Post-Modernism
from them. (Contrary to Jameson, Jencks also argues that Post-Modernism

* Following S.J. Schmidt’s development of the concept of ‘text-world’ and ‘reader-world

(‘Textwelt’ and ‘Leserwelt’), Rose (1979: 26f.) offered an analysis of the parody text as consisting
of at least two texts worlds or codes in order to illustrate one of the differences between it and
other texts. Sirnilarily, Bakhtin has spoken of the ‘dialogic’ form of the modem novel with
reference to parody, while the concept of ‘dual coding’ has also been used to characterise the type
of irony sometimes found in general parody (Rose (1979 : 52ff.)).
9 Jencks is also explicitly critical of the Hal Foster Collection (1984), and of Jameson’s contribu-
tion to it, because he sees it as resulting in a jumble of definitions producing only a ‘Nothing
post-modernism’.
56 M.A. Rose / Parody/post-modernism

can be satiric. lo) L’k

1 e most new cultural developments post-modernism has
found a new target and function for parody - in this case the criticism of
modernism. The new type of parody found in post-modernism is furthermore
not satisfied to simply reflect on the processes or structures of the art work as
was characteristic of parody under modernism - but is concerned to place
modernism, and itself, within a self-reflexive history of art. It will hence be
interesting to see what further developments are still to come in both the
theory and the practice of post-modernism, as too how well its future critics
will describe and analyse the complexities of both.

References

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to Jencks’ analysis of Carlo Maria Mariani’s ‘School of Rome’ sees it as combining irony, parody,
pastiche, and satire. Although the question of how these forms are to be defined with reference to
post-modernism and its differences from modernism might be discussed further, Jencks’ ‘What is
post-modernism?’ is still one of the clearest discussions of the subject to appear to this date. A
fuller discussion of this is to be found in my talk for the George Paton Gallery of the University
of Melbourne (publication forthcoming in Reasons to be Cheerful, 1988).