Something I found interesting was Huyssen's statements about the institutionalization of the avantgarde. While this is an idea that we've run into before, reading Harraway gave me something of new take on the phrase "the dialectic between the avantgarde and mass culture". This is something we've kind of discussed in class, maybe less in the Adorno high/low culture sense and more just in general belief that someone, somewhere, must give a challenge to the inequalities of late capitalist cultural production methodologies.

In my opinion, Huyssen's dissection of the shift from modernism to postmodernism has been the most coherent and rational of all our previous readings. In contrast to other authors, Huyssen dealt with vague terms such as avantgarde and postmodernism head on. He delved deep into how these concepts have shaped our world today. Huyssen's explanation of why the avante-garde can no longer function could easily be the fate of postmodernism.

Morefuntocompute and I are presenting on Monday, and we were hoping to start an online discussion about these readings that can be carried over to class. It may very well fail. (Read more.)