Habermas

After having read Habermas, I came to the realization that the same media example I used for Lyotard was relatable to “Modernity- An Incomplete Project”. Habermas discusses the idea of being avant-garde and how it relates to modernity. The avant-garde invades “unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future”. The avant-garde means that it has not been done before and brings a fresh new perspective to light. The media example I discussed was the Vogue issue that displayed naked models selling the product. This is something I have never seen before and came to me as shocking. I concentrated less on what was being sold and more on the way the magazine was trying to get attention on the product. This shows that we have come to a point in society where it is acceptable to display products in such a fashion as opposed to in previous decades where conservativeness was part of the value system. It certainly would not have been so easily accepted then as it is now. However, Habermas also notes that “although the avant-garde is still considered to be expanding, it is supposedly no longer creative”. In a film class I took my freshman year, we discussed that although an idea for a movie can be regarded as original, realistically all genres and ideas have been already used and are simply being recycled. There is no such thing as a new plot line that has never been thought of before.

Habermas also discusses the Enlightenment and discusses how he does not want to give up on modernity but rather learn from past mistakes of programs that attempted to negate it. He does a thorough discussion on modernity and what it entails however I did not fully comprehend how his point on aesthetic theory related to this. I suppose it could mean that once art was simply used as a representation whereas now it is modern in the sense that it has progressed to involving the media of representation and new techniques that create something innovative and outside of the box.

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