There was a sentence in Jameson’s “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” that really resonated for me. In describing pastiche, he said,
“There is another sense in which the writers and artists of the present day will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds–they’ve already been invented; only a limited number of combinations are possible; the most unique ones have been thought of already.”
This sentence really struck me because I think it is something that we as a society fear today. The internet has facilitated the sharing of ideas, but at the same time, it also means that oftentimes a person does not own his/her own ideas anymore; once they are out in the world, they’re seen as fair game. The readings about postmodernism also discuss this idea as one of the motivating factors for postmodernism, that we are no longer individuals – and in fact, individualism might never have existed.
My question is if this is a new idea to the postmodernist era, or rather one that every era has had to face. Is this just something that has become more prominent today because technology and information are growing at astromonically fast rates? Or is this truly the case – that we can no longer produce new, unique ideas in literature? What are your thoughts on this?
I have to admit, I don’t know how to answer your questions. They do remind me of a few similar ideas though. In considering prior eras grappling with individualism and “new” ideas, I’m reminded of T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Obviously, Eliot is a fairly recent figure so I don’t know to what degree we consider his era distinct from the postmodern era, but he seemed to believe that while all ideas are composed of used parts, they can present those parts in a way that is new. Writers can distinguish themselves as individuals by acknowledging tradition and using it in their favor. I think a lot of people from the modern era agreed–they seemed to still have some belief in the “creative genius.” This issue also reminds me Lot 49′s Koteks, who bemoans Yoyodyne’s rules regarding patents. Perhaps Pynchon had his own statements to make about individualism.
I would think that every time period has had those who assume that we will soon run out of ideas in fiction, only to be proven wrong when new ideas came along. I think that the idea that there will soon be nothing new to say is flawed because it doesn’t take into account that there will always be talented writers who can produce original material, and that the number of “combinations” that can be used to create a story is astronomical.
Every time I sit down to write I have to first conquer (every time) an overwhelming anxiety that I’m unable to write something new, something original, that I’m not just rehashing classic plot-lines and character archtypes. I have, in attempting to defeat this anxiety, read dozens of articles and books about the subject and have come to the conclusion that not only is this anxiety something every writer seems to suffer from, but that it’s actually something to embrace. The idea of coming up with something *completely* original is ridiculous, but as Beau mentioned, combinations are endless. The debate on the reality of “universal truths” wages on, but I certainly believe there are at least, to some degrees, some universal truths, universal archtypes, that will be repeated ad nauseum through the future history of writing, but it’s in what order the author decides to present them that creates something new.
I think that even without the rapidness of technology, and how it has allowed us to share ideas, we would be confronting the same problem. I think that the sense of a “unique plot” was exhausted since man started to tell stories. I think that what makes stories different and unique is how we go about retelling the stories in a new and innovative way. In this sense, I think that Jameson is correct in saying that there isn’t original idea anymore, but I think that it is endless the way that the expression of the ideas could be achieved, It only takes creativity.
When introducing technology in the mix, I think it just creates more of a means to share creativity into the world, so it may not have the same impact as it could have in early eras when things were harder to publish. I think that the fear of running out of individuality is exasperated by the run of technology, but not created by it.