Gary-Habermas

Key phrase from Habermas in this article is definitely the "Avant-garde". This term is used repeatedly throughout the article to describe what I perceive as a outdated movement. Habermas appears to attack the avant-garde ideology as something that was once desired but no longer prevails.

I had my own idea of avant-garde but decided to look it up and see how it was textually defined. I found it described as "movements concerned with art for art's sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform". This movement has lead the charge in the post modern revolution, but Habermas says that "although the avant-garde is still considered to be expanding, it is supposedly no longer creative. Modernism is dominant but dead" (pg 101).He said that "anyone who considers himself avant-garde can read his own death warrant" (pg 101). Are we saying that the movement is dead.....modernism or the expansion of the aesthetic experience? (I am most likely reading this all wrong because he totally confused me when I read this piece).

Habermas likes to classify the groups. I found his explanation for young conservatives, old conservatives, and neoconservatives interesting, but unusually stereotypical. Since the young conservatives "claim as their own the revelations of a decentered subjectivity [...] and step outside the modern world" (pg107), are they the postmodern movement????

The "old conservatives do not allow themselves to be contaminated by cultural modernism"(pg107), while the neoconservatives "welcome the development of modern science as long as this only goes beyond its sphere to carry forward technical progress, capital growth and rational administration" (pg108).

I'm not sure what group I fall into since I agree and disagree with ideas from each classification. But what do I know....I thought Avant-garde was a trashy clothing store on South Orange Blossom Trail.