The Postmodern Irony of Bonsai
In one of those wonderful moments where postmodern theory (not just practice) bubbles up in unlikely places, I happened upon a surprising thread at
BonsaiTalk, a discussion board devoted to (as you might guess), All Things Bonsai. The majority of the discussions (as you also might guess) focus on the intricacies of soil composition, methods for pruning, and occasionally into the aesthetics of the miniaturized trees. (Disclaimer: My wife bought me a bonsai for our anniversary last month, which is how I ended up at BonsaiTalk.)
I found this thread:
Bonsai Art and Irony," which is a lengthy dialogue on the potential postmodern irony of bonsai. The initial post starts,
In a 1993 essay on the relation between television and contemporary fiction*, David Foster Wallace mentions the recent "wider shift in U.S. perceptions of how art was supposed to work, a transition from art's being a creative instantiation of real values to art's being a creative rejection of bogus values."
Wallace goes on to describe how ideas such as "sincerity" and "passion" have been undercut by a new hip and disaffected sensibility.
Which brings me to my question. We've been talking a lot about bonsai as art, lately. When I think of bonsai art, I think of "creative instatiation of real values", of "sincerity", and of "passion." I don't think of hip cyncism or cutting irony.
So am I missing something?
(The quote is from Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.")
The discussion ranges through the functions of Romantic art, the possibility of nature as an art forum, the reflexivity of the two in bonsai, sadism, high versus low culture, the philosophy of categories, and more (some of the more pomo among the previous terms were my paraphrases). What's striking about this, to me at least, is that the whole discussion serves well to remind us that postmodern theorists frequently, perhaps unintentionally, position themselves back into that "high versus low culture" category they claim is dead. The BonsaiTalkers show here that everyone can--should--be playing this game. (And I recognize that even this recognition plays back into that binary--"everybody" as if "look, even
they can do it. But I'll own up to that bias and move on.) Wallace is great at this--a postmodernist playing within language, but tweaking it in ways that are productive rather than merely being either sensationalist or dense.
Intentionally playing the game against itself, one person writes,
Perhaps bonsai can be used as "a neotraditional reaction to, and thus doubly-ironic inversion of, the ironic modernist's creative rejection of bogus values, through a reassertion of a sincere and value-laden paradigm."
do I get my degree now?
Sure thing; you can have mine.
(Ironically, again, when I attempted to post a follow-up in the discussion, I was told that I hadn't been a member of the board long enough to be permitted to post....)
Posted by johndan at September 7, 2004 09:49 PM
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