Suicide machine

Yesterday my professor introduced us to the idea of Vanguardia, a term you might know as "avant-garde." Someone defined it as being a new style. No, the professor said, because it is above the concept of style. Style is too cheap to contain this.

He kept on talking, but I don't remember what he said because just then, I realized that

Avant-garde is dying, and it is killing itself.

And I'm not even talking about how its everyday reference by non-elite thinkers such as myself has cheapened the mysterious and provocative nature of this idea.

Sure there's avant-garde fashion, art, architecture--but these expressions of avant-garde stem from the same thing: avant-garde thought. Dangerous and daring thought. Thoughts that challenge and question with the intent of challenging and questioning without receiving resolutions or answers. Avant-garde thoughts defy boundaries. And boundaries need to exist in order to defy them.

I think it's safe to say that (at least in this day and age) postmodernism is the ultimate fruit of avant-garde thought. There is no longer right or wrong, there is right and wrong (or carrots and a green winter dress), because these don't matter anyway. Postmodernism does to moral absolutes what the Euro did to the Spanish peseta--their value in currency is obsolete. Now I'm not claiming to understand the exact tenets of postmodernism (which is sort of a paradox if you think about it), and I'm also not denouncing its rationality. But postmodernism, the most avant-garde of movements, is getting rid of boundaries (reconstructing them into one chaotic and fascinating meta-narrative), which is why avant-garde is on a slow but steady path towards self-destruction. Postmodernism is Vanguardia's Frankenstein.