Book Cover -- Title -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Anti-Art or Ante-Art? -- Monumental Art or Submonumental Art? -- Eagleton and the Apocalyptic Fallacy -- Introducing the B-Effect -- Introducing the C-Effect -- Deploring/Exploring Hyperspace: Jameson and Cage -- Stupefaction or Enlivenment? -- Benjamin and the Loss of Aura -- Barthes, Belsey, and the Death of the Author -- Brger and the Death of the Avant-Garde -- Bonito-Oliva, Baudrillard, and the Collapse of the New -- Beckett, Brecht, and the Attractions of Antinarrative -- Beckett's Poetics of Failure/Brecht's Poetics of Interrogation -- Beckett, Brecht, and the Groan of the Text -- Eagleton, Jameson, and Dehistoricized Culture -- Cage, Kostelanetz, and Value Judgments -- Jameson, Rauschenberg, and Premature Exasperation -- Cage, Rauschenberg, and Ryman -- Cage and Consumption -- Collective Narrative and the Struggle with Simulacra -- Depersonalized Culture or Repersonalized Culture? -- Cage and the Antilogic of the Text -- Beckett, Cage, and Nothing -- Beckett, Cage, and Programmatic Composition -- Purposeful Purposelessness or Nothing to Be Done? -- Jameson, Bourdieu, and the Destruction of Art and Taste -- Chion, Cage, and New Aesthetic Rationales -- Postmodernism's Purist Aesthetic -- Postmodernism's Hybrid Aesthetic -- Feldman, Crazy Contradiction, and the Conceptual, Artistic Life -- Pure ~H~ -- Habermas and Communicative Rationality -- Beuys, Adorno, and the Silence of Marcel Duchamp -- Beuys, Cage, Buchloh, and the B-B-Effect -- Jappe, Jameson, and the Concept of Utopia -- Bense, Concrete Poetry, and the Dwindling of the Poetic Element -- Chopin, Human Vitality, and Technological Civilization -- Conz and the New Saints of the Avant-Garde -- A Problem in Design: Lax and Mann -- Postmodernism at Two Speeds: Hassan, Janco, and Seuphor.

Rainer, Robbe-Grillet, Reich, and the Turn to Interobjectivity -- Robbe-Grillet and the Re-turn to the Subjective Type of Writing -- Rainer and the Re-turn to Identity -- Reich and the Re-turn to Historical Realities -- Multimedia Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Gaburo and Ashley -- Monk and the Re-turn to Recurrence -- Umberto Eco and the Re-turn to the Middle Ages -- Grass and the Destruction of Mankind -- Grass, Mann, and the Re-turn to Forbidden Literature -- Ernst, Carrington, and the Re-turn of Surrealism -- Carrington, Cage, Beuys, and the Poetics of Resistance -- Cage, Carrington, Barthes, Burroughs, Bense: From Artha to Moksha -- Cage, Wolf, and the Re-turn to the Third Alternative -- Wolf, Mann, and the Authority of Literary Genres -- Mller, Beuys, and the Elevation of the Berlin Wall -- Mller, Brecht, and the Petrification of Hope -- Mller, Wilson, and the Re-turn to the Classics -- Huyssen and the Endgame of the Avant-Garde -- Huyssen, Popper, and the Electrification of the Avant-Garde -- Buuel, Breton, Benjamin, Baudrillard, and the Myths of Mechanical Depersonalization -- DeLillo, Mller, Lyotard, Kroker, and the Panic Sensibility -- Ballard, The Kindness of Women, and Catharsis -- Beyond the Disappearance of Value: Anderson and Acker -- Toward Effective Communication: Kruger and Holzer -- Appropriation, Neutralization, and Reconciliation: Tillers and Johnson -- Independent Internationalism: Finlay and Lax -- Anderson and American Active Freedom -- Glass and Wilson: Alienation Effect or Empathy Effect? -- Burroughs, Walker, and the Pattern of Chaos -- Beckett, Warrilow, and the Clarity of Spirit -- Considered in Diagrammatic Summary: The Phases of Postmodernism -- The Modes of Modernism and Postmodernism -- Baudrillard or Cage? Degeneration or Affirmation? -- Burt, Wendt, and the Positive Parameters of Postmodernism -- Index.