Summary
$e paper examines the legacy of the European historical Avant-Gardes from the perspective 
of the shift of paradigms immanent in the formation of the Postmodern epoch. $e existing 
theories generally regard the Avant-Gardes as an unsuccessful attempt to redefine the function of 
art in the social, cultural and economic environment of the early 20
th
 century. 
Examining the productivity and relevance of the historical Avant-Gardes from the perspective 
of the Avant-Pop, the first thoroughly Postmodern literary movement, I intend to show how the 
strategies of fragmentation and the breaking of organicity not only quintessentially defined the 
manner in which Modernity and its art came to an end, but how they also provided the basis for 
the formation of culture and art that no longer functions according to Cartesian principles. 
Key words: historical/ahistorical Avant Gardes, Avant-Pop, Modernity, Postmodernity, 
institution of art, postindustrial capitalism
 Povzetek
V članku se ukvarjam s pomenom evropskih historičnih avantgard s stališča menjave paradigem, 
povezanih z oblikovanjem postmoderne dobe. Obstoječi teoretični pristopi obravnavajo fenomen 
historičnih avantgard kot neuspešen poskus preoblikovanja funkcije umetnosti v družbenem, 
kulturnem in ekonomskem okolju začetka 20. stoletja. 
S preverjanjem produktivnosti in pomena historičnih avantgard v luči prvega postmodernega 
literarnega gibanja Avant-Pop nameravam pokazati, da sta avantgardistični strategiji 
fragmentarnosti in neorganskosti bistveno pripomogli k razkroju novoveške metafizike in 
umetnosti, hkrati pa zagotovili temelje za oblikovanje kulture in umetnosti postmoderne epohe. 
Ključne besede: historične/ahistorične avantgarde, Avant-Pop, novi vek, postmoderna doba, in-
stitucija umetnosti, postindustrijski kapitalizem
 DOI: 10.4312/elope.7.1.61-72

Mark Amerika declares at the very beginning of his 1992 Avant-Pop manifesto: “Now that 
Postmodernism is dead and we’re in the process of finally burying it, something else is starting 
to take hold in the cultural imagination and I propose that we call this new phenomenon Avant-
Pop” (Amerika 1992). $e implication suggested by the statement is at least twofold: on the one 
hand its aprioristic tone and the name of the movement take us back to the opening decades of 
the 20
th
 century when similar declarations abounded in the manifestoes of movements we now 
associate with the historical Avant-Gardes. On the other hand, a much broader issue is being 
somewhat casually addressed, namely that of the death of Postmodernism.  
Amerika certainly was not the first to have made the claim. More or less substantiated obituaries 
to Postmodernism appeared in both specialized and general media throughout the second half 
of the 1980s, along with claims to its succession. If nothing else, the latter signal the increasingly 
obvious incapacity of Postmodernism to adequately represent and significantly comment upon 
the existing reality. However, regardless of how urgent the appeals to find a way out of the 
Postmodernist self-referential feedback loops may have been, only few attempts to steer away 
from the Postmodernist dictum succeeded in evading at least partially the retrograde revival of the 
Realist tradition.
1
 From the perspective of the Geistesgeschichte approach to the transformations 
of the historical and literary epochs, the problems with finding new modes of expression are 
understandable. In terms of the Geistesgeschichte methodology Postmodernism reveals itself 
as the ultimate realisation of metaphysical nihilism. As such, it disqualifies the last remaining 
category defining the Modern Age specific understanding of the world – the immediate reality 
of the contents of consciousness. $e literary period succeeding it should therefore rely upon the 
paradigms, which would not only separate it from preceding literary movements and periods in 
the sense of rearranging relations among the basic Modern Age categories,
2
 but would transform 
the very content of those categories and thus render them obsolete, at the same time signalling 
the dawning of a new, Postmodern epoch. 
$e first products of the new literary period would therefore fulfil the function which literary 
history associates with the Avant-Gardes in the ahistorical sense. At this point, the repeated and 
more or less explicit Avant-Popsters’ references to their movement as a Postmodern Avant-Garde 
invite the most serious scrutiny. From the perspective of literary history, both terms require 
careful inspection, as they are frequently used at random in artistic as well as in pop-cultural 
contexts. A successful theoretical justification of the first term automatically reveals the nature of 
the second. In other words, if the entire literary machinery concerning the phenomenon of the 
1
 In this respect, the greatest amount of attention was paid to the cyberpunk movement, which introduced a number of 
innovations, yet nevertheless remained essentially bound to postmodernism as it essentially materialized postmodern-
ist formal techniques on the level of content (cf. McHale 1992, 225–42)
 I am referring to the  categories of Transcendence, Subject, Truth and Reality.

Avant-Pop evades the metaphysical framework of the Geistesgeschichte paradigms specific to the 
Modern Age, then the Avant-Pop is the first truly Postmodern literary movement, and as such 
Avant-Garde in the ahistorical sense.
A brief inquiry into how the members of the Avant-Pop movement theorise the “Avant” part of 
the movement’s name immediately raises questions regarding its Postmodern status. Amerika’s 
manifesto as well as Olsen’s and McCaffery’s writings on the subject rely heavily upon the 
vocabulary, strategies and examples of the historical Avant-Gardes.
3
 As I will show over the next 
few pages, the emergence of the historical Avant-Gardes was fundamentally connected to the 
institution of art as conditioned by the metaphysical systems of Modernity. It seems at least 
suspicious, then, that what was potentially the first movement of the new epoch should be so 
intimately bound to movements whose main objective was to reinforce and restore the core 
metaphysical values of the previous age. $is paradox certainly demands further investigation, 
especially as the thorough analysis of the Avant-Pop literary production in relation to its social, 
economic and cultural environment, which I will briefly introduce in the next section, revealed 
significant departures from the Cartesian model. 
 Hunting for instances of literature which would change the very content of existing metaphysical 
categories, render them obsolete and at the same time indicate the rise of a new epoch is extremely 
problematic due to the lack of historical distance and of comparable patterns. However, certain 
guidelines can be established on the grounds of the processes governing such major transitions 
in the past, and by application of ascertainable common mechanisms working broader social, 
cultural and economic changes upon the notion of literature. Leaving aside for the moment the 
paradoxical references to the historical Avant-Gardes, the Avant-Pop manifesto as well as the 
theoretical framework established by the movement’s founders correspond to the characteristics 
of the new epoch exposed by all the major theoreticians of Postmodernity. No previous attempt 
to transcend Postmodernism and offer a more adequate literary reflection of reality had been so 
thoroughly in synch with the mechanisms governing the social, economic and cultural processes 
commonly associated with the epochal shift of paradigms. For that reason, the Avant-Pop seemed 
the obvious candidate to consider as the first representative of literature no longer defined by 
Modern Age metaphysical models.
$e Avant-Pop movement emerged at the beginning of the 1990s within the reorganized Fiction 
Collective writers’ co-op. $e founding members Mark Amerika, Ronald Sukenick and Larry 
McCaffery borrowed the name from the 1985 Lester Bowie album, on which the trumpeter 
submitted evergreens and pop tunes to jazz improvisational play.
4
 $e movement’s main 
 Cf. Amerika 1992, articles 2, 3, 4, 6, 7; Amerika, Olsen 1995, 5–6, 13–14; McCaffery 1993, xviii, xix.
 Bowie’s intention was to show that materials, the structure and meaning of which seem fixed, can offer and provide 
myriads of hidden meanings, alternative contexts and fresh combinations. Transferring unquestioned and unquestion-
able socio-cultural artefacts to the level of raw materials that can be arbitrarily shifted, combined and transformed 
corresponds to the basic tendencies of the Avant-Pop movement.

objective was the production of independent, innovative literary and literary-theoretical works 
criticising and undermining the ubiquity of corporations and consumerism in general. $eir 
strategy, emphasised both in Amerika’s manifesto and McCaffery’s introductions to the two 
Avant-Pop anthologies,
5
 could be summarised as the (ab)use of pop-cultural segments, which we 
are no longer aware of due to their ubiquity and which represent the sine qua non of our social 
memory, with the tactics articulated by the historical avant-gardes. Just as popular culture absorbs 
everything that is new, fresh and interesting, exposing merely the qualities which suit its growth 
and development in the service of the third phase of capitalism, so does the Avant-Pop employ 
everything that is innovative and exciting; however, it foregrounds and uses the characteristics 
which reveal popular culture in all of its artificiality and subservience to the mechanisms 
capital uses to control the masses. $is requires intimate knowledge of popular culture, and an 
efficient means to accumulate, transform and spread information faster than the pop-cultural 
media. Internet is, of course, the medium best suited to such aspirations, enabling both rapid 
accumulation and exchange of information, as well as easier access to like-minded individuals, 
who with their active participation further accelerate information production, manipulation 
and transfer. $e medium also drastically intervenes with the established distribution formula, 
reducing it to a network relation “authors – interactive participants” (Amerika, Olsen 1995, 21), 
in which the two roles are in constant flux. 
$e phenomenon of the Avant-Pop would very probably have remained a marginal literary curiosity 
in the context of Postmodernism were its rise not simultaneous with the spreading of the World 
Wide Web and the irruption of the logic conditioning the functioning of the computer into the 
social sphere by means of the technological sociality it enables. Considered in the context of broader 
social, economic and cultural transformations taking place after the Second World War, hypertext 
reveals itself as the embodiment of the principles all major theoreticians of Postmodernity
6
 agree to be 
the defining mechanisms of contemporary society and culture (Krevel 2005, 152–4). However, the 
electronic medium most conspicuously coincides with Jean Baudrillard’s notions of hyperreality and 
fractal subject, as they are fundamentally network systems of differential signs that can be combined, 
disassembled and shifted at random in accordance with one’s preferences (Baudrillard 1981, 66). 
Artistic works produced within the environment of hyperreality correspond to his concept of the 
third order simulacra, copies without an original, patterns which anticipate and accelerate the 
(hyper)real world of Postmodernity. As such, they function like media, providing the information 
for structuring the systems of our everyday hyperreality.
In my analysis of the Avant-Pop literary production from the perspective of the electronic 
medium, simultaneously applying the results to the categories proposed by Jean Baudrillard, 
I observed significant departures from the established models. First of all, the environment of 
the electronic medium finally provides an effective means for a thorough restructuring of the 
 nt 


categories of author and reader, which was unsuccessfully attempted by the Postmodernists 
already. $e phenomenon of the Internet “wreader”, the reader who “creates the story apart from 
authorial control in choosing links” (Landow 1994, 14), is essentially enabled by a medium built 
upon such links; however, it is not restricted to it. $e fact that in the 1990s hypertext spreads 
into the social sphere and becomes the chief means of human interaction allows us to consider 
the possibilities of “wreading” in other media as well,
7
 most pressingly, perhaps, in the context 
of the printed book. Applying the logic of Internet link-choosing to Baudrillard’s selection of 
information to create (non-electronic) systems of hyperreality, wreading in print would involve 
the presence of media transferred information which has already become part of our every-day 
hyperrealities. In other words, wreading print would depend on the density of the third order 
simulacra, which the readers verify and manipulate in accordance to their own hyperreal systems, 
thus shaping/co-writing the printed information into new, personified hyperrealities.
8
 
$e Avant-Pop achieves just that with a consistent application of media realities and media 
archetypes to the very core of their character and environment creation, as well as to their intrinsic 
stylistic features. Regardless of whether appearing in hypertext or print, the Avant-Pop characters 
and environments are constructed in a way that they prevent traditional reading and analytical 
approaches. $ey can be best described as arbitrary and unstable systems of signs, most of which 
have already been incorporated into the existing hyperreal systems, offered to the receiver to 
accept and manipulate them into new hyperrealities according to his/her preferences. Similarly, 
the defining feature of the Avant-Pop style would be the absence of a system of familiar references. 
Its abundant neologisms have no symbolic correspondents; they are yet to be actualised in the 
manner of the third order simulacra in the hyperrealities of individual receivers. As such, they 
decisively define the direction of the possibilities for a story and its meaning. $e Avant-Pop 
metaphors are probably the best example of how a third order simulacrum attracts and incorporates 
raw data within its hyperreality. Fulfilling the traditional function of describing the unknown 
with the familiar, the Avant-Pop metaphors rely exclusively upon the artefacts of the mediagenic 
society – those which has already become part of our every day hyperreality.
9 
$ese function much 
as the hypertext links, since the receiver’s familiarity with them conditions the creation of the 
story. $e governing principle of the Avant-Pop’s activity and production, then, predominantly 
corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra of simulation, forming hyperreal systems foreign 
to the Cartesian dialectics and principles of organicity, hierarchisation and linearity. 
Even if we consider the novelties the Avant-Popsters introduce less a consequence of a conscious 
effort than an inevitable result of the fact that they were the first generation of writers to have 
fully adopted and internalised the electronic medium, their insistence on promoting their Avant-
Gardism with the strategies, the rhetoric and the examples of the historical Avant-Gardes seems 
utterly paradoxical. In the light of the Avant-Pop’s purpose to offer a productive alternative to 
the exhausted institution of Modern Age literature, such close association with the movements 


from the first half of the 20
th
 century seems nothing short of naive. As it is hard to believe that 
the founding members of the movement, many of whom are professionally involved in literary 
criticism, would have overlooked the paradox of attempting to obliterate and transcend a given 
state with the very tools of its creation, let us examine whether a significant connection with the 
historical Avant-Gardes can be made at all.
 From the existing theoretical approaches to the historical Avant-Gardes, which establish the 
impact and the characteristics of the latter according to their authors’ respective ideological 
standpoints, I will focus upon those general findings which appear common and undisputed, 
and which seem to be in accord with the economic, cultural and social processes of the first 
half of the 20
th
 century. For that reason I will primarily concentrate upon the findings of the 
theoreticians who explore the essence of the Avant-Gardes in connection to the Zeitgeist, relying 
upon the Geistesgeschichte methodology and philosophical analysis.
10
 In this respect, there are 
two authors whose studies summarize the two major views on the reasons why the Avant-Gardes 
failed to bring art back to life within the historical environment in which they emerged. $e 
works of both Peter Bürger and Janko Kos are founded upon Renato Poggioli’s seminal T eoria 
dell’arte d’avanguardia from 1962, but each explains the destiny of the historical Avant-Gardes 
according to his own ideological provenance. 
Considering the original meaning of the term Avant-Garde – a small group of experienced soldiers 
exploring the terrain ahead of a large advancing army – which emerged in the 12
th
 century 
already, it is not surprising that the characteristics implied by the metaphorical usage of the term 
transcend the historical boundaries of the movements from the first half of the 20
th
 century. 
Infiltrating the hostile territory of tradition in the sense of introducing new traditions has been 
a constant practice throughout the history of literature, which is why the term is frequently used 
ahistorically in both literary and everyday discourses. In this respect, the usage of the term for 
specific instances of literary production seems primarily a matter of literary history, as it involves 
evaluation exclusively based on formal and thematic characteristics of such works.
Literary criticism has had much greater difficulties with the self-proclaimed Avant-Gardes from the 
first half of the 20
th
 century – namely Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism and partly Expressionism, 
as well as the movements appearing after the Second World War, the so-called Neo-Avant-
Gardes. $e main problem faced by literary criticism in its treatment of these movements is 
that the essence of the Avant-Gardes cannot be deduced from literature alone, since the major 
part of their production comprises programs, manifestoes and performances, which are semi-
literary at best. Since the historical Avant-Gardes were primarily groups with a common goal, the 
essence of the Avant-Gardes is crucially connected with literary sociology. $is already implies 
the importance of the social circumstances and processes which produced the movements for the 
detection of their common characteristics. 


From the historical point of view the Avant-Gardes were organised movements with the 
task of conquering new territories, which anticipated the provocation of conflict, realised as 
a methodical destruction of the entities pertaining to the bourgeois tradition. $e “violence” 
involved employment of elements which were shocking to the society defined by that tradition. 
$e common goal of these movements was bringing art back to life and the aesthetisation of 
life in general, which is also the point where the theories on the Avant-Gardes diverge – more 
specifically, why this aim was never achieved. 
In his study on the essence of the Avant-Gardes, Janko Kos (1983) identifies the idea of 
progressivism as the underlying common denominator to the tendencies expressed by the 
historical Avant-Gardes. In their case the idea of progress is fundamentally attached to the notion 
of individualism, central to the Modern Age metaphysics from the Renaissance on. As such, the 
movements in question are indelibly bound to the Modern Age understanding of subjectivity
11
 
by their belief that “the advancement can be accelerated especially by means of poetry and art”
12
 
(Kos 1983, 228). But since the historical Avant-Gardes articulate Modern Age progressivism as 
an absolute realisation of subjectivity by demanding to bring art back to life, the actualisation of 
the subject within art alone is obviously no longer possible, which is also signalled by the demise 
of high symbolism.
13
 $us, the Avant-Gardes still retain the Neo-Romantic will to absolute 
subjectivity, though they no longer attempt to actualise it within works of art. Rather, they 
promote literature as a distinctive mode of social action and influence, as a way of life which 
enables the realisation of absolute subjectivity.
According to Kos, this retrograde Neo-Romantic will to re-establish absolute subjectivity was the 
decisive reason for the demise of the historical Avant-Gardes. $e concept of subjectivity they 
were promoting was no longer suited to the social, cultural and economic environment of the first 
half of the 20
th
 century. It is not surprising, then, that the primacy in literature was soon taken 
over by a movement that was formed parallel to the historical Avant-Gardes, namely literary 
Modernism. Emerging within the same historical environment, the new movement recognised 
the inadequacy of the metaphysical foundation of the Neo-Romantic subjectivism, and based 
its literary production upon a type of subjectivity attested by the continuous production of the 
contents of consciousness. 
Peter Bürger’s understanding of the relation between Modernism and the Avant-Gardes is slightly 
different, and corresponds to the ideological bases of his theory. At this point I would like to 
emphasise again that it is not my intention to pass judgements regarding which of the theories 
is more suitable or more correct: what I am interested in are the common features observed 
in the theoretical handling of the historical Avant-Gardes. Even though Bürger’s #eory of the 
Avant-Garde from 1962 has been severely criticised – primarily in terms of his predictions on 
the future development of literature – his treatment of the Avant-Garde phenomena from the 
perspective of the shift of production relations caused by the rise of high capitalism emphasises 
 In case of the historical Avant-Gardes this refers to the absolute Subject of Romanticism.
 My translation.
 Kos understands symbolism as an attempt to realise the metaphysics of the Cartesian subject within (autonomised) 
art after the breakdown of the rational metaphysics.

the relation between art and consumerism, which is crucial to the understanding of the Avant-
Pop phenomenon.  
Like Kos, Bürger also discusses the Avant-Gardes’ fundamental concern to bring art back to life. 
Such a demand, he observes, only makes sense when art becomes an autonomous institution 
and loses connection with life. $e autonomisation of art as a social subsystem begins with the 
formation of the bourgeois society; however, its origins have been implicit in the ideas of the 
Modern Age subjectivity ever since the Renaissance.
14
 $e process reaches its peak when art 
becomes the subject-matter of art in the Symbolist absolute aestheticism.
$e time-frame Bürger is referring to coincides with the development of the mechanisms 
Geistesgeschichte recognises as instrumental in the formation of the Neo-Romantic will to absolute 
subjectivity, which is the central notion in Kos’ explanation of the historical Avant-Gardes. Bürger, 
however, explores the period from the perspective of work distribution typical of the developing 
bourgeois society. $e process involved increasing specialisation of artists to the point where their 
experience within the specialised social subsystem of art could eventually no longer be translated 
into the praxis of life. For the first time in history, the conditions were set for the criticism of the 
whole institution of art, and not just its individual styles, which was rendered possible by the specific 
spiritual and historical context governing the beginning of the previous century. 
Historical Avant-Gardes are thus, according to Bürger, an assault on the very status of art in 
bourgeois society; unlike previous critical movements, they do not negate “an earlier form of art 
(a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life praxis of men. [...] $e demand 
is not raised at the level of the contents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way 
art functions in society” (Bürger 2002, 49). $eir efforts were, in short, ultimately an attempt to 
organise a new life praxis founded upon art.
$e Avant-Garde practice therefore involves negation of the elements which are crucial for the 
existence of the autonomous art, that is, the aetheticist gap between art and life, individual 
production and a separate individual reception. Bürger – like Kos – comes to the conclusion 
that the Avant-Gardes managed to realise none of the goals they had set out to achieve. His 
explanation of the failure, however, differs significantly from Kos’ explanation, as he understands 
it as a consequence of the false equalisation of art and life within the consumerist mass aesthetics 
promoted by the high and late capitalism.
15
 In other words, the Avant-Gardes were devoured 
by the institution of art they were striving to destroy.
16
 It is understandable, then, that Bürger 


considers the phenomenon of literary Modernism a retrograde phase in the development of 
literature, its rise signalling the returning of art into the service of capital. 
 One would expect the story of the historical Avant-Gardes to end right there; however, it is 
difficult not to wonder about the nature and the motives of the apparatus capable of appropriating 
– falsely or not – the strategies that the Avant-Garde movements developed to pursue their goal 
of bringing art back to life. $e reason is, of course, the modus operandi of this apparatus of late 
capitalism, which, to paraphrase Jameson, relies upon aesthestisation of all the aspects of life for 
the purpose of their marketing. Regardless of how destructive the rise of late capitalism proved to 
be for the existence of the historical Avant-Gardes, it is hard to ignore the fact that it was this very 
logic that established some of the fundamental premises of the historical Avant-Gardes as the 
defining elements and the aesthetic foundation of the majority of both artistic and mass media 
production of the 20
th
 century. 
I am referring to the Avant-Garde tendency of equalisation of all artistic means of expression, 
which is a consequence of treating art in its entirety, and not only its individual materialisations. 
$e most emblematic example is the principle of montage. Used frequently as a stylistic device 
in pre-Avant-Garde art, it is now transferred to the level of the organising life principle. Within 
this ‘montage logic’ all the elements involved have the same inartistic value, while their collective 
effect – the inability to produce meaning – equates the aesthetic with the capability to produce 
shock. $e fact that, as Bürger observes, “[n]othing loses its effectiveness more quickly than 
shock” (Bürger 2002, 81) explains, on the one hand, why the Avant-Gardes primarily promoted 
novelty, chance and speed. On the other hand, it also explicates the changes instigated by the 
commodification of the montage principle in the fields of production and reception of the post-
Avant-Garde art. At the level of production, we can observe modifications in the very structure 
of works of art, a transfer from the organic structuring, anticipating an impression of entirety, to 
the inorganic, where individual elements have a higher level of autonomy than the whole. $e 
inorganic structure of a work of art, as well as its intended task to produce shock, also affects the 
reception, which is no longer focused on the meaning of the art work but rather to the principles 
of its construction (idem).
T o summarize: $e basic aim of the historical Avant-Gardes, which the theoreticians recognize in 
their effort to destroy tradition by bringing art back to life, was not achieved. $e reasons seem 
both the consequence of the fundamental motives of the Avant-Gardists – their tendency of 
realising the Neo-Romantic ideal of absolute subjectivity – as well as of the social and economic 
situation in the first half of the 20
th
 century, the functioning of which enabled the inclusion of 
the historical Avant-Gardes within the institution of art as one of its sub-systems. 
 From the current perspective, however, the very elements which functioned as a novelty in the 
context of the historical Avant-Gardes, that is, the introduction of the elements of reality into 

artistic concepts and the commitment to the inorganic structuring of the art-works, are at the 
core of the new production relations. As such, they are revealed as an appropriate means for the 
artistic interpretation of reality formed according to the mechanisms, against which the Avant-
Garde movements were directed. $is ultimately explains why the latter could absorb them. 
Keeping that in mind, the reason for the Avant-Gardes’ failure to achieve their primary goal 
seems to be the inconsistency of their rejection of organicity. I am referring to the model of 
subjectivity upon which they centred their activities, the thoroughly organic absolute subjectivity 
anticipated by Modern Age metaphysics. Although we may agree that it was outright naive to 
attempt a radical, let alone productive, break with tradition by striving to reinstate the already 
obsolete segments of that tradition, the social, cultural and political situation at that time did 
not yet allow for any major interventions within the Modern Age Geistesgeschichte models. 
Modernism did offer a new type of subjectivity, but this was still firmly anchored within the 
Cartesian metaphysics. Needless to say, Modernism was, from its conception, not only part of 
the late capitalist institution of art but a major vehicle of its development.
17
 
$e mechanisms governing the economy of that time already implied a radically different 
concept of subjectivity, one better suited to the demands of high and especially of late capitalism. 
Its development after the Second World War relied primarily on the expansion of advertising, 
media and information technology, which, according to Jameson, was reflected in the intrinsically 
Postmodern culturalisation of all aspects of social life, including economy and finance (Jameson 
1998, 111). Culture and society in general, in their turn, approached the economy by observing 
the laws of the market and by producing cultural objects of consumption. Postmodern cultural 
and social paradigms as established by the mechanisms of late capitalism are thus based on 
a definitive rejection of organicity, which is rendered possible only when individuals perceive 
themselves as systems of signs in the sense of Baudrillard’s fractal subjects. $e formation of the 
latter is completed with the hypertext becoming the chief medium of communication and with 
the consequent irruption of its logic onto the level of the individual’s experience of the world 
and of the self. 
With that, we return to the phenomenon of the Avant-Pop, the first literary movement to 
have adequately responded to the new situation, and – it seems – the last chapter of the story 
initiated by the historical Avant-Gardes. In other words, when the logic of the Avant-Garde 
strategies becomes the logic of Subject creation with the subjectivisation of the hypertext logic, 
the historical Avant-Gardes are truly concluded and as such definitely historical, at the same time 
serving as a foundation of a new Geistesgeschichte paradigm setting – a new historical epoch. 
In this respect, the paradoxicality of the Avant-Pop’s attachment to the historical Avant-Gardes, 
which I mentioned at the beginning of this article, disappears, as the connection is not only 
unavoidable but essential in the disintegration of the specifics of the Modern Age world-order.


Avant-Gardism of the Avant-Pop is then ahistorical in the sense of artistic movements which 
have paved the way into the unknown territory of epochal changes throughout the history. It 
has to be emphasised, though, that its advancement relied heavily upon the strategies and the 
example of the historical Avant-Gardes; these are, in fact, at the very core of what the Avant-Pop 
implies as an ahistorical Avant-Garde. Most notably, the fact that the Avant-Pop production 
can no longer be adequately either explained or evaluated by the existing literary-theoretical 
categories and tools which rely upon clearly defined binarisms (Krevel 2003, 146-9) suggests 
destruction of the institution of art as developed in Modernity. Furthermore, the fundamental 
goal of the historical Avant-Gardes – bringing art back to life – is finally realised in the context 
of reality structured by the third order simulacra, in which literature assumes the role of any 
other medium. As such it becomes an information generator, providing material for creation of 
individualised hyperrealities. $e demarcation line between art and life is completely blurred, 
and, what is more, literature – together with other media – ultimately serves as a model for life. 
$e situation also involves massive changes in terms of the concept of subjectivity, which yet again 
becomes productive precisely because it is structured from information received and incorporated 
by individuals within their systems of identity. Formation of the latter relies entirely upon the 
principles of inorganicity and is as such in constant flux (idem, 99–114). $e productivity of 
such subjectivity is virtually limitless; its ability to randomly adopt and manipulate any piece of 
information ultimately suggests the inevitability of drastic alterations on the level of production 
relations as developed by Modernity and realised in the form of capitalism. $e current global 
crisis may have surprised the economists
18
 – but it was certainly implicit in the direction the 
society, economy and culture were taking after the Second World War, and merrily accelerated 
by the artistic movements such as the Avant-Pop. $ese recognised the lethal potential of the 
seed so carelessly devoured by high and late capitalism, and used it to finish the job. With that, 
the goals of the Avant-Garde movements from the first half of the previous century were finally 
achieved, and the latter finally over and thus truly historical.
 Amerika, M. 1992. (accessed November 25 2009).
Amerika, M., and L. Olsen, eds. 1995. San Diego: San Diego State 
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