Modernist Studies in the 21st Century. The Modern Condition or Why is Postmodernism Out of the Picture Today?

The aim of the present paper is threefold. Firstly, in line with Stephen Ross and Susan Friedman’s contributions in Modernism and theory: a critical debate (2009), our paper highlights how modernism survived throughout the second half of the 20^th century in critical, literary and cultural theory. Secondly, it explains why postmodernism has failed both as a scientific (theoretical) discourse and as a periodization category. Lastly, the paper states the importance of both the achronological and non-historical category of “contemporary” and “the modern turn” in the Modernist Studies today, showing why these are major players in rethinking both modernism and the contemporary literature on the grounds of the former. Today, what we are witnessing is not the afterlife of modernism, but rather its full and “true” modernist life.

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