The Postmodern object: commodities, fetishes and signifiers in Donald Barthelme's writing

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that realism depends on a particularly close relation between signs and the objects they claim to represent. Yet objects have increasingly dominated postmodernist art: does this indicate a return to "realism"? A survey of objects in the writing of Donald Barthelme indicates the opposite. The relation between word and thing has mutated so that words in Barthelme's texts create or even become things, while things in their turn become empty signs. The hierarchy on which realism rests (that the object precedes its representation) is reversed. Such a reversal characterises not only postmodern art, but the entire postmodern condition, according to Jean Baudrillard, who argues that semiology now plays the role that political economy did in the past. It is a mistake to consider objects in postmodernist art as representations of something outside themselves. The correlation that exists between word and thing in Barthelme's work is not the result of textual realism, but is the effect of a reality that has itself become a text.

Opsomming
Daar word algemeen aanvaar dat realisme afhang van 'n besonder hegte verhouding tussen tekens en die voorwerpe wat hulle veronderstel is om weer te gee. Tog oorheers voorwerpe al hoe meer postmodeme kuns: betaken dit dan 'n terugkeer na "realisme"? 'n Ontleding van voorwerpe in die skryfwerk van Donald Barthelme dui aan dat die teenoor­gestelde waar is. Die verhouding tussen woord en ding is omvorm, sodat woorde in Barthelme se tekste dinge kan skep of selfs dinge kan word, terwyl dinge op hul beurt lee tekens word. Sodoende word die hierargie waarop realisme berus, omgekeer. So 'n omkering kenmerk nie alleen postmoderne kuns nie, maar die hele postmoderne toestand, volgens Jean Baudrillard. Hy beweer dat semiologie nou die rot speel wat politieke ekonomie vroeer gespeel het. Om voorwerpe in postmoderne kuns as uitbeeldings van iets buite hulself te beskou, is foutief. 'n Ooreenkoms bestaan tussen voorwerp en teken in Barthel me se werk, wat tog nie die resultaat is van tekstuele realisme nie, maar eerder die effek is van 'n werklikheid wat self teks geword het.