The Sublime Troubles of Postmodernism. A Tribute to S.M.

Abstract

This essay interweaves Stefan Morawski’s critique of postmodernism and Jean-François Lyotard’s expression of the postmodern sublime as “the presentation of the unpresentable” in a wide-ranging appraisal of the culmination of the postmodern age. This juxtaposition finds expression in the concept of the two modes of a negative sublime: the negative dynamical sublime exemplified in the stockpiles of nuclear warheads scattered widely across the globe, and the negative mathematical sublime represented by the omniscient electronic informational web that increasingly entangles individuals and societies.