TITLE:
The Post-Modern Mind. A Reconsideration of John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (1975) from the Viewpoint of an Interdisciplinary History of Ideas
AUTHORS:
Roland Benedikter, Judith Hilber
KEYWORDS:
Postmodernity; Social Psychology; Poetry; Mindset; Contextual Political Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.2 No.1,
February
24,
2012
ABSTRACT: This paper gives a short description of basic features of the dominating mindset in the Western world between the 1970s and today, often called “post-modern”, through a re-reading of John Ashbery’s poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (1975). In doing so, it applies the viewpoint of an interdisciplinary history of ideas. Since collective mindsets have become the most important contextual political factors, the implications are multiple.