Reconciling self-reflexiveness with commonality. Modernism, postmodernism, and perfectionism in Stanley Cavell

In Stanley Cavell’s work, no systematic treatment of the concept of postmodernism can be found. However, on occasion of his reflections on modernism in the arts and philosophy, and in some cursory derogatory remarks on pop art and what he calls the ‘modernizers’, Cavell discusses notions of formal experimentation, self-reflexiveness, and irony that are relevant to postmodernist practices. The aim of my article will be to analyse Cavell’s notion of modernism, as well as the idea of postmodernism that can be extrapolated from it, against the backdrop of his more general conception of philosophy, literature, and the arts as means for a shared humanistic cultural conversation. Cavell’s position on the modern, as I will show, is ambivalent. Nevertheless, far from amounting to a simply ambiguous or contradictory stance, such ambivalence, I will argue, is deeply motivated by the humanistic ideal that Cavell’s early writings frame in terms of ‘therapy’ and ‘education’, only to be later reformulated through the concept of ‘perfectionism’.