[Glice]

I have two responses to this. If you can't be bothered to read the first, please head straight to the second.

1) Their argument doesn't seem to appeal to the now-antiquated notion of the avant-garde so much as a neo-Jungian 'mass consciousness' which seeks to destabalise the hegemony of postmodernism's dissolution of grand narratives. I would contend that this is more of a classical approach, common from the englightenment through to about the era that Nietzsche/ Wagner inhabit. The postmodern criticism would be to say that that's a grand narrative, and obviously the two positions are incommensurable.

It seems that theirs is a re-enactment of the conditions immediately prior to modernism, but robbed of the notions of 'artistic merit' and the qualias re-constituted as 'depth', 'integrity', 'humanity', 'spirituality', 'soul' and 'authenticity'. Unsurprisingly, this sounds an awful lot like leftist-Christianity. The argument is surprisingly cogent - especially as it's taking place under the rebus 'avant-garde', which seems to suggest a rhetoric of changing qualias within whichever field. It's one of those arguments which master pricks will always construct - one which elides the conditions under which any criticism can take place; this is precisely the motion which Hegel begins (although doubtless inherited from the Stoics [etc] before him), whereby you can't find any space within the context of the argument to undermine the argument. So you look to its qualias - 'depth', 'integrity' and the like. Ultimately, then, it's a speculative subjectivity bolstered by mass-consciousness. However, these premises could easily include pretty much anything within the realm of art, even the postmodernism they seek to undermine (I'm pretty confident Marguerite Duras has 'depth' and 'integrity'). So ultimately, a load of cock.

2) What a load of cock.