Postmodernism is a Humanism: Structuralism and Dialogic in John Rea’s Man/Butterfly (2001) and Ikaros Agog... Daidalos on Edge (2012)
In this essay, using John Rea’s major works Man/Butterfly (2001) and Ikaros Agog (2012) as focal points, we will explore the hypothesis that, in Rea’s music, the human and geometric manners meet at the crossroads of two founding themes of postmodernity: the “Death of the subject,” to be linked with the formalism that underlies the geometric aspect, and the “Death of the author,” a paradoxical ground to the dialogic that re-humanizes the relationship with the reader—and by extension, the listener—since the late 1960s. Doing so, we will sketch the lines of a postmodern humanism that, while being irremediably altered by the radical redefinition of the subject along the second half of 20th century, namely through French structuralism, is still placing the human at the heart of its concerns.