DetectiveDanny, Habermas

Jurgen Habermas’ Modernity-An Incomplete Project offered some interesting arguments on the subject of art and culture, but sometimes I felt like it was an argument over semantics and argued itself into a circle in my mind.
One of the things I love most about the critical media program is the study of the relationship between art and culture. Can the two phrases be used interchangeably? Does one have more effect on the other? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? These seemingly unanswerable questions are what fascinate me most and Jurgen Habermas explores these relationships.
Habermas draws an interesting relationship between bourgeois art and neoconservatism. The emphasis on intelligence and expertise in bourgeois art te directly to neoconservative ideals of maintaining status quo. I have always thought the idea of the neoconservative is kind of silly, how can one be new and still uphold old ideals that conserve the old ways? Also, because Habermas suggests that modernity is still a work in progress and is difficult to achieve, doe that mean that conservative ideals have successfully impeded our quest to be modern?
Because modernity is a work in progress, postmodernity seems somewhat unachievable also. As the flow of time moves history forward, how are we to achieve postmodernism? To me, once something is established as postmodern and becomes accepted as postmodern, it has trouble maintaining the sense of postmodernism. I have no idea how I would even rate the success of a postmodern movement, because if it becomes accepted, it becomes modern.
My favorite quote from this piece is “I fear that the ideas of antimodernity together with an additional touch of premodernity, are becoming popular in the circles of alternative culture”. Because there are so many alternative cultures, defining them as a mix of antimodernity and premodernity seems somewhat difficult to grasp.