The avant-garde has generally staked out wider claims, projecting a leading role denied it by modern capitalism. It is best understood as social institution peculiar to technological society that so strongly prizes novelty; it is predicated on the progressivist notion that reality must be constantly updated.

But avant-garde culture cannot compete with the modern world's capacity to shock and transgress (and not just symbolically). Its demise is another datum that the myth of progress is itself bankrupt.

John Zerzan, Elements of Refusal (Columbia Alternative Library, 1999) p. 69