When what were formerly existentially significant modes of being in the world are reduced to “lifestyles,” then a postmodern diversity does indeed become possible. For then everything can coexist with everything without generating conflict or tension in the same way that the corpses of men who were enemies in life can happily coexist in a cemetery. 

In art, Rauschenberg’s Combines embody this enervated diversity of used-up dead things.  If we could all play dead, we would be able to get along as fabulously as the stuffed goat and the tire.