Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature

Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature English 11

What is “Postmodernism”?

Postmodernism: Definition • Coined in 1949 • To describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, founding the postmodern architecture • Any of several movements (as in art, architecture, or literature) reacting against the philosophy and practices of modern movements

Postmodernist Literature: Overview • After World War II • A series of reactions against the perceived failure • Reaction against modernism

Postmodernist Literature: Overview • Important Works: • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) • Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth (1968) • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) • Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973) • Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

First, what is “modern”? Depends on Discipline. The break away from 19th-century values is often classified as modernism, and carries the connotations of transgression and rebellion. However, the last twenty years has seen a change in this attitude towards focusing upon a series of unresolvable philosophical and social debates, such as race, gender and class. Rather than challenging and destroying cultural definitions, as does modernism, post-modernism resists the very idea of boundaries. It regards distinctions as undesirable and even impossible, so that an almost Utopian world, free from all constraints, becomes possible.

Modernism Vs Postmodernism • A break from 19th century realism • A story was told from an objective or omniscient point of view • Character development: • Both literature explore subjectivism • Turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness • Drawing on modernist examples in the stream of consciousness styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce

Modernism Vs Postmodernism: Poems (Not limited to poems) • The Waste Land by T S Eliot • Fragmentary • Employing pastiche like much postmodern literature • Speaker in The Waste Land: "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" • Modernist literature: fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict

Modernism Vs Postmodernism • A problem that must be solved, and the artist often cited as the one to solve it • Postmodernists: this chaos is insurmountable; the artist is impotent, and the only recourse against "ruin" is to play within the chaos. • Playfulness becomes central and the actual achievement of order and meaning becomes unlikely

Modernism Vs Postmodernism • Explore fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction • Characterized by allusive difficulty, paradox, and indifference or outright hostility to the democratic ethos • More and more in jeopardy since the rise of fascism and dictatorial communism.

Modern: Linear progress in history Boundaries, social class, race and gender Formality, emphasis on authoritarian perspectives Scientific rationality, unified theory of progress Essentialism, seeking “real” essences Prescription Normative Postmodern: “Historicity”, historicization, socio-cultural locatedness of moments in history Critical study of class, race, and gender; uses other perspectives Intertextuality, self-reflexivity, montage, pastiche Signs, image, reproductive social order Local accounts Description

“Post-modernism has many interpretations and no single definition is adequate. Different disciplines have participated in the post-modernist movement in varying ways … in architecture, traditional limits have become indistinguishable, so that what is commonly on the outside of a building is placed within, and vice versa. In literature, writers adopt a self-conscious intertextuality sometimes verging on pastiche, which denies the formal propriety of authorship and genre. In commercial terms post-modernism may be seen as part of the growth of consumer capitalism into multinational and technological identity.”

…postmodernity (involves) the end of an overarching belief in scientific rationality and a unitary theory of progress, the replacement of empiricist theories of representation and truth, and increased emphasis on the importance of the unconscious, on free-floating signs and images, and a plurality of viewpoints … a shift from a `productive' to a ‘reproductive’ social order, in which simulations and models -- and more generally, signs -- increasingly constitute the world, so that any distinction between the appearance and the ‘real’ is lost.

“Another feature of postmodernism seen by some theorists is that the boundaries between `high' and `low' culture tend to be broken down. According to many theorists, postmodernist cultural movements, which often overlap with new political tendencies and social movements in contemporary society, are particularly associated with the increasing importance of new class fractions.”

Common Themes & Techniques • Irony, playfulness, black humor, hyperreality, temporal distortion, metacognition/metafiction, paranoia • Postmodern fiction: characterized by the ironic quote marks, • Postmodern novelists labeled black humorists: John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman • Common to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way

Common Themes & Techniques • Pastiche • To combine, or "paste" together, multiple elements. • An homage to or a parody of past styles • A representation of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society • A combination of multiple genres to create a unique narrative or to comment on situations in postmodernity • William S. Burroughs: science fiction, detective fiction, westerns • Margaret Atwood: science fiction and fairy tales

Common Themes & Techniques • Metafiction (metacognition) • Writing about writing or "foregrounding the apparatus" • Making the artificiality of art or the fictionality of fiction apparent to the reader • Generally disregards the necessity for “willful suspension of disbelief” • To undermine the authority of the author, for unexpected narrative shifts • To advance a story in a unique way, for emotional distance • To comment on the act of storytelling

Common Themes & Techniques • Historiographic metafiction • Fictionalize actual historical events or figures • The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (about Simón Bolívar) • Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow (featuring such historical figures as Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Sigmund Freud)

Common Themes & Techniques • Temporal distortion • Central features: Fragmentation and non-linear narratives • Temporal distortion for the sake of irony • Example: Historiographic metafiction • Distortions in time in Kurt Vonnegut's non-linear novels: Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five coming "unstuck in time“

Common Themes & Techniques • Anachronisms: Abraham Lincoln using a telephone In his flight to Canada (Ishmael Reed) • Time may also overlap, repeat, or bifurcate into multiple possibilities. • "The Babysitter" from Pricksongs & Descants by Robert Coover: multiple possible events occurring simultaneously -- in one section the babysitter is murdered while in another section nothing happens and so on

Common Themes & Techniques • Technoculture and hyperreality • Fredric Jameson: “society has moved past the industrial age and into the information age”. • Jean Baudrillard: postmodernity was defined by a shift into hyperreality in which simulations have replaced the real. • People are inundated with information • Technology as a central focus in many lives

Common Themes & Techniques • Paranoia • The belief that there is an ordering system behind the chaos of the world • Postmodernist: no ordering system exists, so a search for order is fruitless and absurd. • Often coincides with the theme of technoculture and hyperreality. • Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: the character Dwayne Hoover becomes violent when he is convinced that everyone else in the world is a robot and he is the only human

~Time to go~ Thank you!

Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature