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Postmodernism
Postmodernism
While postmodernism seems very much like modernism in many ways, it differs from
modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to
present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history, but presents that
fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss.
Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity,
coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what
other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of
fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is
meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with
nonsense.
1. Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms
of the West, Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small
part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and
norms.
2. Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life,
Postmodernism is suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on
one particular Western value systems.
3. Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the
surface of objects and events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior
image and avoids drawing conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings
associated with the interior of objects and events.
4. Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular
piece of literature, Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally
contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented,
discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible. Therefore, it
focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate,
unfinished, "jagged" world.
5. Whereas Modern authors guide and control the reader’s response to their work,
the Postmodern writer creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his
own connections, work out alternative meanings, and provide his own (unguided)
interpretation.
Pastiche
Many postmodern authors combined, or “pasted” elements of previous genres and styles
of literature to create a new narrative voice, or to comment on the writing of their
contemporaries. Thomas Pynchon, one of the most important postmodern authors, uses
elements from detective fiction, science fiction, and war fiction, songs, pop culture
references, and well-known, obscure, and fictional history.
Intertextuality
Metafiction
Many postmodern authors feature metafiction in their writing, which, essentially, is
writing about writing, an attempt to make the reader aware of its ficitionality, and,
sometimes, the presence of the author. Authors sometimes use this technique to allow for
flagrant shifts in narrative, impossible jumps in time, or to maintain emotional distance as
a narrator.
Historiographic metafiction
This term was created by Linda Hutcheon to refer to novels that fictionalize actual
historical events and characters: Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon, for example,
features a scene in which George Washington smokes pot.
Temporal distortion
Temporal distortion is a literary technique that uses a nonlinear timeline; the author may
jump forwards or backwards in time, or there may be cultural and historical references
that do not fit: Abraham Lincoln uses a telephone in Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada.
This technique is frequently used in literature, but it has become even more common in
films.
Paranoia
Many postmodern authors write under the assumption that modern society cannot be
explained or understood. From that point of view, any apparent connections or controlling
influences on the chaos of society would be very frightening, and this lends a sense of
paranoia to many postmodern works.
Maximalism
Villified by its critics for being in turns disorganized, sprawling, overly long, and
emotionally disconnected, maximalism exists in the tradition of long works like The
Odyssey. Authors that use this technique will sometimes defend their work as being as
long as it needs to be, depending on the subject material that is covered.
Minimalism
Minimalism is a style of writing in which the author deliberately presents characters that
are unexceptional and events that are taken from everyday life. It is not an exclusively
postmodern technique, as many writers, most notably Ernest Hemingway, wrote in a
similar style, but some critics claim that Samuel Beckett, one of the most important
postmodern authors, perfected minimalism.
Faction
Faction is very similar to historiographic metafiction, in that its subject material is based
on actual events, but writers of faction tend to blur the line between fact and fiction to the
degree that it is almost impossible to know the difference between the two, as opposed to
metafiction, which often draws attention to the fact that it is not true.
Magical realism
Arguably the most important postmodern technique, magical realism is the introduction
of fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative that is otherwise normal. Magical
realist novels may include dreams taking place during normal life, the return of
previously deceased characters, extremely complicated plots, wild shifts in time, and
myths and fairy tales becoming part of the narrative. Many critics argue that magical
realism has its roots in the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, two
South American writers, and some have classified it as a Latin American style.
Participation
Many postmodern authors, as a response to modernism, which frequently set its authors
apart from their readers, attempt to involve the reader as much as possible over the course
of a novel. This can take the form of asking the reader questions, including unwritten
narratives that must be constructed by the reader, or allowing the reader to make
decisions regarding the course of the narrative.
There are "postmodernisms" even more than there were "modernisms," and not all
postmodernism partakes of all of the following attributes:
A reaction to, refusal and diffusion of, the elements of modernist thought which
are totalizing: which suggest a master narrative or master code, i.e. an explanatory
cohesion of experience; the result may be:
o a sense of discontinuity, of the world as a field of contesting explanations
none of which can claim any authority,
o parodies of all sorts of meta-narrative and master-code elements, including
genre and literary form,
o the challenging of borders and limits, including those of decency,
o the exploration of the marginalized aspects of life and marginalized
elements of society.
(The "problem" with grand narratives is that they bring all of experience
under one explanatory and one implicitly or explicitly regulative order,
and hence are potentially (some would say, inevitably) totalitarian and
repressive; the problem of trying to live without them is that without their
explanatory frame there is no way in which acts can be validated (once
one tries, one uncovers a hidden grand narrative) other than through the
validation of pleasure or pain, some would say beauty or ugliness. It
comes down to what one believes: is living without grand narratives an act
of courage and freedom in the face of inevitable doubt and instability, or
merely an opening of oneself to the worst forces of the libido and an
abandonment of necessary principles?)