Submitted By: Saleha Zaheer

Submitted to: Miss Momina

Topic: A Postmodernist Analysis of A.K Ramanujan’s Poems
Postmodernism emerged after the movement termed as ‘modernism’ and has become current
since the 1980s. ‘Modernism’ was the movement which dominated the arts and culture of the
first half of the twentieth century. It was characterized by its rejection and opposition to the pre-
twentieth-century practices in architecture, music, literature and paintings. Postmodernism
cannot be understood without gaining some insight into what ‘modernism’ was (Barry 81).

All sorts of art which were touched by modernism underwent changes and the
fundamental elements of practice were challenged and rejected. Melody and harmony were set
aside in music, in paintings abstractness was favored while in architecture traditional forms and
material were abandoned for geometric and plain forms. Whereas in literature traditional realism
was rejected e.g. chronological plots, closed endings, continuous narratives conveyed by an
omnipotent narrator etc. in favor of experimental forms of various kinds (Barry 81).

Modern philosophy’s roots are in the formative figures of Francis Bacon and Rene
Descartes, for their influence on epistemology and more comprehensively in John Locke, for his
influence in all aspects of philosophy. They are modern for their philosophical naturalism, their
confidence in reason and especially in the case of Locke, for their individualism. Modern
thinkers start from nature instead of the supernatural which was characteristic of pre-modern
times i.e. Medieval philosophy. Modern thinkers stress that perception and reason are the means
of knowing nature- in contrast to the reliance on faith, tradition and mysticism in pre-modern
times. They also emphasize on human autonomy and the human capacity of forming one’s own
character as compared to the pre-modern stress on dependence and original sin. Modern thinkers
stress on the individual, seeing that the individual is the unit of reality, holding that the mind of
the individual is sovereign- in contrast to the pre-modernist feudal subordination of the
individual to higher political, social or religious realities and authorities. Modernism got maturity
during the Enlightenment period. The Enlightenment philosophes were radical. “The Medieval
and the Enlightenment worldview were coherent, comprehensive- and entirely opposed-
accounts of reality and human beings within it”. (Hicks 7)
 Postmodernism is against the entire Enlightenment project. Postmodernism rejects the
Enlightenment project by attacking its philosophical themes. It denies the reason and the
individualism the entire Enlightenment depended upon and ends up attacking capitalism, liberal
forms of government, science and technology which were the consequences of Enlightenment.
The elements of postmodernism are the exact opposite of modernism’s. Anti-realism was
preferred over natural-reality. Linguistic social subjectivism was in place of experience and
reason. Individual identity and autonomy were replaced by various race, sex and class group-
isms. In modernism human interests were considered as harmonious and tended towards
mutually-beneficial interaction whereas in postmodernism conflict and oppression took over.
Individualism was not valued in values, markets and politics rather postmodernism called for
communalism, solidarity and egalitarian restraints. There was hostility towards science and
technology in contrast to how it was prized in modernism (Hicks 14)

Though “postmodernism” means “after modernism” however looking at it like this would
be a mistake as many of the principles of modernism are still alive. One should also distinguish
the term postmodern from the terms “postmodernity” (a historical era) and “postmodern” (a
particular style of pastiche which has been applied to art, music, literature, architecture etc.).
Thus postmodernism is a philosophy or worldview characterized by skepticism, subjectivism and
relativism (Albright 2).

Postmodern literature refers to some of the defining characteristics of World War II

literature which relied heavily on fragmentation, questionable narratives, paradox etc. and a
reaction against the Enlightenment ideas implied in modernist literature. A.K. Ramanujan is a
postcolonial poet but uses some characteristics of postmodernism as well. His poems “Anxiety”
and “The Striders” can be analyzed from a postmodernist perspective by looking at some of the
postmodern techniques he has used in them.

Both poems “Anxiety” and “The Striders” employ the characteristic of fragmentation.
With fragmentation the poems don’t have a proper structure. There are no proper stanzas while
lines are uneven as it is evident in Anxiety:

of hope, it has loose ends

with a knot at the top
that’s me.
And in “The Striders”:
And drowns eye-
deep
into its tiny strip
of sky.

Fragmentation was a characteristic of romantic and modern age which was also transferred to the
postmodern age. However, the notion about fragmentation in romanticism and modernism is
completely different from the one in postmodern. fragmentation in the postmodern does not
depend on the possibility of an original ‘unity’ which has been lost while romantics and
modernists tend to figure fragmentation in terms of the loss of an original wholeness. Another
way of thinking about postmodern fragmentation is in terms of dissemination. Dissemination
involves a sense of scattering, of origins and ends, of identity, centre and presence. Postmodern
fragmentation is without origins, it is dissemination without any assurance of a centre or
destination. (Bennett and Royl 250)

Irony is also a characteristic of the postmodern fiction. The use of irony in literature did
not start with postmodernists as modernist were also ironic and playful, but it did became a
central feature in many postmodern works (Sharma and Chaudhary 193). This can be seen in
“The Striders” in which the poet uses the example of Jesus and the insect to show how the world
perceives things. Walking on water is associated with Jesus Christ as he was the prophet who
could walk on water and he is a significant figure in Christianity whereas the water strider can do
the same thing but it doesn’t get the same amount of attention as the prophet does.

Postmodern literature is known for the use of intertextuality which is the relationship
between one text and another “within the interwoven fabric of literary history”. Intertextuality in
postmodern literature can be a reference to another literary work, an extended discussion of a
work, or the adoption of a style (Sharma and Chaudhary 194). In “The Striders” the poet uses the
allusion of Jesus from Christianity to make his point that prophets are not the only ones that can
walk on water; the water striders have been able to do this for a long time yet we ignore them
and give importance to the deity.

No, not only prophets

walk on water.This bug sits
on a landslide of lights
 Derrida gave the concept of deconstruction which is a tactic of decentering, a way of
reading, which first reminds us of the centrality of the central term. Then it attempts to subvert
the central term so that the marginalized term can become central (Powell 104). In other words, it
first focuses on the binary opposition present in a text. Next it shows how they are related, how
one is central and privileged and the other is ignored. It then decenters the hierarchy to make the
text mean the opposite of what it actually means and lastly, both oppositions are deconstructed
(Powell 106). This is the case in “The Striders” where he mentions the two binaries of Jesus and
insect in which one is superior and other is not. Through this he has made the deity and the insect
equal in status. He deconstructs the binaries that give superiority to religion, religious figures and
human beings as compared to nature and other small and seemingly insignificant animals.

A characteristic of postmodern literature is that language is seen as unable to convey

thoughts and ideas clearly. Language is unable to express anything concrete and substantial. This
is found to be the case in “Anxiety” in which the poet, at the end says that no matter what kinds
of words he uses, he is unable to express the feeling of anxiety that he is feeling. He tries to use
different metaphors to explain the feeling but is unsuccessful in fully explaining it.

But anxiety
can find no metaphor to end it.
 Works Cited

Albright, Julie. “Postmodernism.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2018, pp. 1-5.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2002.

Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory.
Prentice Hall, 1999.

Chaudhary, Preety and Sharma, Ramen. “Common Themes and Techniques of Postmodern
Literature of Shakespeare.” International Journal of Educational Planning &
Administration, vol. 1, no. 2, 2011, pp. 189-198.

Hicks, Stephen R.C. Explaining Postmodernism. United States of America, Scholargy

Publishing, 2004.

Powell, Jim. Postmodernism for Beginners. United States of America, Writers and Readers
Publishing Inc., 1998.