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Rodriguez-Salas, G. 2005. Postmodernist Katherine Mansfield

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Rodriguez-Salas, G. 2005. Postmodernist Katherine Mansfield Rodríguez Salas | 1 Katherine Mansfield is traditionally located in English Modernism; however, she goes beyond the modernist perception of the “allotropic self” and approaches the endlessly split subject of postmodernism. This study selects the theoretical rationale of a number of postmodernist critics that validates a perception of Mansfield’s treatment of the human subject as postmodernist, particularly in “The Garden-Party.” Dennis Brown and Eric Mark Krame distinguish between modernism, as a platonic or monolithic movement that traces an essential identity beyond social chaos, and postmodernism, as a “heraclitan” and radically plural trend that ends up in an eternally split subject never to be systematized. Hence, this article departs from several postmodernist concepts to prove that Mansfield’s narrative differs from traditional modernism in its closeness to these theoretical presuppositions that she preceded by several decades. __________________________________________________ The Postmodern Katherine Mansfield: Beyond the Self of Modernism In “The Garden-Party” Dr. Gerardo Rodríguez Salas University of Granada, Spain [email protected] Split Subject: Modernism and Postmodernism Although traditionally located within the English modernist literary canon, Katherine Mansfield’s fictional approach to the human subject seems to go beyond the modernist perception of a core subject, and to approach the endlessly split subject of postmodernism with its evanescent selfhood. To understand and recognize in Mansfield’s fiction a divided postmodernist self as a complex, chaotic, and vast entity, we have to go back to the origins and definition of this critical movement. Thus, the materialization of these two initial aspects is only a mirage, whose conceptualization becomes a hopeless enterprise. Agora: An Online Graduate Journal | 3.2 (Spring 2005) ISSN 1496-9580 | http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/agora Rodríguez Salas | 2 Proposed by Ihab Hassan, the term “indetermanence” refers to the intangibility of this movement and provides an introductory concept that leads to the explanation of the postmodernist split subject of this study. Hassan’s term is a neologism that combines two basic meanings: indeterminacy and immanence. As this critic clarifies (93-94), the first meaning implies ambiguity, discontinuity, pluralism, and deconstruction, while the second one presupposes continuous processes and interactions. It is, therefore, a concept that combines fluidity and indetermination with a tendency to immanence, or the continuous repetition of that interaction. In this sense, postmodernist “indetermanence” presumes the impossibility to offer clear definitions, an endless deconstructive and subversive process, and the inexistence of categorical truths.1 The ambiguity that characterizes postmodernism as an intellectual movement materializes in its perception of the self, which is different from that of modernism. The departure point is the idea of essence and totality. It is a truism that, despite chaos and fragmentation, modernism transcends them in its search for an absolute truth, unique identity or essence; on the contrary, postmodernism accepts the chaotic identity of the subject, and it does not offer any answer about the existence of an idiosyncratic identity to each subject. Thus, this movement raises the question without providing a conclusive answer, and turns merely superficial aspects into its particular creed. Eric Mark Kramer (15-17) describes modernism as “platonic” or “monolithic,” as opposed to the “heraclitan” or “radically plural” character of postmodernism. As regards modernism, this study agrees with Alan Wilde’s distinction between two modernist models (25): on the one hand, that represented by such figures as Cleanth Brooks, who traces some unity behind disorder; on the other hand, the model advocated by writers like T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster, unable to locate this continuity. Wilde suggests that this last attitude is the general one in modernism, an idea that contrasts with the opinion of most critics, including myself, since we perceive in modernism a final totalizing aim. The general tendency among modernist writers is to consider the notion of the “self,” or as D.H. Lawrence calls it, “allotropic self” (qtd. in Earnshaw 61), a stable and essential identity in each individual, regardless of the changes that he may experience in 1 Critics coincide in pointing out the impossibility of defining postmodernism, which becomes one of the most evanescent and versatile terms of our time. Tim Woods (3) calls it a “buzzword,” stating that, in its wide popular reception, it is a vague and misty word used to refer to that which is “more modern than modern.” Walter Truett Anderson (9), in turn, calls it “multiphrenia,” considering postmodernism as “a puzzling, uppity term,” a word that we use “until we have decided what to name the baby,” while Monika Kilian (17) speaks of this movement as “[an] anything goes approach.” Due to this impossibility to provide a definition, Linda Hutcheon (Politics 15) suggests to conceive postmodernism not so much as a concept, but as a “problem”: a series of questions, heterogeneous but interrelated, characterized by offering not a unitary answer, but a multi-faceted one. Thus, she uses a dynamic term (“poetics”) in her study of postmodernism (Poetics 13-14). Agora: An Online Graduate Journal | 3.2 (Spring 2005) ISSN 1496-9580 | http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/agora Rodríguez Salas | 3 the learning process of life.2 As Dennis Brown states (2): “The Modernist discourse of selfhood is haunted by the ghost of some lost self which was once coherent and self- sufficient.”3 Despite acknowledging the fragmentation and complexity of the subject, modernism aims to prove the existence of an essence inherent to the self and previous to any social influence; the idea that this essence may not exist implies a lifelong trauma. Postmodernism, however, seriously questions the existence of that essence and speaks of a conglomerate of social influences that create us. In spite of the general distinction between modernist essentialism and postmodernist anti-essentialism, there is an endless existentialist debate within postmodernism itself. Two main tendencies within this movement can be distinguished: the nihilist one, which condemns the postmodernist subject to irreversible passivity, and the “too optimistic” one, which, very much in line with modernism, takes for granted the existence of a human essence. This study suggests an in-between position as a bridge that joins the previous two, which will be called “conciliatory.”4 In this sense, the aim of postmodernism is an unmasking tendency, not to passively accept such constructive character, but to make us aware of the social impact and to fight openly to improve our situation departing from a position of awareness. Woods clarifies that “Postmodernism is a knowing modernism, a self-reflexive modernism, a modernism that does not agonise about itself. Postmodernism does what modernism does, only in a celebratory rather than repentant way” (8-9). Following this conciliatory line, the present study enhances the subject’s ambiguity without presupposing its essence and, hence, it departs from two axioms central to postmodernism: the “sublime” and the hermeneutic code. The former derives from Lyotard, who takes the idea, in turn, from Kant and Nietzsche. The “sublime” refers to a reality that escapes human understanding and can only be intuited; it cannot be proved, nor can it be negated totally. Philip Brian Harper (8) defines it as a cognitive gap and the difference between our ability to conceive certain ideas and our skill to represent 2 Therefore, human essence is the keynote of modernist writers. See the example of Lawrence, who coins this concept, or T.S. Eliot, who speaks of “[a] substantial unity of soul” (qtd. in Brown 2). 3 Stephen Earnshaw is more direct in his distinction between modernist essentialism and postmodernist anti-essentialism: “If modernist existentialism suggests that there are a number of possible selfs we can choose from as we search for our one authentic self, postmodernist existentialism does not, or cannot, countenance notions of authenticity. Postmodernist existentialism relativizes selfs and celebrates, or at least flaunts, this variety. There is (was) always the suggestion with modernist existentialism that inauthentic selfs were fraudulent copies of some original. The postmodernist existential outlook has copies of selfs without originals” (60). 4 For a more detailed analysis of these three postmodernist positions as regards the split subject, see Gerardo Rodríguez Salas, La marginalidad como opción en Katherine Mansfield: Postmodernismo, feminismo y relato corto. Granada: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada, 2003 (77-84). Agora: An Online Graduate Journal | 3.2 (Spring 2005) ISSN 1496-9580 | http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/agora Rodríguez Salas | 4 them. In line with the postmodernist concept of the “sublime,” Roland Barthes (12) coins his “hermeneutic code,” which basically involves raising questions and giving their answers; it seems, however, to be only partially found in postmodernism. This movement is characterized by what Barthes calls “dilatory morphemes” (62), especially two of them: the “suspended answer” and the “blocking.” Here, Barthes connects with the opinion of other critics who consider postmodernism as a movement that poses questions without an answer, always leaving us with the doubt of whether there
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