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Postmodernity Vs. Postmodernism

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Postmodernity Vs. Postmodernism Introducing Postmodernism Geyh, Leebron, and Levy, McHale and Mumbo Jumbo Postmodernity Postmodernism Thematic concerns and • Historical period from stylistic traits in the arts, 1960s-present philosophy, theory, etc. Events (Cold War,civil and Connected to women’s rights contemporary changes movements, Vietnam, Debate regarding growing diversity of U.S. characteristics that population, shift from constitute industrial to service postmodernism’s economy, television as dominant feature dominant information and “Tentative” entertainment technology, introduction of computer) that caused fundamental shift in way we see world Postmodernity vs. Postmodernism Postmodern writers using historical events as metaphor PM writers: critique of historical “progress” (EX: atom bomb, political assassinations) PM writers questioning traditional literary narrative form, with its emphasis on closure Technology as influence on literary texts: tech of war, info. tech. Rise of television affecting writing (fragmentation, collapsing effect). Media creating new way to present info. Breakdown of urban community; suburbanization Questioning of govt., of all forms of authority Postwar America and Postmodern American Fiction Modernism not only early 20th-century artistic movement through which we can assess postmodernism. Avant-garde movements that considered political potential of public art: ◦ Dadaism (1910s and 1920s) ◦ Surrealism (1920s and 1930s) ◦ Futurism (1900s and 1910s) Modernismpostmodernism: shift from questions of epistemology (how we know/can know) to questions of ontology (being, existence), questions of what constitutes an identity (McHale 9-10) Postmodern sensibilities re: high culture/pop culture collapse—formal experimentation not maintaining modernist disdain Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Avant-Garde Lyotard: skepticism toward metanarrative—“single conceptual system or discourse through which we might aspire to understand the totality of the world” (xx). ◦ “If any one common thread unites the diverse artistic and intellectual movements that constitute postmodernism, it is the questioning of any belief system that claims universality or transcendence” (xx). Derrida and deconstruction: language shaping perception of reality, our construction of subjectivity. Language mediates our relationship to the world. Contingency of meaning ◦ Meaning localized, can take out of local context and made to mean something radically different ◦ Slippage between word or “sign” and thing it identifies, or “signifier” (as meaning accretes over a sentence, for example, or via connotations that attach to “signs”) ◦ Contradictory meanings within texts or systems of meaning ◦ Meaning not under the control of single author or reader Antifoundationalism and the Problem of Meaning Meaning not vested in singular author; readers determining meaning (death of the author) ◦ Vonnegut playing with this idea in Breakfast of Champions Text as “open,” part of “network of other texts” Literary techniques and forms that tend to interrogate notions of originality, authorship and the authority of the author Work, Text, Author, Reader Reexamination of literature as fictional and history/journalism as objective ◦ History as construct (we know history via text, which are themselves biased constructions) ◦ History leaves out particular groups (PM writers offering “histories from below” or margins) Literature, History, and Journalism Complex relationship between African American writers/critics and postmodernism. Although goals of both projects sometimes aligned (deconstruction of history’s metanarrative, collapse of boundary between popular and high culture), issue of identity based in race problematic ◦ PM notion of “identity as a linguistic and cultural construction” (xxviii) versus “defining and validating specificity of African American identity” However, certain linguistic structures argued to be unique to African American expression (Gates on figurative language; signifying and sampling) Also, PM deconstruction of genre boundaries has given new “respect” to 19th century African American literary forms (slave narrative) Emphasis on hybridity of form and expression marks African American PM and other PM writers of color Postmodern Subjectivities II: Race and Ethnicity Critique of monotheistic religions and philosophies that claim universality and offer “understanding of the totality of the world” Deconstruction of narrative of Western Civilization’s progress from POV of conquered, colonized and oppressed Newspapers vehicles of Atonist Path; not objective (example of Biff’s murder of Berbelang) Quotation marks often signifying contingent meaning of words Pastiche of recontextualized quotations and images Novel operates within and deconstructs multiple genre conventions (historical fiction, crime film, detective novel, academic writing) Jes Grew as stemming from non- Western tradition and situated entirely Image source: Agate Publishing within popular culture African American popular culture (jazz) shapes novel’s form and prose Connection to Reed.
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