Etymology and Meanings of “Postmodernism” Literary Theory
Etymologically, postmodernism comprises two words, post- and modernism. Here the post is a prefix added to modernism to create a cultural notion that exists after the passing of modernism. The term came into use in the decade of the 70s, though its first use is traced to John Watkins Chapman. However, he used it for painting, avoiding using the French Impressionistic style. It happed in 1870. Since then, the term has been used repeatedly by different people for different reasons.
Definition of “Postmodernism” Literary Theory
Based on its meanings, the term, postmodernism literary theory or postmodernist literary theory could be defined as a style in fiction, novel, and poetry writing that demonstrates a leap forward from modernism. It is characterized by the conscious use of different earlier writing styles, norms, and literary conventions used by the writers in their modern words mixing them into one another.
Origin of “Postmodernism Literary Theory
Postmodernism, in literature, started around the decades of the 80s and 90s and emerged out of modernism. It instantly hit the literary world. Yet, it is uncertain when the first postmodern literary piece appeared on the scene, for several literary pieces are simultaneously modernist and postmodernist. Rather, modernism imperceptibly gave way to postmodernism which started replacing it. Soon postmodernism pervades all other fields of culture such as linguistics, sociology, art, and architecture. It is also linked to other theoretical perspectives in criticism such as deconstructionism and post-structuralism.
Despite its broad usage in art, architecture, philosophy, and social theory, postmodernism is also a critical theory, encompassing a type of literature that shows postmodern traits such as skepticism toward general and accepted trends or rejection of them. Literature that invades the universal real of accepted truths such as hierarchies, morality, truth, human nature, reason, scientific inquiry, social development, and social norms is postmodern literature.
Principles of Postmodernism Literary Theory
- Postmodernism critiques the past movements and tears them apart and sees that the past movements, tenets, and conventions do not hold validity in the postmodern culture.
- It rather presents an amalgamation of low and high art, or culture and shows a mosaic of all elements considered vulgar, or pure.
- Postmodernism uses parody and irony to criticize modernistic literature, or art and even goes to the extent of using black humor and comedy to view tragic aspects of life such as Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller, paints the grim picture of WWII in a comedic manner.
- Postmodernism shows that time and space are not as coherent and linear as the modernists and realists show in their works. It is non-linear and fragmented like the reality itself. Therefore, the postmodernism has experimented with time, space, reality, and narratives, presenting fragment ontological aspects of the postmodern culture.
- Postmodernism also presents a metanarrative that means to present a narrative about the narrative in a self-conscious manner, showing that text is also conscious of commentary on its artistic effects such as Italo Calvino’s novels.
- Despite being the tenet of modernism, absurdity, Theatre of Absurd, existentialism, and distortion of belief systems, postmodernism shows its different strands pervading in postmodern literary pieces.
- Postmodernism also attacks the existing canons of literary narratives, literary poetics, poetry, and even cultural conventions, showing that the issues of identity, sovereignty, culture definitiveness, and individual liberty do not hold merit now.
- There is no valid narrative or grand narrative in existence. All narratives spread on the basis of some assumptions that postmodernism lays bare.
- Postmodernism is contrary to all modernist ideas such as romanticism is Dadaism, form is disjunctive, design is a chance, purpose is a play, hierarchy is an anarchy, metaphor is metonymy, centre is an anarchy, and transcendence is immanence, etc.
- Meaninglessness, paranoia, subjectivity, multi-narrative, and a sense of the loss of time and space are some other tenets of postmodernism.
Criticism Against Postmodernism Literary Theory
- The collapse of narratives in postmodernism is in itself a grand narrative.
- Postmodernism is itself a product of late capitalism in the words of Frederick Jameson. Therefore, consumerism is its foundation rather than a product.
- Postmodernism is not a product, but an effect of consumerization and commodification of the culture in which different classes experience postmodernism in a different ways.
- Postmodernism is relevant to some social structures in the world that it may not hold any validity in the third-world proletariat social classes.
- Simulacra or hyperreality does not mean that reality has become unreality or that it is not a reality.
Examples of Postmodernism Literary Theory
Example # 1
From “Post-Modernism” by James Galvin
A pinup of Rita Hayworth was taped
To the bomb that fell on Hiroshima.
The Avant-garde makes me weep with boredom.
Horses are wishes, especially dark ones.
That’s why twitches and fences.
That’s why switches and spurs.
That’s why the idiom of betrayal.
They forgive us.
These are the first two stanzas of the poem of James Galvin whose title is ironically “Post-Modernism.” However, it has a hyphe,n while the term postmodernism is mostly used in its de-hyphenated shape. These two stanzas show that the thoughts of the poet are disjointed and he thinks one thing and then moves to another, showing postmodern features of disjointed thinking, avant-garde, unusual metaphors, and repetitions with minor changes. The slippery quality of the semantic language shows what postmodern poetry is like.
Example # 2
From “Thinking I Think I Think” by Charles Bernstein
. . .The man the man declined
to be, appraised at auction at
eighty percent of surface volume.
Cube steak on rye amusing twist
on lay demo cells, absolutely no
returns. Damaged goods are the only
kind of goods I ever cared about.
The lacuna misplaced the ladle,
the actor aborted the fable. Fold
your caps into Indians &
flaps.
Almost every line of this poem has a different thematic strand, different subject matter, and different linguistic nuances. This shows that the poetic conventions followed in the postmodernism do not seem valid for Charles of Bernstein in this stanza of his poem. It shows clearly from its verses which have broken almost all the rules of poetic conventions, too. Therefore, it becomes an excellent example of postmodern poetry.
Example # 3
From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare, and we made friends with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoner of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn’t much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
This passage shows the authorial intervention in the very beginning which points to the truth and its validity in the postmodern era. However, this intervention of the author at this point, and that too in the work of fiction points to how much the author feels free to twist and turn facts which also hold the same legitimacy as the author himself whose major point in this fiction is “So it goes.” This is a point of the mini-narrative, a feature of postmodern fiction.
Example # 4
From “The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges
No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sink into the sacred mud, but in a few days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man came from the South and that his home had been one of those numberless villages upstream in the deeply cleft side of the mountain, where the Zend language has not been contaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. What is certain is that the grey man kissed the mud, climbed up the bank with pushing aside (probably, without feeling) the blades which were lacerating his flesh, and crawled, nauseated and bloodstained, up to the circular enclosure crowned with a stone tiger or horse, which sometimes was the color of flame and now was that of ashes.
This passage occurs in the short story of Borges “The Circular Ruin.” Although this passage shows an unusual character, the end of the story shows that this unusual character is not even a character. He is rather a shadow who thins out in the air as he has descended on this ruin. This shows the postmodern trait of the fiction as having no specific character, no specific features, no specific mannerisms, and no specific setting. In other words, postmodern fiction also breaks all narrative conventions.
Example # 5
From “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—”I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.
This passage occurs in the novel of Italo Calvino in which he shows more conventions of narratology and narratives broken here. Not only he himself appears in this passage, but also he points out what type of novel he is going to write and what the reader is expecting from him, or doing with his fiction. This is an unusual narrative method, using the second person. This shows an excellent use of a postmodern feature of fiction writing.
Keywords in Postmodernism Literary Theory
Fragmentation, rejectionism, deconstructionism, sub-culture, simulacra, commodification, consumerization, micropolitics, hyper culture, hyper reality, avant-garde, grand recits, petit recits, metanarrative, totality
Suggested Readings
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2012. Print.
Childs, Peter. Modernism. Routledge, 2016. Print.
Quinones, Ricardo J. Mapping Literary Modernism. Princeton University Press, 2014. Print.
Hassan, Ihab. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Print. Bertens, Hans, and Douwe W. Fokkema, eds. International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice. John Benjamins Publishing, 1997.
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