6.2 Glimpses into postmodern literature

Postmodern literature - Frames and Perspectives

What is postmodernism?

  • The experimental aesthetic movements of the post-World-War-II era

  • Relationship – modernism: rejection; ‘unfinished project’; critical reflection → modernism didn’t follow through with ideas

  • Multiple meanings > no consensus, not one explanation, way of living

  • >> post-post-modernism? / post-9/11 → wave of reactions, moving further

Precursors and influences

  • Gertrude Stein (precursor) → radical experimenting

  • Jean-Francois Lyotard (The Postmodern Condition. 1979):

    • end of grand / master narrative, one narrative that explains world ->lit.: focus on arbitrariness, absurdity

  • poststructuralism/deconstruction (Derrida, Barthes, Foucault)

    • multiplicity of meaninngs

    • >> representation? >>lit. → distrust in possibility of literature representing world

    • Concept: death of the author (Barthes) (> reader!) → no focus on intention/message → birth of the reader

Ideas and characteristics

  • conventional modes used up / overused → new methods needed but everything has already been done, innovative re-use e.g. hybridity, intetextuality, collage → using in new way

  • fusion and dissolution: dissolves distinction ‘art’ and popular culture; ‘real’/’fantasy’ → Faction → New Journalism

  • Experiments

  • Process more important than end result

  • Critique, re-writing of history

  • Metafiction

  • No Chronology

  • playfulness, parody

Manifestos → Ideas of what postmodernism is about

Ronald Sukenick,“Innovative Fiction/Innovative Criteria,” 1974

  • old form of fiction no longer adequate

  • fiction as expressive medoum: reaction to news

  • not one new fiction but many, new = what is not old

  • novels = recombinations and unaccustomed forms

  • essentials of the medium: not plot, but ongoing incident → focus on process

  • Innovative fiction…represents the progressive struggle of art to rescue the truth of our experience

Charles Olson,“Projective Verse,” 1950 → New version of poetry

  • Projective verse: projectile, percussive, prospective (vs. the nonprojective)

  • more open, also called COMPOSITION BY FIELD, not strict stanza, … → free, experimental, process

  • kinetics: carry energy, mobility

  • breath plays in verse → life/performative character

Audre Lorde,“Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” 1977/8

  • poetry not luxury for women but necessary

  • survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action → vital necessity to create new social conventions

  • Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless

Diversity in literature

  • Identity

  • Migration

  • Diaspora

  • Home and belonging?

  • Generations

  • Collective memories

  • Revision of history, ideology → Counter versions

  • ComplicatingWhite / Anglo master narratives

  • Marginalization, racism, discrimination

  • Diverse (literary / cultural ) traditions, conventions

  • Language

  • Holocaust

  • Reservation life, trickster stories

  • Migratory work, immigration, undocumented immigrants

  • Border, borderlands

Ralph Ellison “Invisible Man” 1952

  • blach identity in American society → being invisible, African American = having identity, but Americans don’t allow Black identities to participate

Gwendolyn Brooks “We real cool” 1960

  • play with freedom, openness

  • voice, performances

Gloria Anzaldua “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza” 1987

  • experiences in borderland: being inbetween, mixed cultures → hybrid identities, celebrates them

  • attacks non-acceptance of mixed forms, categorizations

  • Opposition of racial purity, focus/celebration of inclusivity → Struggle of borders becomes inner war

  • clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity

  • leads to discriminations between groups

  • Actually: hybrid identity should be the ideal → new/mestiza consciousness → breaking down borders, new togetherness and fusion of cultures

  • Would bring end to struggles

Linda Hogan “To Light” 1985

  • oral tradition, NAtive American experience, not being accepted

  • Still rising of voice

Postmodern Literatures —Sample Movements and Styles

Beat Writers – Beat Movement – Beat Generation (beat very ambigous)

-> protest and innovation

  • Literary avant-garde movement

  • Critique of 1950s America (materialism society)

  • protest & dissent (see Whitman, Thoreau)

  • Outsiders, non-conformism

  • Liberation of the individual

  • Breaking of limits / taboos (obscenity trials)

  • Mystical experience

  • Experimental, open, performance

  • Two places with essential role: Six Gallery (1. major reading of beat reading), City Lights (place of publication)

  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Joan Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Diane die Prima, …

  • Central works

    • Alan Ginsberg, Howl (1956)

    • William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

    • Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

      • (counter culture / antiestablishment; individualism; ->searching a better America; journey structure → inner restlesness)