Reading Postmodernism: The Fiction of Cristina Fernandez Cubas, Paloma Diaz-Mas, and Marina Mayoral

Abstract

To read about postmodernism is to realize how problematic a phenomenon it is. Is it a reaction against modernism or an extension of it, a rupture or a reconsideration? Does the prefix post- imply mere temporal posteriority or logical consequence, a following after or a following from? Does the term postmodern signal opprobrium or approval? Is there a single version of postmodernism or does it take varying forms in, for instance, the fields of architecture, art, dance, film, literature, music, photography, and theater? (I incline toward the second of each of the preceding alternatives.) And what constitutes its essence? Jean-Franqois Lyotard emphasizes the subversion of metanarratives, Brian McHale argues for a change of dominant thesis, and Charles Jencks and Ihab Hassan, respectively, stress double coding and indetermanence (indeterminacy + immanence).' Fredric Jameson claims that postmodernism is characterized by suppression of depth, waning of affect, the omnipresence of pastiche, and essential triviality. Linda Hutcheon, far more sympathetic, highlights its ironic dialogue with the past. Edmund Smyth proposes a series of features: fragmentation, discontinuity, indeterminacy, plurality, metafictionality, heterogeneity, intertextuality, decentring, dislocation, ludism. And Umberto Eco, tongue in cheek, declares: I have the impression that ['postmodem'] is applied today to anything the user of the term happens to like.' The present essay focuses on indeterminacy and on parody and intertextuality, core aspects of literary postmodernism, and examines how they are manifested in the fiction of three contemporary Spanish writers: Cristina FernAndez Cubas (Arenys de Mar, 1945-), Paloma Diaz-Mas (Madrid, 1954-), and Marina Mayoral (Mondofiedo, 1942-).' The decision to study women writers is motivated in part by the query Where Have All The Women Gone?, the subtitle of the initial chapter of Patricia Waugh's Feminine Fictions.4 Most of the critics who have studied literary postmodernism have been men, and the works they have analyzed have been by male authors, thereby rendering women, once more, invisible. Steven Connor, for example, lists Samuel Beckett, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don