Definition Of Postmodernism Research Articles

Realism, Postmodernism and/as Metanarrative

Abstract The question of how realism and metanarratives are related in the philosophy of history does not seem to have been widely discussed. Whereas there are distinct philosophical and political senses of ‘realism’, contrasting with ‘idealism’ and ‘utopianism’ respectively, ‘metanarrative’ has a singular meaning based on Jean-François Lyotard’s sceptical definition of postmodernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives”. Lyotard defined metanarratives as philosophies of history that serve some legitimatory function, but claimed that their importance was waning. From this point of view, postmodernism can be described as a species of philosophical ‘realism’. But the appearance of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis, which explicitly presented itself as a neo-Hegelian critique of political realism, suggested that Lyotard had underestimated the enduring power of metanarrative insofar as it served the interests of the American liberal-democratic capitalist order. For Jacques Derrida, Fukuyama’s work thus underlined the importance of breaking with what he called ‘onto-theological’ visions of history, although Derrida himself could be seen as authoring a metanarrative in the service of European social democracy. But if so, Derrida’s approach to metanarratives was very different in kind to contemporary religious and nationalistic versions. One way to resolve the difficulty is to make a distinction between modern ‘utopian’ and postmodern ‘realist’ versions of metanarratives.

Playing upon knowledge through language games: Lyotard’s ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’

Lyotard's seminal work The Postmodern Condition has been considered one of the most influential works of postmodernism. It has inspired thinkers and scholars in its criticism and report of the knowledge and its suggestiveness of paralogies. Many scholars even today draw on his definition of postmodernism as the incredulity of metanarratives. The text has been selected to be closely read and understood from the Foucauldian viewpoint of the creation of regimes of truth which we have argued that the text is involved in the same practice of creating its hegemonic place by making certain assumptions and assertions over nature, status, and forms of knowledge. We have also contended that Lyotard's interests are involved in writing this text, particularly in the propagation of the concept of paralogies and rejection of grand narratives. The text has also been viewed from Van Dijk's perspective that certain scholars who are given value by the elite to be part of the scholarly elite control academic discourses which are specifically disseminated and propagated to influence humanity. This is how the postmodern condition has been generated, produced, disseminated, legitimized and propagated worldwide.

Not About Race Dance by Gerald Casel

Reviewed by: Not About Race Dance by Gerald Casel Kate Mattingly NOT ABOUT RACE DANCE. By Gerald Casel. CounterPulse, San Francisco. December 15, 2021. Gerald Casel’s investigations into racial dynamics take many forms. Since 2018, Casel has organized Dancing Around Race gatherings, and, in 2021, Not About Race Dance had its premiere at CounterPulse. I watched a recording of Not About Race Dance made available for free in December, the day that bell hooks passed, and sensed hooks’s description of the politics of white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal exclusion in the performance. I, as a white, cisgender woman, am aware of the access and advantages my whiteness has provided and that Casel’s multifaceted performance illuminate. Not About Race Dance, choreographed with movement collaborators Styles Alexander, Audrey Johnson, Karla Quintero, and Cauveri Suresh, vivified the racial politics of postmodern dance. The recording began with a camera situating the viewer within the white walls of CounterPulse while the sound of TLC’s “Waterfalls” filled the space. Casel walked onto the white stage carrying a speaker, accompanied by shouts of joy from the audience. Standing center stage, he faced us. His hips rocked to the rhythm. Words appeared on the back wall: “I am performing an accumulated sequence”; “It’s an adaptation of Trisha Brown’s choreographic device”; “She made a dance entitled ‘Accumulation’ in 1971.” Brown’s gestures, visible in Casel’s actions, were also transmuted. Casel’s dancing signaled Cholly Atkins’s work with the Temptations and the Pips in the 1960s and ’70s: understated cool with exquisite attention to detail and smooth transitions. The moment provoked thoughts about artists of color who are consistently written out of definitions of post-modernism. Brilliantly clear in this initial moment, Casel’s work brings into physical form the theories of Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Cornel West, who have written about the multiple influences, borrowings, and erasures of white postmodernism. Casel remained in one place. His dancing was lush and fluid. Words on the back wall connected this event to Neil Greenberg’s Not About AIDS Dance from 1994, the same year that TLC released “Waterfalls” (as celebrity artists, TLC also raised awareness for HIV/AIDS). More words appeared: “Seeing this piece made HIV more visible . . . more real.” By associating his work with Greenberg’s performance, Casel highlights how both of these events are performances that intervene in hegemonic systems of erasure. As dance performances these events operate kinesthetically, communicating through our [End Page 378] senses, and offer an intimate sense of connection and vulnerability. Click for larger view View full resolution Audrey Johnson, Gerald Casel, Cauveri Suresh, Styles Alexander, and Karla Quintero in Not About Race Dance. (Photo: Robbie Sweeny.) Born in the Philippines, Casel immigrated to the Bay Area when he was 8 years old. More words appeared: “I am a brown body performing an accumulated sequence in a big white cube to TLC’s ‘Waterfalls.’” About five minutes into this hour-long event, Casel’s solo ended. Duets, trios, and group sections followed. There is a gorgeous intricacy in Casel’s choreography: craft and compositional structure highlight the subtle interactions of dancers’ joints and bodies. Shoulders swivel, elbows elongate, and hips shift to generate a refined and luscious dynamic. Elements of stillness and nuance underscore this physical virtuosity. Aron Altmark’s lighting design projected shadows of dancers on the white walls, transforming a duet into a dance of ten figures. A zig-zagging walking pattern by Casel ended as he descended to the floor, mirroring his duet partner in a reclining pose, their gazes lifted upwards, suggesting odalisques. This moment emphasized my role as a spectator, witness, or perhaps voyeur, highlighting the power dynamics between watchers and the watched. I appreciate the ways that complex questions emerge from Casel’s kinetic and kinesthetic propositions. James Frazier considers Not About Race Dance particularly resonant for its ability to foreground the physical and emotional impact of “accumulation,” and I am indebted to our conversations after watching the recording. (Frazier had seen the performance at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in November.) In postmodern dance, accumulation is a choreographic process that uses a sequence of relatively simple gestures to build...

„Socialist postmodernism”: residential architecture in Kyiv Podil district (Ukraine)

Despite the short chronological span of the socialist era architecture heritage, it remains little investigated and underappreciated. Given the political and cultural isolation of the Soviet Union republics and strict architectural design regulations, there was a widespread belief that architects should not use innovative trends. This article exemplifies residential quarters in the historic Podil district, designed and built in the 1970s-1980s in Kyiv. They vividly demonstrate the postmodern ideas embodied in Ukrainian architecture. Methodologically, the article bases on the Ch. Jencks definition of postmodernism and in the comparison of his ideology with the implemented Kyiv project. It states that Kyiv architects proposed not typical Soviet construction projects but international postmodern architectural solutions. It proves that, on the one hand, Ukrainian architects had perfect qualifications to draw construction projects implementing advanced world trends of the time. But on the other hand, it highlights that postmodernism in architecture did not merely confine to Western Europe and the United States but also penetrated the Iron Curtain, exemplifying innovative architectural thinking which ran contrary to the modernist paradigm.

WAS THERE A POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism as a cultural term has been in use since the mid-twentieth century. While a common use of the term refers to multiple cultural and economic conditions, it also suggests new artistic and literary forms. On the one hand, postmodernism is commonly considered as a reaction towards modernist movement in arts and literature, it is also regarded as an intensified version of modernist narrative techniques in literature. This article analyses and compares the various definitions of postmodernism and its literary forms to question whether or not there was a postmodernism before it began to be talked about. The article also reads the modernist texts of writers and poets such as James Joyce and Allen Ginsberg as the early examples of postmodernist tropes in literature in order to compare them with the narrative styles of postmodernist writers like Salman Rushdie.

Natural Childbirth Movement in Hungary

As the behavior science, preventive approach and health-oriented worldview gradually permeate the whole of medicine, transformations in obstetrics are occurring slowly all around the world. The technocratic character of the medical approach to obstetrics strives to keep the intrinsically natural process under total control of medicine, which has provoked the emergence of the critical movement known as the natural birth movement. However, this generic term is only used theoretically in Hungary because the movement is yet to develop a single base that would bring together its separate units. One of the most important units of the natural birth movement is the doulas community which, after twenty years of differentiation, is seeking possibilities for cooperation, joint action and representation of natural childbirth. In this article, I would like to discuss this process, which reachesbeyond its own frameworks – since it affects not merely the quality of obstetrics but also modern and post-modern definitions of health and disease, the system of power, gender roles, distribution of knowledge, the relationship between nature and technology, as well as the long-term problem of the quality of life within the society – significant questions not only for Hungary.

RETHINKING THE GLOBAL POLITICS AND LEADERSHIP: ULRICH BECK’S RISK SOCIETY VERSUS POSTMODERN POLITICS

Ulrich Beck, with the conceptualization of risk society and the book of the name “Risk Society” in 1992, claims that the postmodern era gave birth to a social structure adorned with risks. This situation, which arises mainly from the problem of trust, actually presents a model of society in which the silent motto of individualism and capitalism prepared by modernity. On the other hand, there is no consensus in the definitions of postmodernism, which is widely discussed concept since the mid-20th century. However, postmodernism corresponds to situations such as globalization, consumption, change of centralist understanding in-state levels, the commodification of knowledge, and deformation in lifestyle. Social control mechanisms ant the limitations, as Beck stated, nurture this belonging from their former strength. This melting state, which can be observed at different scales in each society, becomes more visible with some developments. Globalization and mobility, the complexity of education and business life, the erosion of the cyber realm and the mechanism of law are just a few of the areas underlined in the present trial. In the context of this study, Ulrich Beck's concept will be compared with postmodernism and the question of whether the change in global policy understanding will ensure the continuity of international politics and relations.

Peter Ackroyd’un Cinayet Sanatı’nda İkililik Sanatı

This paper analyses Peter Ackroyd’s novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem in view of Linda Hutcheon’s definition of postmodernism as a “commitment to doubleness, or duplicity”. Unlike other postmodern parodies of crime fiction that have been termed the “anti-detective novel”, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem does not fully deconstruct the genre on which it is founded. Instead, Ackroyd’s novel manages to function on two apparently contradictory levels: as an enjoyable crime novel that satisfies readers’ expectations of that genre and simultaneously as a postmodern parody of the crime novel that subverts its conventions. Both of these functions of the novel, how they interact and how they work to both undermine and bolster one another will be analysed.

Significant insignificances: Winston Smith’s diary and other reclaimed histories

The construction of counter-narratives which reclaim and rename history by challenging hegemonic discourse cannot simply be a question of replacing one metanarrative with another. Genuine counter-narratives also challenge the category of “the historical” itself, blurring its parameters and making value-claims for what is often regarded as historically insignificant or marginal. In this chapter, I examine works by three authors – George Orwell, Charles Olson and Georgi Gospodinov – who, despite the diversity of their outlook, output and circumstances, exhibit a shared interest in the significance of the seemingly insignificant and in its potentiality as a foundation for ethical challenges to the assumptions and definitions of hegemonic metanarratives. Winston Smith’s diary in Orwell’s 1984, the autobiographical anecdotes, obscure historical documents and local mythology included in Olson’s Maximus Poems and the fragmentary texts of Gospodinov’s Всички нашите тела are discussed in relation to Kierkegaard’s notion of dignity in personal history, Lyotard’s definition of postmodernism as an “incredulity towards metanarratives” and Auerbach’s discussion of modernism in Mimesis, which also serves to illuminate continuities between the different “epochs” of the modernist/ post-modernist age as well as identifying a possible need to interrogate the way literary history itself is defined and narrated.

The Cybathlon experience: beyond transhumanism to capability hybridization

ABSTRACTThe Cybathlon is a new kind of competition that embraces disabled people who use advanced assistive technologies. The purpose of this essay is to interpret the Cybathlon not as a ‘transhuman’ sport for enhanced athletes but as a place for experimenting with ‘capability hybridatization’ of the self. We wish to show that the figure of the transhuman cyborg that dominates the media coverage of disabled athletes is an attempt to approximate the able-bodied standard. This figure is problematic because it excludes athletes who cannot meet it. We defend the idea that capability hybridization, on the other hand, does not seek to approach a standard, but aims to promote and legitimize variedly able bodies. This article will be organized in three stages. First, we will highlight the production of the transhuman cyborg at work in contemporary disability sport. Then, we will show that this transhuman cyborg is based on ableist and heteronormative conceptions of the body that are opposed to a postmodern definition of the cyborg. Finally, we will argue that the Cybathlon, as it currently exists, is not a showcase of this transhuman cyborg but, above all, a place to experiment with a form of capability hybridization.

Вплив постмодернізму на розбудову моделі мовної політики.

The influence of postmodernism on the development of a model of language policy, which consists of political actions, technologies, flash mobs, political shows, manipulations, etc., which negatively influence the formation of this model, is explored. It is revealed that the positive component of the development of the language policy model during the postmodern period is such phenomena as freedom, independence, democracy, pluralism, etc. Conversely, the development of a model of language policy is hampered by political technologies, various actions, demonstrations aimed at the formation of pro-Russian self-consciousness in Ukrainians, the rejection of all Ukrainian: Ukrainian independence, unity, language, culture, history, heroes, etc. It is noted that the development of the language policy model is hampering the symbolic linguistic policy, which manipulated all political forces during the independence years and used it during the election for victory.The definition of postmodernism as a phenomenon and construct, which is inherent in it: the fall of respect for power, which we observe not only on the example of Ukraine, which has experienced several revolutions during the period of independence, the last of which is the "Revolution of Dignity", but also other foreign and rather successful democratic ones. states such as Canada, Belgium, etc., where the authorities can not overcome linguistic-political confrontation and solve language-political problems in a civilized way; the enhancement of human self-expression that is generated by the postmodern realities of the lives of ordinary people and policy makers, as well as the use of technologies that promote the carnival of protest actions; "Blinding game characters" when flash mobs, performances and theatricals are used to show weaknesses of power, its incompetence, and the unwillingness to work for the benefit of the people and the state; the virtualization of the political life that takes place during the election, when the struggle of ideas and programs is replaced by the struggle of political showmans for the number of viewers / readers, liceans, social networking posts that clearly showed the presidential election in Ukraine in 2019; turning policies into "talk shows" when private TV and radio channels discuss the same problems or are obvious and understandable to most viewers and listeners issues that are often accompanied by controversy and even fights that television channels broadcast to many countries of the world. Particular attention in this article is paid to various postmodern theories, the overwhelming percentage of which is related to the destructive problems of the model of language policy and those institutions that are not able to cope with the language-political challenges of the present. Proceeding from the above, it was concluded that citizens' loyalty to the model of language policy, which is not specific to their language and culture, as well as the state in whose territory they live, is largely ensured by the welfare they see in the growth of the economy, the formation of identity, mutual understanding and in building a European or other model of language policy on the basis of equality, pluralism, multi – or monoculturalism.

ПОСТМОДЕРНЕ АТРАКЦИЈЕ КАО ИЗАЗОВНИ ТРЕНД РАЗВОЈА ТУРИЗМА

Many creators from different scientific areas believe that we live in the times of postmodernism, which has touched all the pores of social life: art, culture, architecture, music, etc. In doing so, they are trying to describe the time in which we live, which also results in different definitions of postmodernism. It is no rarity that their views are often in conflict with each other. Nevertheless, regardless of all the differences that exist, one thing is certain: in modern conditions there are many attractions that, in addition to their basic purpose of existence, can be found in tourism.As tourism receives new dimensions at the beginning of the XXI century, in terms of changing its physiognomy from mass to individual, the question arises as to the possibilities of applying different postmodern attractions for tourist purposes? The answer to the question is not simple. On the one hand, there is a postmodern state, in which the critique of absolute truth, identity and traditionalism is dominant, while on the other hand, we have postmodern tourists, with different tastes, desires and demands. The aim of this paper is to try to show where their contact points are and what the future of tourism development is in this regard.

Fronteiras, armadilhas e muros: contribuições teóricometodológicas para o debate sobre território

Resumo O artigo aborda as principais matrizes teórico-metodológicas do debate sobre o território, considerando estudos da área da Geografia e das Ciências Sociais comumente citados como referenciais na compreensão do tema em seu amplo espectro epistemológico. Trata de um acurado estudo bibliográfico que aponta algumas fronteiras, armadilhas e muros subjacentes ao tema. O território (re)surge como tônica nas políticas públicas e consequentemente, no Serviço Social, como constructo sócio-histórico do capital mundializado em crise em uma conjuntura de derruição de garantias sociais, como panaceia ao desenvolvimento capitalista em países de economia dependente. Indica-se no percurso, as tendências deste debate e, ao mesmo tempo, mostra como este pode se constituir como mediação fundamental na análise dos processos e fluxos presentes nas transformações societárias e sua dialética espaço-tempo. Para além das definições abstrato-formais e pós-modernas, cabe situar o tema do território como chão da luta de classes que expressa a vida social em movimento.

Challenging Age Binaries by Viewing King Lear

Contemporary Western theatrical productions with themes about aging and old age often yoke aging to decline by highlighting narratives of dependency and loss in their live performances. One reason is a tendency to interpret scripts through the lens of chronological time, a sense of time that defines age solely in terms of number of years lived, and creates rigid expectations about life-stages. Recognizing the limitations of the life-stage model, postmodern theorists, building on Judith Butler’s discourse on gender, have considered age in terms of its performativity and looked to theatre as a way to study this. Such discourses dismiss the idea that aging involves embodiment of time because, in postmodern tradition, they do not want to understand time as simply progressive and linear. However, some age theorists argue that postmodern definitions of age are problematic because they deny the very real effects of time on the body. By contrast, theatre and age studies scholar Anne Davis Basting insists that there can still be a postmodern poetics of the aging body that acknowledges its temporal component. In this article, Julia Henderson uses Basting’s “depth model of aging” to analyze age-effects in a Vancouver production of Shakespeare’s King Lear by Honest Fishmonger’s Equity Co-op. Through a close reading of the actors’ embodied performances and her affective response to them, Henderson argues that Basting’s model reveals how the contemporary production of a classical work can engage with postmodern concepts of time while still considering age. In doing so, the production highlights more positive age narratives rather than reinforcing a narrative of decline. Henderson extends Basting’s model by drawing connections with Marvin Carlson’s theory of theatrical ghosting, suggesting that reception of theatrical performances of age is not only influenced by layering of memories of past performances of age on stage, but also by a kind of anticipatory quality engendered by the ghosting process, which she terms a “ghosting forward.” Connecting these theories offers a way to differentiate between performances of age without relying on a chronological sense of time or restoring age binaries. Henderson’s analysis contributes to the rather new body of research at the intersection of age studies and Canadian theatre studies.

Introduction: The Mediterranean Voyage

Introduction: The Mediterranean Voyage

Relativism and postmodern public space (Anybody can be the hundredth monkey

The presented study deals with philosophical analysis of modern and postmodern notions of public space. The actual problem of relativism in European culture is a consequence of essentialism, the belief that the world, reality or universe, has some inner essence which cannot be grasped in the language. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at an philosophical analysis of the category – public space. It points out the dissension between the traditional and postmodern definition of this conception and the consequences resulting from these different attitudes. As far as the methodology is concerned, the study is based on French postmodern philosopher J. F. Lyotard, presenting the postmodern approach as a greater contribution. In postmodern public area we can meet two basic types of dissentions, while only the first of them can be solved by further grow of specialization and the expertlike know. The second part of the study discusses Richard Rorty's philosophy, influence of Rorty's ideas on solving some traditional philosophical topics, especially the question of relativism. Richard Rorty's untraditional, provocative and inspiring version of neo-pragmatism enables us to view all the theories created so far by human culture as a case with tools. Physics and astronomy can be seen as a way to cope with some aspects of the Universe, philosophy, religion or literature as ways that help us cope with other aspects of the reality. One form of research results in statements, another in images, mathematical equations or stories. The emphasis is put on the analysis of the influence of neo- pragmatism and continental postmodernism on Rorty's writings. The main motto of the article is the statement that if we take care of free and critical public space, the truth will take care of itself.

The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator: Between Violence and Artistry by Fatima Festić (review)

Reviewed by: The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator: Between Violence and Artistry by Fatima Festić Leena Kurvet-Käosaar Festić, Fatima. The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator: Between Violence and Artistry. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Pp. vi+ 225. This is a curiously timely work, despite (or perhaps because of) being written more than a decade ago, in 1998, originally in Bosnian-Croatian and much later translated into English by the author herself. Referred to as “a small document-testimony to the last decade of the 20th century,” it offers, via an in-depth analysis of postmodern narrating, a novel look at postmodernism. Widely enough used (and misused and abused) paradigm or concept that may or may not have by now exhausted itself, postmodernism gains a different voice and weight in Fatima Festić’s consideration. Starting from Habermas’ claim about Holocaust as the marker of the end of modernism, Festić’s definition of postmodernism ties this concept to violence, murder and destruction, to “dark forces of desire and the repercussions of their externalization in the reality of life” (1). Based on the insights of psychoanalysis from Freud to Lacan to Žižek along with interpretations by Kristeva and Felman, The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator seeks to highlight the physio-biological element behind the self-referential impasse of (postmodern) literature via a tracing of the circulation of desires into narrative exchange, desires that can be seen as the products of the “drive to acquire knowledge” (3). The novels to which interpretation, defined in The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator as a site for finding and elaborating opposition to “Lyotard’s…irreducible difference” between “one’s fiction and the piles of corpses” (196), is offered here—Christa Wolf’s Cassandra (1984), John Maxwell Coetzee’s Foe (1986), Salman Rushdie’s Shame (1987) and D. M. Thomas’s The White Hotel (1981)—are all canonical postmodernist novels. At the same time, they also occupy a variety of different borderlines that make them, in a sense, also marginal in postmodernism though not marginal for postmodernism. In her analysis of the novels, Festić employs a number of different theoretical foci (an emphasis on the interrelationship of visuality, consciousness and narration, the symbolic and representation and the referent and reference) that are all self-consciously and elaborately, indeed minutely, laid out for the reader. The basis of selection of the novels and, even more importantly, the frameworks of interpretation of Festić make her work an important statement not only on postmodernism but also on the state of comparative literature. At the same time, it also prompts the question of whether and in which manner the tendencies identified in the four novels are present in the world literature (a term that has recently regained popularity in the field of comparative literature) of the new millennium and if such presence would point toward continuity of (certain characteristics) of postmodernism or if the tendencies themselves may go, in fact, beyond the paradigm [End Page 231] of postmodernism. A few years after The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator was completed, Gayatri Spivak’s well-known statement on the situation of comparative literature, Death of a Discipline (2003), was published. It emphasized not only the need to recognize the state of crisis of the discipline but also envisioned new routes for it to take, routes that would yield a “responsible comparativism” that, when practiced thoroughly and with utter dedication may “come close to the irreducible work of translation…from body to ethical semiosis, that incessant shuttle that is a ‘life’” (Spivak 12-13). What is practiced in The Body of the Postmodernist Narrator is, similarly, a “responsible comparativism” that, via investigating “the split inherent in subject, agent and author” seeks to bring back to (postmodern) literature “the dimension of maturing and of (accepting) difference that today equals life itself” (Festić 4-5). In different manner, each of the novels that form the interpretational nexus of Festić’s book deals with the question of history, violence, and trauma. The analysis of Cassandra foregrounds a re-writing of the myth of the Trojan War and the process of finding the alternative of living between killing and dying; the...

Afterword: Reconstructing Postmodernism

Afterword: Reconstructing Postmodernism Brian McHale (bio) As one of the first epigraphs in my epigraph-heavy book on Postmodernist Fiction (1987), I quoted the irrepressible American experimentalist, Steve Katz, from an interview he gave to Larry McCaffery around 1980: I don’t think the ideas were “in the air” . . . rather, all of us found ourselves at the same stoplights in different cities at the same time. When the lights changed, we all crossed the streets. (in LeClair and McCaffery 227) Opportunistically, I seized on Katz’s wittily unpretentious figure of speech as a convenient metaphor for the literary-historical mechanism that I thought was responsible for the emergence of postmodernism in fiction. Resisting the model of Zeitgeist that McCaffery had offered him, Katz suggests that a number of American writers, independently of each other, had all arrived at the same aesthetic threshold at about the same time, not because they were implementing some theoretical project—ideas “in the air”—or because they were in communication with each other (which would not happen until sometime later, after the fact), but as a consequence of the shared literary-historical situation in which they all found themselves. According to this account, the breakthrough to postmodernism in fiction—or Katz’s breakthrough, anyway—is [End Page 357] not theory-driven, nor is it facilitated by membership in some avant-garde circle or coterie or movement (which would only come into being later); rather, it is a consequence of the internal logic of genre. Katz’s metaphor proposed what seemed to me confirmation—all the more valuable because it came from an insider and eyewitness—of the model of literary dynamics that I adapted from the Russian Formalists. According to this model, when a genre has exhausted its possibilities, it renovates or replenishes itself by shuffling the hierarchy of its features, subordinating the features that had formerly been dominant, and promoting formerly subordinate features to positions of dominance. The language of exhaustion and replenishment is of course John Barth’s, but the model of change of dominant is ultimately Roman Jakobson’s. In my view, the modernist novel’s radical exploration of epistemology was in the process of exhausting itself in the middle decades of the twentieth century, in such texts as William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée (1938), Samuel Beckett’s Murphy (1938), Vladimir Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947), and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie (1957), among many others. What emerged from modernism’s midcentury impasse was a different set of priorities for fiction. Already anticipated in the last chapters of Absalom, Absalom!, this new mode privileged questions of world-making and modes of being over questions of perception and knowing: it was ontological in its orientation, where modernism had been epistemological. In many respects, this account accords perfectly with one of the least contentious definitions of postmodernism: “a main international current of literature and art after the waning of modernism, both continuous and discontinuous with modernism,” as Wang Ning restates it in his essay in this issue. However, my account differs in one important respect from this consensus definition: it decisively locates the mechanism of change from modernism to postmodernism inside literary history, inside the logic of genre. Other theorists in the 1980s placed the mechanism outside: J.-F. Lyotard, in the crisis of confidence in the master-narratives that had formerly underwritten Western culture; Fredric Jameson and David Harvey, in the mutation of capitalism itself into a form whose cultural consequences could be traced in the artistic products of post-modernity; and so on. Nevertheless, I was confident that I had identified part of the explanation for the change, if not the whole of it. Postmodernism was a phenomenon complex enough to be multiply over-determined, externally as well as internally. My confidence about having identified the internal logic of postmodernism’s emergence in fiction—a mechanism, if not the mechanism of change—led to over-confidence about that mechanism’s scope, indeed its universality. Glossing Steve Katz’s metaphor, I wrote this: The logic of literary history brought writers in various cities...

Do We Still Have Postcolonialism?

About a year ago Biodun Jeyifo told me of a conversation he had with one of his Ph.D. students. She had come to his office in a panic, informing him that her advisor had told her that retaining postcolonialism in her project would only hinder her job search, and that it ought not to play a significant role in her dissertation. We were in the throes of asking where the profession was going, how global studies have now become sine qua non for those seeking to teach non-Western literatures. The fragile place of African literary studies was once again called into question: what would it belong to now? And for those wishing to study and teach it, where would it figure in a job application? BJ straightened out the student and her advisor, but we remain confronted with the issue as has become widely adopted as the rubric under which the students of non-Western literatures are asked to become expert.The study of African literature within the academy has moved from an original Areas Studies approach to a contemporary World Literature approach. We should begin by asserting that both approaches are so seriously flawed as to call into question the very inclusion of African literature in the curriculum,; if that is the only way it is to be taught.For Area Studies, the risk lies in imposing a vision of Africa created by an underlying anthropology of the early 20th century. It called for understandings generated by experts in indigenous cultures and languages, and which identified native values which informed cultural texts and gave them meaning. This is the true curse not only of Orientalism in African dress, but of authenticity detectives who prescribe the attributes of what is essentially frozen cultural truths for people viewed as natives, that is, objects for experts, rather than as subjects with subjectivity.For Global Studies, the notion is equally pernicious. World Literature flattens out all cultures in the quest to find universal patterns of thought and creativity, and even more, to accept as representative texts those whose self-reflexive, postmodern postcolonial markers are highlighted within the stylistics of the current Creative Writing University Curriculum.The former approach dignifies its knowledge under that heading of Objec- tivity as the quality that provides it with its claims to truth. The latter dignifies its value under the heading of Subjectivity as the value that enhances its aesthetic claims to universal worth. The former can be said to sell the value of education; the latter to sell books and movies. Both ultimately displace a global south perspective by privileging the dominant flows of global north ethnoscapes and financescapes.Figures that give us access to the issues involved in moving toward our contemporary situation might be seen in the cell phone of Pius Adesanmi's palm winner tapper. In Binyavanga Wainaina's memoir it is his use of the term kimay and a disk of benga music.Wainaina ends his recent, hot memoir, One Day I Will Write about This Place (2011) by referring to the creation of a new Anglo-Kenyan culture, and to a noteworthy CD and documentary on benga music. He evokes how it corresponds to what he calls the sounds of languages without the languages; how it relates to a new world context for Kenyans of today, one without the past.World literature and world music are now manifestations of Jameson's definition of postmodernism as a cultural moment so fixated on the present as to erase any grounding in the past, occluding history from our readings, and resulting in what he calls pastiche.2 It is a view of culture as reduced to the bits and tracks of a video and cd.Wainaina speaks English, and sees Anglo-Kenyan as the new identity being created at independence. He also speaks Swahili, and thus fits with the audiences of the two Kenyan radio stations he had when growing up. General Service is anglicized, like the Muslim singer Abdul Kadir Mohammed who changes his name to Kelly Brown and sings world pop. …

Postmodern Relativism and Richard Rorty's Humanistic Philosophy

Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at an philosophical analysis of the category– public space. It points out the dissension between the traditional and postmodern definition of this conception and the consequences resulting from these different attitudes. As far as the methodology is concerned, the study is based on French postmodern philosopher J F Lyotard, presenting the postmodern approach as a greater contribution. In postmodern public area we can meet two basic types of dissentions, while only the first of them can be solved by further grow of specialization and the expert like know. The second part of the study discusses Richard Rorty’s philosophy, influence of Rorty’s ideas on solving some traditional philosophical topics, especially the question of relativism. Richard Rorty’s untraditional, provocative and inspiring version of neo-pragmatism enables us to view all the theories created so far by human culture as a case with tools. The main motto of the article is the statement that if we take care of free and critical public space, the truth will take care of itself.