By Lechi Eke
From the last edition of Inside Literature, we began to look at Postmodernism as a literary movement. We learned that it started around the 1950s and peaked in the ’70s, but refused to completely go away ever since.
One notable feature of Postmodernism is that it challenges authorities or traditions (or whatever is held as absolute truth). It exhibits political tendencies. Also, it is divided into three categories such as Historical period, Theoretical aspect which embodies Philosophy, and Cultural aspect which includes visual arts and Literature.
Postmodernism, in addition, challenges traditional literary conventions using pastiche or lampoon (imitation), as well as black humour, etc. Its themes are usually political, religious or social, challenging traditions long accepted as in the classical 20th century drama, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket. In this play, Beckett challenges “waiting on God” which indicates prayer or supplication with its follow-up of waiting for answer or “waiting on God”, to say that those who “tarry (supposedly in idle waiting for God) waiting for God, will wait in vain as Godot doesn’t show up in the play.
Postmodernism doesn’t believe in objective reality or truth, or in scientific or historical truth.
We also dealt with how to identify Postmodernism. It is marked by extreme self-reflectivity, irony and parody, a breakdown between high and low cultural forms, retrogression, a questioning of grand narratives, visuality and the simulacrum versus late capitalism.
Postmodernism is also marked by a special form of irony, deconstruction, feminist theory, etc.
Irony in postmodernism has a totally different meaning. Postmodernism irony means that which is cynically mocked and not taken seriously, and at the same time, in a new sincerity, something which is meant to be taken seriously or “unironically.” These two senses are combined by either having something absurd taken seriously or be unclear as to whether something is meant to be cynically mocked or taken seriously. If you read it again, you’ll understand it (smile).
Deconstruction in Postmodernism: this isthat whichfinds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempt to produce a history (based on experience or event of past happenings or accepted truth) or a truth.
Postmodern Feminist Theory – Postmodern Feminists seek to analyse any notion that has led to gender inequality in society. Postmodernism feminists analyse this notion and attempt to promote equality of gender through critiquing logo-centricism (if you know the word ‘logorrhea’ you’ll understand the meaning of ‘logo-centricism’ – something about preference for spoken word over written, because written words involve logic or rationality (sorry, this is 900 level post-graduate education (smile))), supporting multiple discourses, deconstructing texts, and seeking to promote subjectivity.
Postmodernism is usually characterized as skepticism towards grand-general theories. Remember that Marxism is a grand-general theory about how class struggle and economic conditions shape the trajectory of history.
Below are some Postmodernism novels and their authors culled from the internet:
1. Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of former slaves whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is inspired by a true life incident involving Margaret Garner, an escaped slave from Kentucky who fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856, but was captured in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When U.S. Marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, they found that she had killed her two-year-old daughter and was attempting to kill her other children to spare them from being returned to slavery.
The (324 page) novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award. It was adapted as a 1998 movie of the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey. A survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked it as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006.
2. Naked Lunch (sometimes The Naked Lunch) is a 1959 novel by American writer, William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.
Genre: Science-fiction (Surrealism)
The vignettes (which Burroughs called “routines”) are drawn from Burroughs’ own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs: heroin, morphine and, while in Tangier, majoun (a strong hashish confection), as well as a German opioid with the brand name Eukodol (oxycodone), of which he wrote frequently.
The novel was included in Time’s “100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005”. In 1991, David Cronenberg directed a film of the same name based on the novel and other Burroughs writings.
In a June 1960 letter to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac said that he was pleased that Burroughs had credited him with the title. He states that Ginsberg misread “Naked Lust” from the manuscript, and only he noticed. Burroughs used the title to refer to a three-part work made up of “Junk”, “Queer” and “Yage”, corresponding to his first three manuscripts, before it came to describe the book later published as Naked Lunch, which was based largely on his 1957 “Interzone” manuscript. Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot.
3. Pale Fire is a 1962 (corrected edition first published by Vintage International, 1989) novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled “Pale Fire”, written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade’s neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters.
Pale Fire has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticisms, which Finnish literary scholar, Pekka Tammi, [fi] estimated in 1995 as more than 80 studies. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it “Nabokov’s most perfect novel”, and the critic Harold Bloom called it “the surest demonstration of his own genius … that remarkable tour de force”. It was ranked 53rd on the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and 1st on the American literary critic Larry McCaffery’s 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction.
Shade’s poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel Shade. Canto 3 focuses on Shade’s search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a “faint hope” in higher powers “playing a game of worlds” as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shade’s daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe.
4. White Noise is a 326-page novel written by Don DeLillo and published January 21, 1985. It is an example of Postmodern Literature. It is widely considered Don DeLillo’s “breakout” work and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience. Time (magazine) included the novel in its list of “Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005”. DeLillo originally wanted to call the book Panasonic, but the Panasonic Corporation objected.
Plot Edit
Set at a bucolic mid-western college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler studies (though he has not taken German lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and rears a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called “Waves and Radiation”, is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire.
There is little plot development in this first section, which mainly serves as an introduction to the characters and themes which dominate the rest of the book. For instance, the mysterious deaths of men in “Mylex” (intended to suggest Mylar) suits and the ashen, shaken survivors of a plane that went into free fall anticipate the catastrophe of the book’s second part. “Waves and Radiation” also introduces Murray Jay Siskind, Jack’s friend and fellow college professor, who discusses theories about death, supermarkets, media, “psychic data,” and other facets of contemporary American culture.
In the second part, “The Airborne Toxic Event”, a chemical spill from a rail car releases a black noxious cloud over Jack’s home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin (called Nyodene Derivative) Jack is forced to confront his mortality. An organization called SIMUVAC (short for “simulated evacuation”) is also introduced in Part Two, an indication of simulations replacing reality.
In part three of the book, “Dylarama”, Jack discovers that Babette has been cheating on him with a man she calls “Mr. Gray” in order to gain access to a fictional drug called Dylar, an experimental treatment for the terror of death. The novel becomes a meditation on modern society’s fear of death and its obsession with chemical cures as Jack seeks to obtain his own black-market supply of Dylar. However, Dylar does not work for Babette, and it has many possible side effects, including losing the ability to “distinguish words from things, so that if someone said ‘speeding bullet’, I would fall to the floor and take cover”. THIS SEEMS TO ECHO NOVELIST DAVID FOSTER’S ANALOGY IN HIS 1990 ESSAY WHERE HE LOOKS AT THE RISE OF POSTMODERNISM AND THE RISE OF TELEVISION AS HE CITES SELF-REFERENCE AND AN IRONIIC JUXTAPOSITION OF “WHAT’S SEEN AND WHAT’S HEARD.” FOSTER BELIEVES IN THE HOLD OF POP CULTURE ON POSTMODERNISM LITERATURE (my addition).
Jack continues to obsess over death. During a discussion about mortality, Murray suggests that killing someone could alleviate the fear. Jack decides to track down and kill Mr. Gray, whose real name, he has learned, is Willie Mink. After a black comedy scene of Jack driving and rehearsing, in his head, several ways in which their encounter might proceed, he successfully locates and shoots Willie, who at the time is in a delirious state caused by his own Dylar addiction.
Jack puts the gun in Willie’s hand to make the murder look like a suicide, but Willie then shoots Jack in the arm. Suddenly realizing the needless loss of life, Jack carries Willie to a hospital run by German nuns who do not believe in God or an afterlife. Having saved Willie, Jack returns home to watch his children sleep.
The final chapter describes Wilder, Jack’s youngest child, riding a tricycle across the highway and miraculously surviving.
Novelist and Theorist Umberto Eco describes postmodernism as a kind of double-coding and as a “trans-historical phenomenon” in his ‘Reflections’ on The Name of the Rose.
Next edition, we will conclude with “What’s wrong with Postmodernism?”