Descriptions of postmodernism

• "Postmodernism is incredulity towards metanarratives." Jean-Francois Lyotard

• "The theory of rejecting theories." Tony Cliff

• "A generation raised on channel-surfing has lost the capacity for linear thinking and analytical reasoning." Chuck Colson

• "Postmodernist fiction is defined by its temporal disorder, its disregard of linear narrative, its mingling of fictional forms and its experiments with language." - Barry Lewis, Kazuo Ishiguro

• "It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism," Al Gore

• "Post-modernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is." - David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989

• "We could say that every age has its own post-modern, just as every age has its own form of mannerism (in fact, I wonder if postmodern is not simply the modern name for “Manierismus”...). I believe that every age reaches moments of crisis like those described by Nietzsche in the second of the Untimely Considerations, on the harmfulness of the study of history (Historiography). The sense that the past is restricting, smothering, blackmailing us." - Umberto Eco, "A Correspondence on Post-modernism" with Stefano Rosso in Hoesterey, op cit., pp. 242-3

Features of postmodern culture begin to arise in the 1920s with the emergence of the Dada art movement. Both World Wars contributed to postmodernism; it is with the end of the Second World War that recognizably post-modernist attitudes begin to emerge. Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s as an early trend toward postmodernism. The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French academia. In 1979 Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short but influential work The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge. Also, Richard Rorty wrote Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes are also influential in 1970s postmodern theory.

The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological ideas appear to have been conducive to, and strongly associated with the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism, and even the peace movement, as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. Unsurprisingly, none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition, but they reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas.

Influencer	Year	Influence
Søren Kierkegaard	c.1843	"Truth is Subjectivity", stressing the importance of experience and relativity over absolute, concrete thoughts
Friedrich Nietzsche	c.1880	no fixed values, God is dead, all perception is interpretation
Dada movement	c.1920	a focus on the framing of objects and discourse as being as important, or more important, than the work itself
Karl Barth	c.1930	fideist approach to theology brought a rise in subjectivity
Martin Heidegger	c.1930	rejected the philosophical grounding of the concepts of "subjectivity" and "objectivity"
Ludwig Wittgenstein	c.1950	anti-foundationalism, on certainty, a philosophy of language
Thomas Samuel Kuhn	c.1962	posited the rapid change of the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional consensus of scientists, coined the term "paradigm shift"
W.V.O. Quine	c. 1962	developed the theses of indeterminacy of translation and ontological relativity, and argued against the possibility of a priori knowledge
Jacques Derrida	c.1970	re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in general; sought to undermine the language of western metaphysics (deconstruction)
Michel Foucault	c.1975	examined discursive power in Discipline and Punish, with Bentham's panopticon as his model, and also known for saying "language is oppression" (Meaning that language was developed to allow only those who spoke the language not to be oppressed. All other people that don't speak the language would then be oppressed.)
Jean-François Lyotard	c.1979	opposed universality, meta-narratives, and generality
Richard Rorty	c.1979	philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods; argues for dissolving traditional philosophical problems; anti-foundationalism and anti-essentialism
Jean Baudrillard	c.1981	Simulacra and Simulation - reality created by media

The main characteristics of postmodernist literature.

The key word for postmodernism is not knowledge but sensibility. According to B. McHale, postmodernism is ontological by its nature: it doesn’t try to study the world as modernism does, but it just ascertains the fact of its existence.

This existence is uncertain, chaotic and decentralized; it is impossible to form the models of the world because all the hierarchical and logocentric systems are absurd. From here we have the so called postmodernist uncertainty and decentration. French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari used the term "rhizome", which refers to the botanical rhizome (a kind of roots without one central root), to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. They compare the Western logocentrism with the tree and the Eastern philosophy with rhizome. A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections, while a model of tree works with vertical and linear connections. It means that postmodernist reality is heterogeneous and doesn’t have a strict structure. The absence of rules causes the postmodernist irony: a postmodernist parodies everything, including himself and his work. The specific kind of postmodernist parody is called pastiche - a literary technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style; although jocular, it is usually respectful (as opposed to parody, which is not).

A postmodernist writer sees the world as one great text with different allusions (hints), citations and references. The shaping of texts’ meanings by other texts is named intertextuality. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” was coined in 1966 by the French poststructuralist Julia Kristeva who used Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. According to Kristeva, there is a dialogue between all the texts of the world literature. Moreover, the entire world is the text, which includes culture, history, society, people’s consciousness.

Some examples of intertextuality in literature include:

• East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck: A retelling of the story of Genesis, set in the Salinas Valley of Northern California.

• Ulysses (1914) by James Joyce: A retelling of Homer's Odyssey, set in Dublin.

• The Dead Fathers Club (2006) by Matt Haig: A retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, set in modern England.

A postmodernist cannot create something new; he just plays with the well-known meanings to create a new combination of old ideas for revaluing them. Thus, postmodernism has much in common with the literary game.

A term of simulacrum (plural: simulacra) is very important for postmodernist theory. It comes from the Latin simulare, "to make like, to put on an appearance of", originally meaning a material object representing something (such as a cult image representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). Fredric Jameson uses the example of photorealism to describe simulacra. The painting is a copy of a photograph, not of reality. The photograph itself is a copy of the original. Therefore, the painting is a copy of a copy.

The typical features of postmodernist work are: decentration and fragmentation, total irony and parody, mixture of tragedy and farce, intertextuality, reflection and self-reflection (for instance, the author’s comments on his writing of this work), open ending (the work is open for different approaches towards its interpretation). The important symbols are carnival, labyrinth, library, lunatic asylum, etc.

Among the theorists and critics of postmodernism we should name Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva (France), Ihab Hassan, Brian McHale, Fredric Jameson (USA), Umberto Eco (Italy), etc.

John Fowles as a forefather of postmodernist canon (The Collector, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman).

John Fowles 1926-2005

He was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Robert J. Fowles, a prosperous cigar merchant, and his wife, Gladys Richards, a schoolteacher. After attending Bedford School and Edinburgh University, he studied at New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he dropped German and concentrated on French for his BA. After his studies, he worked as a teacher in France, Greece (where he met Elizabeth Whitton, the woman he would later marry), and England. The success of his first published novel, The Collector (1963), meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and start a literary career.

In 1968 Fowles moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset and used it as the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman. In that same year he adapted The Magus (a novel based on his experiences in Greece and written before The Collector) for cinema, but the film was not a success. The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film in 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (subsequently a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.

Fowles' best-known non-fiction work is probably The Aristos, a collection of philosophical reflections. Many critics now consider him a forefather of British postmodernism.

Fowles died at his home in Lyme Regis on November 5, 2005, after a long illness.

Major works: The Collector (1963), The Magus (1965, revised 1977), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Daniel Martin (1977).

The Collector

The book is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his free time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view. Clegg is attracted to Miranda Grey, an art student who he thinks is very beautiful. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his nonexistent social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside. He feels lonely, however, and wants to be with Grey. Unable to make any normal contact, Clegg decides to add her to his 'collection,' in hopes that if he keeps her captive long enough, she will grow to love him. After careful preparations, he kidnaps Grey using chloroform and locks her up in the cellar of his house. He is convinced that the girl will start to love him after some time. However, when she wakes up, Grey confronts him with his actions. Clegg is embarrassed, and promises to let her go after a month. He promises to show her "every respect," pledging not to sexually molest her and to shower her with gifts and the comforts of home, on one condition: she can't leave the cellar.

Clegg rationalizes every step of his plan in eerily emotionless language; he seems truly incapable of relating to other human beings and sharing real intimacy with them; it could be inferred that he is a sociopath. He takes great pains to appear normal, however, and is greatly offended at the suggestion that his motives are anything but reasonable and genuine.

The second part of the novel is narrated by Grey in the form of fragments from a diary that she keeps during her captivity. Clegg scares her, and she does not understand him in the beginning. Grey reminisces over her previous life throughout this section of the novel, and many of her diary entries are written either to her sister, or to a man named G.P., whom she respected and admired as an artist. Grey reveals that G.P. ultimately fell in love with her, and subsequently severed all contact with her. Through Grey's confined reflections, Fowles discusses a number of philosophical issues, such as the nature of art, human nature, and God. At first Grey thinks that Clegg has sexual motives for abducting her, but as his true character begins to be revealed, she realises that this is not true. She starts to have some pity for her captor, comparing him to Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest because of his hopeless obsession with her and his warped behavior. She tries to escape several times, but Clegg is always able to stop her. She also tries to seduce him in order to convince him to let her go. The only result is that he becomes confused and angry. When Clegg keeps refusing to let her go, she starts to fantasize about killing him. After a failed attempt at doing so, Grey passes through a phase of self-loathing, and decides that to kill Clegg would lower her to his level. As such, she then refrains from any further attempts to do so. Before she can try to escape again, she becomes seriously ill and dies, probably of pneumonia.

The third part of the novel is again narrated by Clegg. At first he wants to commit suicide after he learns of Grey's death, but after he reads in her diary that she never loved him, he decides that he is not responsible and is better off without her. Finally, he starts to plan the kidnapping of another girl.

The Magus is the first novel by John Fowles, but actually the second to be published, following the success of The Collector. Fowles started writing it in the 1950s, partly basing on his experiences as an English teacher on the Greek island of Spetses. He wrote and rewrote it for twelve years before its publication in 1965, and despite critical and commercial success, continued to rework it until its revised version, published in 1977. The Magus was a bestseller, partly because it tapped successfully into - and even arguably helped to promote - the 1960s popular interest in psychoanalysis and mystical philosophy. It has been recently featured on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, #71 and #93 on the Reader's and Critics' lists, respectively.

The story concerns young and intelligent Oxford graduate Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. The affair gets more serious than Nicholas can stand, so he leaves her to take a position as an English instructor at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas contemplates suicide, then takes to long solitary walks. On one of these walks he stumbles upon the wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during the war and apparently lives alone on his island estate.

Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis's psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke, but as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is not vanishes. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the godgame, and realizes that the enactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis's life, but his own.

The novel presents an extraordinary series of descriptions of both places and events, and paints an unusually vivid picture of the surroundings in which the action takes place.

John Fowles has written an article about his experiences in the island of Spetses and their influence on the book, and he has also specifically acknowledged some literary works in his foreword to the revised version of The Magus. These include The Wanderer (Le Grand Meaulnes, 1913), by Alain-Fournier, for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Jefferies's Bevis (1882), for projecting a very different world. Fowles also refers in the revised edition of the novel to a Miss Havisham, a likely reference to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1861).

A film version was released in 1968, directed by Guy Green, and written by Fowles. It starred Michael Caine as Nicholas Urfe, Anthony Quinn as Maurice Conchis, Anna Karina as Alison, Candice Bergen as Lily/Julie, and Julian Glover as Alison, and was filmed in the island of Majorca. The adaptation, however, was a failure. Michael Caine himself has said that it was the worst film he had been involved in, because no one knew what it was all about. Woody Allen is quoted as saying that if he could live his life all over again, he'd do "everything exactly the same – with the exception of watching The Magus."

The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The book was inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated to English in 1977 (and revised in 1994). In 1981, the novel was adapted as a feature film.

The novel's central character is Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the book's title, also known by the nickname "Tragedy" and by the unfortunate nickname "The French Lieutenant's Whore." She lives in the town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman, supposedly ill-used by a French sailor who returned to France and married another woman.

Sarah spends her limited time off from her domestic work on the Cobb [sea wall] at Lyme Regis, staring at the sea. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow daughter of a wealthy tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah's story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her. They end up having several clandestine meetings during which Sarah tells Charles her history and asks for his support, mostly emotional. Although Charles tries to remain distant, he ends up sending Sarah to Exeter, where he cannot resist stopping to see her during a journey. At the same time, Charles learns his projected inheritance from an older uncle is in jeopardy, as the uncle is now engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir.

From there, Fowles - who appears briefly as a character in the book - offers three different endings.

• In one, Charles marries Ernestina. Their marriage is not a happy one, and Sarah's fate is unknown.

• In another, Charles has sex with Sarah and breaks his engagement to Ernestina, which brings unpleasant consequences of its own. He becomes disgraced, and his uncle marries and gets an heir. Sarah flees to London without telling Charles, who, very much in love with her, looks for her for several years before finding her again--she is living with several artists, likely the Rossettis, and enjoys an artistic, creative life. He then sees that he has a child. Their future as a family is left open, but there is an implication that they might reunite.

• In the third, events are the same as in the second, but when Charles finds Sarah again in London, their reunion is a sour one. He realizes he has been used, but sees some benefit in the journey towards self-knowledge. Sarah does not tell him about the child, and expresses no interest in furthering their relationship.

Along the way, Fowles discourses on the difficulties of controlling the characters one has created, and offers tangents on Victorian customs and class differences, the theories of Charles Darwin, and the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy, and Lord Tennyson.

Postmodernist elements in Anthony Powell’s epic A Dance to the Music of Time and Malcolm Bradbury’s works.

A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell (December 21, 1905 – March 28, 2000), inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid 20th century.

The sequence is narrated by Nick Jenkins in the form of his reminiscences. At the beginning of the first volume, Nick falls into a reverie while watching snow descending on a coal brazier. This reminds him of "the ancient world - legionaries (...) mountain altars (...) centaurs (....)". These classical projections introduce the account of his schooldays which opens A Question of Upbringing.

Over the course of the following volumes, he recalls the people he met over the previous half a century. Little is told of Jenkins's personal life beyond his encounters with the great and the bad, with events, such as his wife's miscarriage, only being related in conversation with the principal characters.

Powell regards the human experience as a dream of a superior unintelligible being. The idea of life as the text and man as a novelist, which creates it, connects Powell with postmodernism.