Postmodernism

• The term "postmodernism" refers to a socio-cultural philosophy, a change in perspective, and a range of fields, such as the social sciences, art, architecture, literature, fashion, communications, and technology. The postmodern change in perspective is generally acknowledged to have started in the late 1950s and is likely still going strong today. The shifts in power, the dehumanisation of the post-Second World War era, and the rise of consumer capitalism are all related to postmodernism.

• Even the name Postmodernism suggests a connection to Modernism. In the first decades of the twentieth century, modernism was a popular aesthetic movement. Postmodernism is frequently described as both a continuation of and a rupture from the Modernist perspective.

• The strict distinctions between high and low art are rejected by both schools.
• Postmodernism willfully combines one genre with another, the past with the present, and bad art with high art.
• Such a mingling of discordant components demonstrates Postmodernism's use of humorous parody, which Modernism also employed.
• Pastiche, or the replication of another's style, was also used by both of these schools.

• The uncertainties, confusion, and fragmentation of the 20th-century western world are given voice by modernism and postmodernism.
• Due to the gradual loss of its Third World colonies, the devastation of two major World Wars, the impact of new social theories and developments like Marxism and Postcolonial global migrations, new technologies, and the transfer of power from Europe to the United States, the western world began to experience this profound sense of security in the 20th century.

• The fragmentation and unevenness of the modern world are seen by modernism as sorrowful.
• It laments the loss of life's centre and unity and argues that art may restore the coherence, continuity, and significance that have been lost in contemporary living.
• Eliot bemoans the fact that the modern world is an unproductive wasteland, and the fragmentation and incoherence of this reality are reflected in the poem's structure.
• The Waste Land is an attempt to restore the meaning and organic wholeness that have been lost.

• Fragmentation and confusion are no longer sad in postmodernism. On the other side, postmodernism celebrates disintegration.
• It does not attempt to escape from fragmentation and decentredness since it sees these as the only viable forms of life.

• Both postmodernism and poststructuralism acknowledge and accept the impossibility of having a coherent centre.
• Derridean terminology states that both the centre and the periphery are always moving in opposite directions.
• Seat of authority, the centre, is never really effective.
• It keeps losing power while the helpless peripheral keeps attempting to gain control.

• One could contend that there is never a centre or that there are constantly several centres as a result.
• Derrida referred to this deferral of the centre gaining control or maintaining its place as differance.
• Thus, there is an underlying belief in differance, a belief that unity, meaning, and coherence are always postponed, in postmodernism's embrace of fragmentation.

• Modernism emphasises the value of reason and order because it thinks coherence and unity are possible.
• The fundamental tenet of modernism appears to be that greater reason produces greater order, which improves societal performance.
• Modernism constantly invents the concept of Disorder in its representation of the Other, which encompasses the non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, etc., in order to affirm the dominance of Order.

• In other words, Modernism gives the notion that all marginal, peripheral societies are infected by Disorder in order to prove the supremacy of Order.
• Postmodernism, on the other hand, takes things too far. It doesn't say that some aspects of society represent Order while others represent Disorder.
• In its critique of the binary opposition, postmodernism even cynically asserts that all is disorder.

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• Postmodernism shares with modernism the conviction that there is no objective truth and that truth is relative.
• According to postmodernism, truth is not reflected in how humans see it, but rather is created as the mind strives to make sense of its own unique world.
• Facts and lies can thus be used interchangeably.

• For instance, there is only one truth in classical literature, which is "obey your fate" in works like King Oedipus.
• There is no such thing as absolute truth in postmodern literature, in contrast to classical literature like Waiting for Godot.
• Here, everything is relative.

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• Postmodernism opposes Western values and beliefs as being a minor portion of the human experience and frequently rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms.
• Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West.
• Postmodernism is sceptical of being “profound" because such notions are founded on a certain set of Western value systems, whereas modernism seeks to uncover fundamental truths about experience and life.

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• Postmodernism tends to focus on the outside image and avoid making conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings linked with the interior of items and events, whereas modernism seeks to uncover depth and interior meaning behind the surface of objects and events.
• A literary work's major themes and unifying vision were the emphasis of modernism, whereas postmodernism views human experience as unstable, internally inconsistent, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmentary, discontinuous, and "jagged," with no single potential reality.
• As a result, it centres on an image of a contradictory, disjointed, ambiguous, undetermined, incomplete, and "jagged" universe.

• Although postmodern writers were not the first to employ sarcasm and comedy in their writing, for many of them, these elements became distinctive features of their work.
• Authors of the postmodern era are particularly irritated with conspiracy theories, the Cold War, and World War II.
• Irony, playfulness, and dark humour appear as they attempt to manipulate it in an indirect manner.
• In fact, a number of novelists who would later come to be known as postmodernists—John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman, etc.—were initially referred to as black humorists.
• Postmodernists frequently approach important themes in a lighthearted and amusing manner.

• In their writing, postmodern authors frequently use metafiction, which is essentially writing about writing in an effort to make the reader aware of its fictitious nature and, occasionally, the author's presence.
• This approach is occasionally used by authors to allow for blatant changes in the plot, impossibly large gaps in time, or to keep the narrator emotionally detached.
• Although metafiction is most often linked with Modernist and Postmodernist writing, it may be found in Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from the 14th century.
• Some literary works that use metafiction include At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, Misery, Secret Window, Secret Garden, Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Counterfeiters by André Gide, The World According to Garp by John Irving, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea by Michael Morpurgo, etc.

Features

• The moulding of writings' meanings by other texts is known as intertextuality.
• It can apply to a reader citing one text while reading another or to an author adapting and drawing from an earlier work.
• Since it was first used in 1966 by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva, the term "intertextuality" has itself undergone several borrowings and transformations.
• The phrase "has come to have virtually as many interpretations as uses," according to critic William Irwin, "from those faithful to Kristeva's original vision to those who just use it as a trendy way of talking about allusion and influence.“
• The recognition of earlier literary works is a key component of postmodernism.

• Magical realism, the most significant postmodern approach, is the inclusion of strange or impossible aspects into a story that make them seem genuine or normal.
• Among the elements found in magical realism novels include dreams that occur during waking hours, the reappearance of characters who have died, intricate plots, erratic temporal shifts, and the incorporation of myths and fairy tales.
• Numerous critics claim that the works of South American authors Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garca Márquez are the origins of magical realism, and others have categorised it as a Latin American style.
• The Historia universal de la infamia by Jorge Luis Borges is frequently cited as the pioneering work of magic realism.

• Another recurrent postmodern topic is paranoia, which is the conviction that there is an orderly system behind the chaos of the universe.
• A search for order is foolish and pointless for the postmodernist because there is no ordering system.
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which has long been regarded as the first work of postmodern literature, offers a scene that might be "coincidence or conspiracy — or a cruel joke."
• Frequently, this is related to the idea of technoculture and hyperreality.
• In Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, Dwayne Hoover's aggressive behaviour is a result of his conviction that he is the only person in the world and that everyone else is a robot.