Module VII·Article I·~1 min read
Postmodernism in Literature: Playing with Reality
Postmodernism and Contemporary Literature
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What is Postmodernist Literature
Postmodernism in literature (1960s–90s) is not a single style, but a set of techniques united by a distrust of “grand narratives,” authority, and a unified truth. Metafiction (self-referentiality), intertextuality, nonlinearity, unreliable narrator, the blending of “high” and “low” culture.
Jorge Luis Borges — a forerunner and master. “The Garden of Forking Paths,” “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “The Library of Babel” — short labyrinthine stories exploring the nature of reality, time, and identity. Borges created the “Library of Babel” — an infinite library containing all possible books — as an image of totality and meaninglessness.
Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” (1980) — detective postmodernism: a medieval monastery, murders, investigation, “Aristotle on Comedy” as a MacGuffin. Yet it is also a novel about the nature of knowledge, interpretation, and power. The logic of the detective story is revealed as an illusion.
David Foster Wallace and “New Sincerity”
David Foster Wallace is the chief American prose writer of his generation. “Infinite Jest” (1996) — 1,000 pages with 400 footnotes, exploring television, addiction, entertainment, and depression in the near future. This is a response to postmodernism: irony has exhausted itself, “new sincerity” is needed.
“Infinite Jest” anticipated smartphones and social networks: the “Entertain-O-Tron” is a device so entertaining that those watching die, unable to tear themselves away. Addiction to entertainment is a political problem.
Question for reflection: Wallace wrote about “amusing ourselves to death” in 1996. TikTok and social networks have realized his dystopia. How do you manage the balance between an information flow and deep focus?
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