1. From Modernism to Postmodernism
Ceremony
From Modernism to Postmodernism

2. Ceremony First Edition (1977)
Discussion
What connections do you see between Ceremony and the modernist works we’ve read?
What differences do you see between Ceremony and the modernist works we’ve read?
Ceremony First Edition (1977)

3. Postmodernity vs. Postmodernism
Historical period from 1960s- present
Events (Cold War, civil and women’s rights movements, Vietnam, growing diversity of U.S. population, shift from industrial to service economy, television as dominant information and entertainment technology, introduction of computer) that caused fundamental shift in way we see world
Thematic concerns and stylistic traits in the arts, philosophy, theory, etc.
Connected to contemporary changes
Debate regarding postmodernism’s dominant feature
“Tentative”

4. Lyotard: Postmodernism and Grand Narratives
Postmodernism defined by skepticism toward metanarrative—“single conceptual system or discourse through which we might aspire to understand the totality of the world” (The Postmodern Condition xx).
“If any one common thread unites the diverse artistic and intellectual movements that constitute postmodernism, it is the questioning of any belief system that claims universality or transcendence” (The Postmodern Condition xx).
Drawing of Lyotard Image source: Postmodernidad at Xtec.Cat

5. Questions What grand narratives does Ceremony critique?
How does the novel advance its critique?

6. Derrida: Postmodernism and Language
Derrida and deconstruction: Language shaping perception of reality, our construction of subjectivity. Language mediates our relationship to the world.
Contingency of meaning
Slippage between word or “signifier” and thing it identifies, or “signified” (as meaning accretes over a sentence, for example, or via connotations that attach to “signifiers”)
Contradictory meanings within texts or systems of meaning
Meaning of text not under the control of single author or reader
Meaning localized, can take out of local context and made to mean something radically different

7. Questions
How does Ceremony treat the relationship between language and reality? Language and subjectivity?
How does the novel explore the contingency of language and meaning?

8. Postmodernism and Writers of Color
Identity as linguistic and cultural construction
Critiques of “whiteness” and masculinity as norms
Emphasis on hybridity of form and expression marks PM writers of color

9. Questions How does Ceremony emphasis hybridity?
Why is hybridity important?
Leslie Marmon Silko Image source: West Virginia University Native American Studies Department