1. Camelia Elias American Studies

2. What is postmodernism?  a period in history?  a kind of writing?  an attitude to these things?  postmodernist theories provide a set of terms relevant for thinking about literary and other cultural texts

3. post…modern  ‘modernity’ indicates a mode  ‘post’ indicates periodization  the postmodern distinguishes itself from the modern by creating a set of oppositions  the term ‘postmodern’ is itself a contradiction in terms

4. complaints about modernism  postmodernists tend to think that:  more emphasis should be placed on popular forms  political praxis is more important than experimental innovation  textual gaps should be valorized rather than patterns of transcendence or aesthetic wholeness

5. Uses of the term "postmodern"  after modernism (subsumes, assumes, extends the modern or tendencies already present in modernism, not necessarily in strict chronological succession)  contra modernism (subverting, resisting, opposing, or countering features of modernism)  equivalent to "late capitalism" (post-industrial, consumerist, and multi- and trans-national capitalism)  the historical era following the modern (an historical time-period marker)

6. Uses of the term "postmodern"  artistic and stylistic eclecticism (hybridization of forms and genres, mixing styles of different cultures or time periods, de- and re-contextualizing styles in architecture, visual arts, literature)  "global village" phenomena: globalization of cultures, races, images, capital, products ("information age" redefinition of nation-state identities, which were the foundation of the modern era; dissemination of images and information across national boundaries, a sense of erosion or breakdown of national, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identities; a sense of a global mixing of cultures on a scale unknown to pre-information era societies)

7. change of dominant  Epistemology  knowledge  ‘How can I interpret this world of which I am part?’  ‘What am I in it?’  ‘What is there to be known?’  ‘Who knows it’, ‘how do they know it’, and to what degree of certainty?’  Ontology  being  ‘Which world is this?’  ‘What is to be done in it?’  ‘Which of my selves are to do it’?  ‘What is a world’, and ‘what kind of worlds are there’? (Brian McHale, Postmodern Fiction, 1987)

8. method vs. foundation  imitate – in pre-modernism  make it new – in modernism  make it ‘funny’ – in postmodernism

9. positions  “Even though my fiction has often been labelled postmodern, and I have read many books written about postmodernism (for I am vain enough to search in every book for the mention of my name, but sardonic enough to mock my own eagerness), quite frankly I have never understood what Postmodernism was. Or as Beckett’s Unnamable once put it: To tell the truth, let us be honest at least, it is some considerable time since I last knew what I was talking about.” (R. Federman, Critifiction, 107)

10. undecidability  creates polysemy  suspends the laws of non-contradiction:  ex. the liar’s paradox: ‘I’m a liar’  pays new attention to its own value  dislodges the unity of meaning

11. the a/rational  mistrusts reason, and the rational  shows that reason leads to oppression  critiques Enlightenment  suspends the opposition between rational and irrational

12. dissemination (Derrida)  fragmentation  suspects ‘originality’  does not depend on ‘unity’  represents a scattering of semes, but not from a centre

13. little and grand narratives (Lyotard)  grand narratives such as Christianity, Marxism, Enlightenment, Psycho-analysis attempt to provide a framework for everything  little narratives have local, non-totalizing explanations  distrust legitimation  establish the crisis of master codes or master plots/narratives

14. simulation (Baudrillard)  the sign represents a basic reality (Realism)  the sign misrepresents reality (romance novels)  the sign disguises the fact that there’s no corresponding reality underneath (modernists, Magritte)  the sign bears no relation to any reality at all (Disneyland)

15. the real vs the copy  Plato: painters, actors, dramatists produce representations or ‘imitations’ of the real  hierarchy between the real and the copy  representation  distinction between signifier and signified, between a word and that which it represents  simulation  no distinction between the real and the copy:  the real unthinkable without the copy  the real is inextricable from the significance and effect of the copy.  the copy is not a copy of something real (hyperreality)

16. depthlesness  surface/depth dichotomy distrusted  ‘expression’ and models of self in depth psychology are symptoms of the opposition (inside/outside)  ‘truth is hidden in depth’  (existentialism, etc.) is being questioned

17. pastiche  imitation of previous texts and objects  parody – impulse to ridicule  pastiche is ‘blank’ parody without a single impulse  radical eclecticism  architecture, fashion, hybridization, genre-mix  radical intertextuality  mixes forms, genres, conventions, media, and thus dissolves boundaries between high and low art, between seriousness and play

18. the unpresentable  the sublime (Lyotard), the abject (Kristeva), the unnamable (Beckett)  the radically undecidable  disturbance of temporality  liminality:  the postmodern is grammatically specified as inhabiting the future perfect, what will have been, a paradox of the future anterior, post/modo

19. decentering  The ‘logocentric’  The ‘ethnocentric’  The ‘phallocentric’  ‘De/Di:  deconstruction, decentering, dissemination  dispersal, displacement, difference  discontinuity, demystification, de-legitimation  disappearance

20. Don Barthelme (1931-1989)  rejects traditional chronology, plot, character, time, space, grammar  rejects traditional distinctions between fact and fiction  language, and its complexity is the subject of writing  reference site reference site

21. Donald Barthelme: The Balloon 1.Give examples of undecidable instances in the text and comment on the effect of such demonstratives, adverbials, and implicit ellipsis, as in the sentence: "That was the situation, then". 2.How is meaning constructed in this text? On how many levels can we find the author's engagement with meaning and signification? 3.To what extent does this story offer a critique of grand narratives? Give examples of some instances. 4.How many contexts can this story be said to engage with? Are these contexts interrelated? 5.Comment on the significance of the balloon. Is the balloon symbolically, metaphorically, or literally referred to? 6.Can you relate the text to the notion of simulacra? 7.How much did you laugh, what did you laugh at, and why?

22. Pynchon, Thomas (1937)  novelist, known for his experimental writing techniques that involve extremely complicated plots and themes.  His most famous novel, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), won the National Book Award.

23. general themes  books portray a vast social network made up of the industrial, military, mass- communication, and entertainment systems that developed during World War II (1939-1945).  concern with the development of this network from the European roots of free enterprise, throughout the founding of the United States, to modern times.

24. general contexts  novels are broad in scope and use scientific theories, historical facts, and details of popular culture with great accuracy.  novels have large casts of characters through interwoven plots that are often incomplete.  novels offer a variety of narrative techniques, including satire, humor, and suspense, to paint a dark, but not hopeless, picture of society.

25. Where's Thomas Pynchon?  Much of Pynchon’s personal life remains a mystery. He has lived in seclusion for many years, and his academic and military records have been lost.  See the CNN report Where's Thomas Pynchon? Where's Thomas Pynchon?

26. Pynchon in the introduction to Slow Learner: "Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite."

27. Pynchon on Barthelme “…his inescapable sadness…” “Barthelme’s was a specifically urban melancholy, related to that look of immunity to joy or even surprise seen in the faces of cab drivers, bartenders, street dealers, city editors, a wearily taken vow to persist beneath the burdens of the day and the terrors of the night. Humor in these conditions leans toward the anti-transcendent—like jail humor and military and rodeo humor, it finds amusement in failure and loss, and it celebrates survival one day, one disaster, at a time.” Introduction, The Teachings of Don B., p. xviii

28. The Crying of Lot 49 Themes  Legacy  Conspiracy/Paranoia  Roles/functions  Escape from/creation of (world)  Self-realization/narcissism/solipsism  Reality?

29. thematics  Executor/will/death  Housewife?  Boredom  Defeat  Sensitivity to stereotypes  Cars/car owners/car salesmen  Lot(s)  Faces/hallucinations  Psychoanalysis/trust  Revelations/insulation  Rapunzel/letting your hair down/escape  Weaving/tapestry/world

30. contexts  Popular culture/media  Intertextuality (Rapunzel/Remedios Varo)  America in the 1960s  Post-modernism  Experimental realism?

31. Bordando el Manto Terrestre (Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle)