chaptr 2 postmodernism

7/28/2019 Chaptr 2 Postmodernism

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It is highly reasonable that contemporary issues, ideologies, theories, popular

culture do get represented partially or fully in fiction. The novel with its flexibility and

wide space can always afford for the inclusion of such topics. While we observe

postmodern novels sparring with form, structure, style, order and such boundaries, we

can still observe the fact that these novels too have space to include life- either

partially or fully; life with all its vibrant issues, personalities, and ideas. With life

comes the concept of change and with change comes the idea of time. It is true that in

postmodern fiction there is a more radical rejection of the cultural certainties on which

western life had been structured. The certainties of reason, order, humanism, science, and

religion were disowned extensively during the period of postmodernism. The influence of

time had already begun to erode with the writings of modernist fiction. Time had brought

in a kind of form and order into the realm of fiction. While they rejected it or ridiculed

it, writers could never fully disregard its presence. The concept of linearity in time was

disowned yet writers could use time as a concept for experimentation in postmodern

fiction with its lack of temporal sequencing, intermingling of spaces, and fragmentation.

We can study the handling of space and time in postmodern fiction by concentrating on

these techniques and experimental styles. Unique methods of operating with time can

also be seen by studying some visionary authors of the postmodern genre.

Linda Hutcheon is of the opinion that postmodernism is a contradictory

enterprise. It is contradictory because postmodern art, including fiction, repeatedly

make use of, and later discard, conventional methods and ideas. She calls it a re-reading

of several works of art which had already been written in the past. Thus postmodern

fiction brings back events which had happened in a time in the past to a period which is


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in a different time. An ironic effect is generated from such presentations. Hutcheon

considers the majority of works in the postmodern tradition to be historiographic

metafiction which self-consciously distorts historical events, personalities and so on.

According to Brian Mc Hale this kind of distortion or manipulation of history (which

relies on time and events happening in time) can be achieved through Apocryphal

history, anachronism, and also by Magic Realism in which history and fantasy

mingle with each other.

In an Apocryphal history, the exact time of events in the past are distorted or

subverted to produce a reading from a new perspective. Here the certainty of events

happening in time is challenged. What we have always regarded as events are the

highly debated, reported, and important historical incidents which a majority had

perceived in time; this is a kind of blind following of an absolute time. But in an

Apocryphal history multiple perspectives are utilized. A plot (very familiar) will be

narrated, based on a time in the past, from the point of view of a narrator who observes it

from a different angle in time. Consider the work The Remains of the Day by Kazuo

Ishiguro. In this novel, which is a historical account of incidents set in the period of the

Second World War, the narration is made from the point of view of a butler named

Stevens. He narrates incidents which had happened in the mansion of his master, where

he too had played a small, but significant, role in the matters which were related to

Britains policies during the Second World War. What we get is a new history, a new

account of events, a new time being projected on our senses; a manipulated version of

time, the past, and history.


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Magic Realism also present us with a time and space where the familiar is seen

flowing with the fantastic. Notable figures in this genre include Gunter Grass, Italo

Calvino, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, J.G. Ballard, Thomas Bernhard and

others. Magic Realism originated from South America where novels were written which

projected a space and time in which there were surrealist elements. Salman Rushdie

considered Magic Realism to be a product of third world consciousness. A

marginalised space was coming up to the fore with a completely distorted narration of

history, which many had regarded as true, and some had considered elitist. Magic

Realism, as the name suggests, also contained realistic elements, yet these were molded

differently using postmodern techniques of the unreliable, yet, self-conscious narrator and

by the abandoning of linear narration in time. In characterization also there is a genuine

methodology followed by magic realist writers. Characters are mostly empowered with

magical powers which helped them to distort the space and time of their narrative. The

narratives of such characters are mostly fragmented and jumbled up with a shifting

and contradictory point of view, circular and repetitive time scales, labyrinthine plots, the

doubling of events (Travers 219).

Salman Rushdies Midnights Children is to be considered a seminal work in

Magic Realism and postmodern fiction. It deals with the story of 1001 children born at

midnight of August 15, 1947, the day India received independence. The incidents in the

novel are not narrated in a realistic fashion and disregard the chronological ordering of

time. There are often sudden jumps made into the future and the past; the novel even

ends in an ambiguous fashion with the narrator Saleem Sinai predicting his future.

Saleem is an unreliable narrator; hence the events that he has narrated are not to be


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taken as events which had actually happened in time. He narrates the history of his family

which spreads out to around 70 years. This is another example of how history can be

fiction and fiction history. A time of 70 years is used to narrate events happening in three

countries India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Questions can be asked on the reliability of

the events in time which have happened over a long period and a wide space. This

also points towards the unreliability of grand narratives.

Magic realism is dominant when observing fiction where reality is questioned, a

fantastic interpretation of reality is done. Whatever considered to be natural is made to

seem quite super-natural. Magic realism seems to question the very credibility of the

use of language to portray the world in a realistic framework. No matter how perfectly

suitable language is for communicating ideas or representing reality, it is still unable to

capture life to the fullest. The artistic possibilities of this limitation are exploited by

magic realism. Events are presented in a time where the very authenticity of absolute

time or linear time is questioned. In magic realist works time is presented as both

historical as well as fantastic (immortal, timeless). Time is presented as cyclic and not

linear. Incidents recur and the characters seem to be caught in a time which offers not

much possibility for redemption. Consider the structure of Gabriel Garcia Marquezs

novel One Hundred Years of Solitude; the novel has an abrupt beginning, with the

incident of the firing squad, and this is followed by a very long flashback. This testifies to

the fact that time is not ordered or linear, in the magic realist world time moves, yet the

pattern of its movement is irregular and labyrinthine. The past seems to be ever present

and, occasionally, the future seems to have already happened. In Marquezs novel, certain

events keep returning to the framework of the present, even as we observe time turning


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the leaves of generations. The constant shifting in narrative as presented in a chaotic

temporal space points towards a reality which is outside the realm of time.

The repetition of events already happened in a particular spacetime can be seen in

Ben Okris The Famished Road. Azaro, the spirit child, his father and his mother all have

similar experiences of fighting with spirits of the other world. The recurring image of

the novel seems to be his fathers boxing matches with mortal and supernatural beings.

The novel expertly amalgamates the fantastic and the real space. Steppenwolfby Herman

Hesse also presents elements of magic realism. Hesses presentation of the Magic

theatre, where the fantastic mingles with the seemingly real, can be cited as a

forerunner for magic realist novels which would be written later in the era. The Magic

theatre seems to be highly metaphorical. This is a realistic- magical world which

exists beyond time, a world of memories-fragments of time caught and preserved for

eternity. Observe Hermine emphasizing on something she calls eternity. This eternity is

beyond any temporality. Hesse seems to speak his mind through Hermine; these are

arguably his ideas on time. Goethe, who appears as a character in the novel, speaks of

mans mistake in making too much of time. The meeting of various immortal artists by

Harry points towards their continuing existence in a realm freed from the limiting

ideologies of time. Magic realism points towards abolishing this world view of a limiting

time and space where boundaries dominate. Magic realism is a critique of the

possibility of representation in that it blurs the boundaries between what is magical and

what is real and thus calls into question accepted definitions of either (Marshall 180).

Magic realist writers never fully disregarded history, but they paced their

preoccupation not just with the past but also with the present hence a new hybrid


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time evolved where events actually happened in no-time, a time which is familiar yet

fantastic, a different universe where a different time scheme worked. Such efforts by

writers of postmodern fiction can be seen as attempts to reduce the authority of time, an

entity which was master to all is now made a slave in the hands of writers who show

us how easy it is to dethrone time from its position of power. The dreadful state of a

society governed by order which has been imposed by time can be seen in Anthony

BurgesssA Clockwork Orange (1962). In the novel, which is dystopian, there is a severe

criticism upon the ordering of the society and how the people might become violent,

soulless occupants if an authority tries to radically order things in time. This kind of

excessive ordering reduces humanity to mere machinery and hence was disregarded by

postmodern novelists.

There is also a corruption of the present in postmodern fiction. It disorders the

linear coherence of narrative by warping the sense of significant time, kairos, or the dull

passing of ordinary time, chronos (Sim 124). Kairos is associated with novels like A

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manby James Joyce, which relies a lot on epiphany and

disclosure. Chronos is associated with realist writing which follows a linear narrative

pattern. This also undermines the fact that postmodern writing is characterized by

temporal disorder. Postmodernist writers also use the technique of fragmentation in

order to reduce the significance of ordering events in time. Plot, character, setting and

theme are all mashed-up into a form which challenges the very notion of ordering,

linearity and absolutism. Postmodernist writers have disregarded the wholeness and

completion associated with traditional stories and prefers to deal with other ways of

structuring narrative (Sim 127). They do this using several techniques, one is the use of


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multiple endings where the novelist challenges the very notion of linearity;

postmodern novels never really end. There are also other methods to make a novel open

ended, inconclusive and free of the domain of linear time. This is done by, breaking

up the text into short fragments or sections, separated by space, titles, numbers or

symbol (Sim 127). What this does is that it confuses the reader on the reality of the time

where events are unfolding, a questioning of the very nature of order and time is

generated and this leads to further disregard of the authority of time.

Metafiction, a postmodern construct, expertly reminds the reader of the fictional

status of a work. It reminds the reader time and again of its own conception. In

metafiction the writer gets directly involved in the narration, can be seen often interacting

with the reader seeking their opinions or giving advices. The narration hence loses its

flow, time gets disrupted. An attempt is made by the writer, who had scripted the work

during a certain period of time, to communicate and to participate in a time which would

comparatively be in the future. The writer interacts with the reader while s/he reads the

work, hence at a moment in the now or present. This expertly disrupts our notions of

past, present, and future. Thus time in terms of hours, days, and years is replaced by

durations which can be contracted into an eternity or dilated into a moments epiphany.

A work which utilizes metafiction also attempts to fuse a real time with the imaginary

one of the text. This can also be regarded as an attempt to include the humanistic

concerns of traditional narratives with the completely contrasting narrative of

postmodernism.

Italo Calvinos If on a Winters Night a Traveler is cited as one of the best

examples regarding the meta-narration or metafiction. The novel:


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Playswith all the conventions of the discourse of fiction: psychological

characterization, linear narratives, the assumption of a real world that is

being transcribed. All are abandoned in favour of pure playfulness, which

is manifested through the novels fusion of real and imagined scenes, its

false correspondences, its microscopic depiction of objects and bodily

gesture, and its leitmotific, almost musical narrative structure. And yet

behind these small fictions lie the bigger fictions of everyday life, those

existential patterns that manifest themselves in the continuity of life, the

inevitability of death. These are revealed through the gentle humanism of

Calvinos novel, and through a perspective that remains (in spite of its

endemic formalism,) supremely alive to the open nature of experience and

to the invigorating banalities of ordinary life (Travers 211).

Relativity triumphs here, where the text as such is not just a mere island, a self

contained space, but a multiple universe of spaces.

An intriguing feature of postmodernism is the desire for theorists to practice

what they preach and for artists to preach what they practice (Sim 235). This is highly

relevant when read in relation to Umberto Eco. His semiotic space with its universe of

signs gets due representation in his novels. There is a blurring of boundaries between

academic and fictional writing. Umberto Eco has always fascinated his readers with his

versions of subverted histories, he can be regarded as a modern day potter who moulds

and remoulds the clay of history and plays with the realm of time. Eco has always

shown interest in pursuing matters or topics related to the Middle Ages.


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This is not surprising as there are many parallels that link the Middle Ages

with the postmodern moment. Both are periods of in-betweenness, interim

states defined in terms of the historical eras they succeed and anticipated.

Both are fascinated with the stacking of layers of meaning and the

interpretation of different worlds of meaning (Sim 236).

Ecos The Name of the Rose expertly fuses the medieval, the semiotic, and the

postmodern realm into a single work. It pays homage to traditional plots by using a

framework of a murder mystery which is used as a backdrop to foreground the ideas of

the author. The mystery is related to the investigation of bizarre murders, in a gothic

monastery of the Franciscan monks, by a Benedictine monk William of Baskerville

(resounding The Hound of Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Sherlock Holmes

mystery). William too is a character structured around the likes of Holmes, the power of

deduction is to be observed in both. William is assisted by a young novice Adso (who is

the Doctor Watson of Ecos narrative). The focus of attention is always on the

labyrinthine library of the monastery. The library can be regarded as a representative of a

temporal maze. Time in postmodern narrative does not exist as a complete entity, self

sufficient in itself. There is no pattern as such. There is no linearity and hence the plot is

made more confusing and complicated. In a labyrinthine view of time, time has no

beginning or end, yet it is not circular time. A work of metafiction where a text with its

own space and time is placed inside a text with a different space and time creates a sense

of a maze or labyrinth.

The plot ofThe Name of the Rose is complicated with the missing of the key to

solving the mystery which is Aristotles famous lost book on comedy, which was


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considered as a threat to the ideologies of the church. This novel is the first of its kind

from Ecos universe which would continue to challenge notions of time and its linearity.

The plot of the murder mystery, the characterization of William and Adso (Holmes and

Watson), the labyrinthine library, the text of Aristotle all are contained in a single

temporal space of the novel which gives us the impression not of a single time but of

multiple interrelated times seen in a symbiotic relationship.

Ecos Foucaults Pendulum continues with this tradition with a suspense filled

thriller, a complex ridiculing of secret sects and myths related to the Holy Grail. While in

The Name of the Rose it was the library which represented the labyrinthine feature of the

novel, this novel by Eco is in itself a complex maze. The narration is done by Causaubon

a scholar who is researching on the topic of the Knights Templar, a topic which has

achieved mythical identity, and who is also a businessman in Milan. His thirst for

knowledge is limitless and he is ready to pay any price for the information that he seeks.

He is assisted by Jacopo Belbo and Diotallevi. Their popular pastime is ridiculing of

anyone who takes himself seriously. The issue of metafiction and multiple space and

time arises when in an episode the three friends enter into their computer all the

information, all the hermetic plots that were ever written. The result is an amalgamation

of information, of space and time into an alternative history a subverted mass history. The

information they get is presented as a much more perfect and ordered history. But the

fact is that the characters themselves acknowledge the fact that they have recreated

history which is a true presentation of false facts. The world of absolutes comes

tumbling down and with it the absolute nature of historical time.


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Temporal disorder, fragmentation, vicious circles, labyrinthine metafictional

narratives are some techniques which the narrators of postmodern fiction have used to toy

or play with the presence or absence of time. Linear and absolute time has

disintegrated thoroughly, yet whenever the question of form or narrative space comes

up in fiction the problem of time appears. In postmodern fiction there is a total collapse

of firm foundations, principles and paradigms. With it the dominance of time also fades.

Postmodern writers appear to be utterly undetermined on the idea of time. While in

modernist fiction time was subjective, concentrating on a private time, Postmodern

novels took things further by seeing unlinearity everywhere: now, not only personal time

but public time melted into flux, as writers stressed the ways that it too, had no basis in

reality (Matz 141). Umberto Ecos The Island of the Day Before is in this sense a

response to all the confusion surrounding time in fiction; scientific debates on time which

got due representation in works of fiction find a culmination in this novel. The Island of

the Day Before radically challenges and destroys the dominance of time.

chaptr 2 postmodernism

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