Postmodernism Flashcards
According to the Marxist postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, what is the relationship between globalisation and modernity?
Globalisation is the ‘infrastructure’, and postmodernism ‘the superstructure’, of the modern mind
How does Fredrich Jameson distinguish between the modern and the postmodern?
There was a dominant concern with ‘time’ in modernity, but postmodernity entails a dominant concern with ‘space’
[this has been partly responsible for the collapse of identity- aging etc
How does Alan Macfarlane characterise identity?
‘the collapse of any integrated worldview at all’; the world is now a ‘constructivist world generated by each individual…remade constantly and always open to challenge’.
Therefore there is no author - each reader constructs for themsleves, and furhtermore all views are ‘valid’
We no longer ‘share questions’ therefore cannot share ‘answers’
‘Free market of ideas’
How does Alan Macfarlane suggest postmodernity discredits structuralism?
Structuralism suggests there are basic categories to the mind - postmodern diversity makes such categorisation impossible
Why does Alan Macfarlane assert that postmodernity can have no stable worldview?
There are ‘too many centres of knoweldge’
What is the theoretical problem of postmodernism which Alan Macfarlane identifies?
it is too amorphous to be defined- arguably encompassing everything thus cannot be delineated
What does Baudrillard identify?
the dissolution of metanarratives in postmodernity
What does Linda Hutcheon claim of postmodernism?
It is ‘less a period than a poetics or an ideology’
What does Amy Elias claim that the postmodern literary technique of historiographic metafiction does?
By pointing to ‘our discourse about the past’, reminds us that discourse is not certainty and yet is ‘our only access to the past’
Which technique does Robert Scholes identify and why is it pertinent to postmodernity?
The use of ‘fabulation’ - as certainty about knowledge in the real world declines, allegorical modes of understanding become more appealing
Brenda Marshall - what defines the postmodern moment?
The postmodern moment is ‘an awareness of being-within’
How does Joan Peters argue that metafiction is not entirely postmodern or new?
Points to the use of metafiction in Moll Flanders - in the preface
