THE POSTMODERN

Question 1

why is history one of the most contentious areas of debate

Answer 1

historical records are not 100% factually written

Question 2

according to jameson, why is postmodernism harmful?

Answer 2

it is ahistorical as it focuses on imitative works that produced degraded form of historicism

it also emphasises consumerism, wherein the things treated as “history” are those that are dictated my the consumers

Question 3

for hutcheon, why is postmodernism useful?

Answer 3

it remians historical beause it criticizes history thru parody

Question 4

a literary movement that averts from absolute meaning and instead emphasizes play of fragmentation, metafiction, and intertextuality. This rose to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a reaction to modernist literature’s quest for meaning in light of the significant human rights

Answer 4

postmodern literature

Question 5

what are the core ideas of postmodernism?

Answer 5

• embrace randomness
• playfukness
• fragmentation
• metafiction
• intertextuality

Question 6

rejects the idea of absolute meaning and instead embrace randomness and disorder. It often employs unreliable narrators to further muddy the waters with extreme subjectivity and prevent readers from finding meaning during the story.

Answer 6

embrace randomness

Question 7

while modernist writers mourned the loss of order, postmodern writers revel in it, often using tools like black humor, wordplay, irony and other techniques of playfulness to dizzy readers and muddle the story.

Answer 7

playfulness

Question 8

moving literary works more toward collage-style forms, temporal distortion, and significant jumps in character and place

Answer 8

fragmentation

Question 9

is a self-conscious literary style in which the narrator or characters are aware that they are part of a work of fiction. Postmodern writers began to experiment with more meta elements in their works, drawing attention to their works artifice and reminding readers that the author is not an authority figur

Answer 9

metafiction

Question 10

as a form of collage-style writing, many postmodern authors wrote their work overtly in dialogue with other texts. The techniques they employed included pastiche (or imitating other authors’ styles) and the combination of high and low culture (writing that explores on subjects that were previously considered inappropriate for literature

Answer 10

intertextuality