Based on the article by Michael Berube, it\u2019s hard to say when Postmodern fiction was born and what it is exactly. And yet, here we are discussing Postmodern American fiction. So, after finishing the Lathe of Dreams and reading David Harvey\u2019s \u201cThe Condition of Postmodernity,\u201d I thought about Harvey\u2019s discussion of Foucault\u2019s concept of heterotopia, in which \u201cincommensurable spaces [are] justaposed or superimposed on each other\u201d (48). In this heterotopia of postmodernist fiction, \u201ccharacters no longer contemplate how they can unravel or unmask a central mystery, but are forced to ask, \u2018which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of myselves is to do it? instead.\u201d Orr, the powerful\/passive dreamer in Lathe of Dreams, seemed to fit this postmodernist model for a fiction character. Because realities were altered while he was sleeping and because he was dreaming, Orr woke up and each time wondered, \u201cWhich world is this?\u201d Since the conditions of the day-to-day world were changing, sometimes radically, Orr needed to discover how he figured into each new world. Similarly, Oedipa Maas had to approach each situation and person as though individually separate from each other and yet tangled up, sometimes intentionally and with no intention or connection at all. <\/p>\n
I find this jarring and I\u2019m beginning to think I prefer modernism. Maybe my approach to analysis is still caught up in the moral crisis born of the Enlightenment, but I\u2019m pretty uncomfortable with all the uncertainty. I\u2019d like to know that a glass of milk is a glass of milk, even if it has the possibilities of changing into some other substance at some point in the future (this is a random example, I know). And yet, I\u2019m noticing a postmodern effect in most media\u2014films portraying the lives of people who will never meet and yet showing how their lives intersect all the time (Love Actually and Crash) or the Internet\u2019s hypertext world. To close, I have to say that the idea that there is no singular explanation or meaning behind something is somewhat welcoming because it doesn\u2019t seem to close doors on anyone about being right or wrong (I\u2019m thinking of the Lathe of Dreams discussion about the snake bite scenario); and yet, it can rub me the wrong way since I like having answers and finding a moral at the end of my stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Based on the article by Michael Berube, it\u2019s hard to say when Postmodern fiction was born and what it is exactly. And yet, here we are discussing Postmodern American fiction. So, after finishing the Lathe of Dreams and reading David Harvey\u2019s \u201cThe Condition of Postmodernity,\u201d I thought about Harvey\u2019s discussion of Foucault\u2019s concept of heterotopia, … Continue reading Which selve am I today?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}