One of the things that I noticed in many of the works we read for this week was the tension between the past and the present. In “POSTmodernISM: A Paracritcal Bibliography,” the author attempts to go about defining postmodernism and its predecessor modernism with mixed success. In Foer’s short story there is both admiration and conflict between the different generations represented within the author’s family. “Super Goat Man” depicts the distance between the nostalgic older generations and the less interested and invested younger folks.
This tension reiterates the trend of fragmentation in postmodern work. Together, the inability to fully understand and reconcile the past to the present and the fragmentation of structure in these postmodern stories contributes to a feeling of uneasiness that others have mentioned in previous blog postings. The disconnection between past and present in terms of memories and values makes for a seemingly foundation-less, free-floating contemporary point of view; the younger generations do not immediately identify themselves with their parents’ generation, thus leading to a fluid, undefined sense of self. The uncertainty, ambiguity, and rejection of the past mirrors the unconventional structure of many postmodern narratives. The story “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” serves as an example of internal conflict and structure. Structurally, the story unfolds in un-chronological order, which then establishes the character of Arthur/Art/Soap/Wolverine as a somewhat disembodied individual. I also think that a large part of the mystery, the reason why we as readers keep reading is not just because we want to know what Soap is going to do at the party, but that we want to know who he is, his identity.
Despite the negative connotation I associate with fragmentation, I think many postmodernists (?) view this division as an advantage. John Cage writes that “Now there’re more and more of us , we find one another more’ n’ more interesting. We’re amazed, when there’re so many of us, that each one of us is unique, different from all the others.” While few of the works we read this week label the postmodern identity as an improvement or a tragedy (Foer’s story seems most at odds with the ideas of heritage and the permanence versus fleeting nature of family values and traits), I think it is interesting that this conflict can be viewed as both good and bad.
In reading Dr. Sample’s post about the atrocities in “Uniforms” I’m not sure what he means by diminishing and multiplying effects. The randomness, repetition, and an underdeveloped context for the violence (at least to me) made the acts of atrocity seem pretty meaningless and petty. I’m interested to know what others’ thoughts are on violence in postmodernism. Clearly, DeLillo’s “Uniforms” depicts extreme violence in a very matter-of-fact, detached manner, which, as many have said in previous posts, is extremely disturbing. I wonder where one would place a work like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in terms of postmodernism. McCarthy’s work is similar to the piece that we read for class in that they both possess an indifference toward acts of atrocity, but McCarthy goes into much more detail. How does this difference change things?