{"id":44,"date":"2009-01-27T21:40:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T02:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=44"},"modified":"2009-01-28T08:56:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T13:56:45","slug":"the-experience-of-postmodernism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"The Experience of Postmodernism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the previous posts have discussed this feeling that it is unsettling and seemingly impossible to try to deduce Postmodernism, and I wanted to say that while I feel the same way, I also think it is comforting to consider that the experience itself\u00a0may\u00a0be\u00a0the point.\u00a0 <\/span>I get the impression that these writings intend to unsettle us and that unsettling feeling can also apply to understanding the point of the pieces themselves and the point of the movement in general. <\/span><\/p>\n

I, too, felt the inclination to look at the stories as an aggregate group.\u00a0 <\/span>I concur with Alana that the first thing I noticed was \u201cthe element of something unsettling or something that doesn\u2019t \u2018fit\u2019-that forces you to stop and think or retrace your step as it jars you out of the\u00a0rhythm of reading.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I, too, was more than uncomfortable with the content in DeLillo\u2019s story, and though we had no warning of the content, I think that is, again, part of the experience.\u00a0 <\/span>While I had to tell myself multiple times to look past my own offense at the content, I can admit that the story effectively shocks, disturbs, and unsettles.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the dehumanization Sara\u00a0discussed in her post as applied to Foer\u2019s piece also pertains to DeLillo\u2019s story; both the characters in the story and the readers themselves may be viewed as dehumanized.\u00a0 <\/span>I went back, after reading \u201cThe Uniforms,\u201d to find how many times gratuitous sexual violence occurs in the tale, and I found at least eleven examples.\u00a0 <\/span>I am curious, having never read DeLillo before, whether he usually includes this kind of sexual violence and why.\u00a0 <\/span>As I said, I think feeling unsettled is important in Postmodernism, or at least a little confused, but when I read this story in particular, the excessive mentions of rape and castration distract and offend so much that I feel more disgust than appreciation.\u00a0 <\/span>Then again, I feel as if that may be the point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another common element in some of this week\u2019s reading is the questioning.\u00a0 <\/span>I have already mentioned the reader\u2019s experience of confusion, but perhaps the same is true for many of the characters in the stories, as well as in Cage\u2019s piece.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, in \u201cSuper Goat Man,\u201d after the superhero fails to save one of the frat boys from his six-story fall, the narrator asks, \u201cHad the hero failed the crisis?\u00a0 <\/span>Caused it, by some innate provocation?\u00a0 <\/span>Or was the bogus crisis unworthy, and the outcome its own reward?\u201d (73).\u00a0 <\/span>The narrator questions, and probes those questions in the (confused) reader, what it all means when the bizarre hero does save the drunk college student.\u00a0 <\/span>Likewise, in Foer\u2019s piece, the misunderstandings which are carefully delineated for the reader almost all result from questions that the narrator\u2019s family members pose to him, to which he cannot or does not verbally respond.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, the narrator\u2019s mother asks, \u201cAre you dating at all?… But you\u2019re seeing people, I\u2019m sure. Right?… Are you ashamed of the girl?\u00a0 <\/span>Are you ashamed of me?\u201d (82).\u00a0 <\/span>In this case, the mother cannot understand the son, but he tries, perhaps successfully, to understand them both.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in Cage\u2019s piece, almost every statement incites questions, though few are actually phrased in the form of questions.\u00a0 <\/span>The questions that do appear tend to ask the reader to think through society\u2019s logic, like this one: \u201cWhy is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don\u2019t ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eighth (October),\u00a0 <\/span>the twelfth called the tenth (December)?\u201d( 204).\u00a0 <\/span>This question reveals a logical fallacy and effectively pokes fun at what society would call \u201clogic\u201d at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The questioning in these pieces does not necessarily lead to answers, as is the case in much of Postmodernism, but it sure does make you think.\u00a0 <\/span>What I am wondering, and I am guessing we will address much of this in class, is what it was in our American society which affected our literature so much?\u00a0 <\/span>I can name a few triggers on my own, but I am very interested in the historical events and trends which triggered, in particular, the tendency to disturb and to question which is evident in this literary era.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of the previous posts have discussed this feeling that it is unsettling and seemingly impossible to try to deduce Postmodernism, and I wanted to say that while I feel the same way, I also think it is comforting to consider that the experience itself\u00a0may\u00a0be\u00a0the point.\u00a0 I get the impression that these writings intend to … Continue reading The Experience of Postmodernism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,26,49,34],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-2-short-stories","tag-delillo","tag-race","tag-sex","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}