<\/p>\n
I found Adams\u2019 article, \u201cThe Ends of America,\u201d really helpful in my (still feeble) attempts to form a working definition of postmodernism. She seems very confident in her definition of what we\u2019ve admitted is a slippery category: postmodernism as the \u201cdominant form of avant-garde literary experimentalism during the Cold War, a period marked by the ascendance of transnational corporations, the upheavals of decolonization, fears of nuclear holocaust, and the partitioning of the globe into ideological spheres\u201d (Adams 2). Here, Adams is referring to the sixties through the late eighties (I would say it coincides with the formation and then fall of the USSR). However, stuff like the \u201cupheavals of decolonization, fear of nuclear holocaust, and the portioning of the globe into ideological spheres\u201d is sounding an awful lot like what\u2019s going on today (I asked someone who lived through the Cuban missile crisis why they thought we don\u2019t seem particularly concerned about the prospect of countries like North Korea or Pakistan getting nuclear weapons, and they said they think it\u2019s because our generation has never had that much faith that the world wasn\u2019t<\/em> going to end, so there didn\u2019t seem a point to panicking. I think they\u2019re right.). <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So anyway. If Adams is arguing that postmodernism was a reaction to the \u201ccontainment culture of Cold War America,\u201d (Adams 1) it would seem that the postmodern \u201cmoment\u201d is over, as the particular historical moment that postmodern was a reaction to is more or less over as well. If so, I\u2019d have to say that postmodernism seems to me to be the quickest-passing literary \u201cmoment\u201d I\u2019ve ever studied. (Is it possible that literary eras are speeding up? Why do I have to use so many parentheses?) Anyway, Adams argues that books like Tropic of Orange<\/em> (and I would say also <\/span>The Magical Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death<\/em>-there I go again with the goddamn parentheses) are not postmodern per se but post-postmodern, or, in her terms, a reaction to the globalization of American literature. But do we agree that postmodernism has passed as its historical moment has passed?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But moving on, I thought I\u2019d write a bit about my final paper and the issues I\u2019ve been having and hopefully elicit some opinions and comments from other people. I wanted to take the discussion about Beloved <\/em>and sort of run with it-I\u2019d have to say it felt like the one book on the list that had the most to quibble about whether or not it was postmodern. But now I\u2019m starting to feel like Oedipa, because it seems that each article or book I read just sends me ping-ponging from one position to the other. I\u2019d like to make the argument that <\/span>Beloved <\/em>is a uniquely postmodern book. Here, Adams gives her list of what makes a postmodern work postmodern: \u201cdark humor, themes of paranoia, skepticism, and conspiracy, preoccupation with close reading and textuality, and complex formal experimentation\u2026[postmodern works] can be historicized as a response to and reaction against\u2026the containment culture of Cold War America\u201d (Adams 1). Given that <\/span>Beloved <\/em>has nary a nuclear reactor or conspiracy theory in sight, and it takes place in a history as yet untouched by the Cold War, is it still a postmodern novel?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Well, Adams goes on to write of Pynchon as the definitive postmodern author, citing his \u201cpreoccupation with paranoia and conspiracy, radical skepticism about foundational truth and authority of all kinds, deft mixing of genres, distrust of received historical knowledge, and confrontations with the sublime and apocalyptic\u201d (Adams 3). Leaving out the paranoia and conspiracy part, I think a case could be made that Morrison\u2019s work exhibits the same characteristics<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I found Adams\u2019 article, \u201cThe Ends of America,\u201d really helpful in my (still feeble) attempts to form a working definition of postmodernism. She seems very confident in her definition of what we\u2019ve admitted is a slippery category: postmodernism as the \u201cdominant form of avant-garde literary experimentalism during the Cold War, a period marked by the … Continue reading Help.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[78,56,79,75,22,27,57,120,71],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-13-tropic-of-orange","tag-adams","tag-beloved","tag-cold-war","tag-globalization","tag-humor","tag-morrison","tag-postmodernism","tag-pynchon","tag-tropic-of-orange"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}