Postmodernism: Multiplicty, Hybridity, and Duplicity

What is postmodernism...really? Well, that is an interesting question with no single answer. That's one of the basic premises of postmodernism; not only does it privilege multiplicity but it resists definition too.

Some general "ideas" of what postmodernism means:

it developed after (post) modernism therefore whatever modernism did some may argue that it still does), postmodern does differently.

it is the opposite of everything modernism was.

as Fredrik Jameson would have it, postmodernism is synonymous with consumerism and capitalism.

it can signify a temporal condition, it comes after the era of modernism.

symbolises a melting of binaries, no more high art and low art, parody (as Jameson would argue) turns to pastiche, no more grand narratives (says Lyotard), and pure hybridization (in form and content).

lack of "real" reality. Baudrillard argues that with postmodernism comes a dissolution of society. Instead we put all our remaining faith in images. According to Baudrillard (and to some extent Eco) Disneyland becomes a model for America.

Perhaps the most important idea to keep in mind about the myriad of definitions that abound for "postmodernism" is that this plurality signifies (and symbolises) the diversity of the cultures and disciplines which call themselves or their theories postmodern. Octavio Paz, in Los Hijos Del Limo sums up the state of postmodernism: "la literatura moderna es una apasionada negación de la modernidad" (p.57), but "la historia no es una: es plural" (p.215

What does this mean vis a vis literature? An accent on consciousness and subjectivity in writing (like self-reflexive fiction, "yes, you dear reader") occurs. And the emphasis changes to how meaning-making occurs, rather than on what is meant. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing. The goal here is to render the thoughts "as they fall" upon the mind (see Woolf's "Modern Fiction"). These thoughts take on embryonic, disorganized, amorphous, chaotic, or even inchoate or nonverbal shapes which, for Joyce, Faulkner, and Woolf, are the uncontaminated fragments of thought or moments of sensation and being. Generally authors employ stream-of-consciousness to create an illusion that the reader (that's you) is right there listening to the character's unleashing of sensations and unrestricted, absurd musings within a character's mind before the character has ordered them into any coherent form or shape. Thus the novelist will neglect syntax and grammar, forget logic and its concomitant orderly, carefully phrased sentences and predictable pauses. Woolf refers to this aspect of stream of consciousness when she talks to the reader in "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" and says that:

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