ENG252Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Constipation, Socratic Method, Canadian Multiculturalism Act
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
ENG252 - Lecture 16
Postmodernism
-Wide-ranging term
-A reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality
-Stems from recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it
but is constructed
-A response to the modernist movement that came before it
-Awareness that all systems of meanings are constructed
-From Truths to truths
•from a single/singular interpretation to plurality of meanings
-No universal values
-Reader invited to interpret the text with their own ideas and experiences
-Politics and aesthetics of contestation
-Difference replaces universal values
-Questions authority (of author)
-Stresses self-reflexivity
-Engages with margins and minorities - fertile space
•ec-centric
-includes the margins
-Doubleness/dupicity
-Ambiguity/ambivalence
•to come to terms with conflict, not to manage difference and control it
-The post- of postmodernism
•after modernism chronologically
-Engages with and subverts conventions
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Tuesday, February 9, 2016
-Denaturalises what we assume to be natural (e.g. realism)
-Calls into question the messianic faith of modernism (e.g. technological innovation
and departure from traditional norms will usher in redemption
-Self-conscious sensibility
-Meta-fiction= fiction about its own making draws attention to its own fictionality
-Language constitutes reality (rather than merely reflecting it)
-From author to writer
•the author doesn’t authorise meaning
•the text’s meaning is constructed by the reader
•The author as a reader and producer of meaning
-From product to text
•Product: complete/finite meaning
•Text: registers the process of its construction
•From character identity to subject formation
-Often preoccupied with history
-Historiographic metafiction
•the presence of the past
-It’s post- because it denies the existence of ultimate principles
Aesthetics/devices
-Collage
-Parody
-Irony
-Self-reflexivity
-Story-making
-Synthetic approach (political implications)
!2
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
A reaction to the assumed certainty of scienti c or objective efforts to explain reality. Stems from recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it but is constructed. A response to the modernist movement that came before it. Awareness that all systems of meanings are constructed. From truths to truths: from a single/singular interpretation to plurality of meanings. Reader invited to interpret the text with their own ideas and experiences. Engages with margins and minorities - fertile space: ec-centric. Ambiguity/ambivalence: to come to terms with con ict, not to manage difference and control it. The post- of postmodernism: after modernism chronologically. Denaturalises what we assume to be natural (e. g. realism) Calls into question the messianic faith of modernism (e. g. technological innovation and departure from traditional norms will usher in redemption. Meta- ction= ction about its own making draws attention to its own ctionality. Language constitutes reality (rather than merely re ecting it)
