The article examines the structure of the literary subject in Ruth Ozeki's 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being from the perspective of the governing mechanisms of the postmodern epoch. I argue that the fluidity of the subject roles in the novel not only complies with Zen Buddhist principles Ozeki admittedly employed in their conception, but also reflects the structure of contemporary individuals within the postmodern social and economic realities. My analysis of the narrative agents relies primarily upon the theoretical framework charted by Jean Baudrillard, specifically his concepts of hyperreality and fractal subject. The adherence of the subjects in the novel to the principles of the postmodern paradigm allows us to consider A Tale for the Time Being as an example of a way in which the American mainstream has begun to accommodate (to) the social and historical circumstances of the new historical epoch.
In the first half of the 1980s, at the height of the postmodernist theoretical debate, the actual literary production already showed signs of fatigue from the postmodernist dictum. Especially the works of American authors from the 1980s onwards show an increasing tendency to abandon the dead-end loops of postmodernist autoreferentiality, and to focus on various aspects of tangible reality instead. The paper argues that such practice should not be considered or theorised in terms of falling back on the great tradition of realism but rather as a necessary literary response to the mechanisms governing the changing of the epochs. My intention is to show that the allegedly realistic modes of contemporary American writing correspond to the epochal social, cultural and political changes accompanied by the rise of digital media. As such, these works effectively reflect, comment on and contribute to the contemporary reality that can no longer be adequately described or theorised about in terms of Cartesian metaphysics.
The paper examines the legacy of the European historical Avant-Gardes from the perspective of the shift of paradigms immanent in the formation of the Postmodern epoch. The existing theories generally regard the Avant-Gardes as an unsuccessful attempt to redefine the function of art in the social, cultural and economic environment of the early 20th century. Examining the productivity and relevance of the historical Avant-Gardes from the perspective of the Avant-Pop, the first thoroughly Postmodern literary movement, I intend to show how the strategies of fragmentation and the breaking of organicity not only quintessentially defined the manner in which Modernity and its art came to an end, but how they also provided the basis forthe formation of culture and art that no longer functions according to Cartesian principles.
The article argues that with the spreading of computer hypertext into the social sphere, hypertext is no longer merely a writing technique or an organising principle; it becomes the logic implicit in the functioning of postmodern societies.lts actualisation can be performed via any medium-TV, internet, radio or print. Based on instances from 1990s and early 2000s printed American fiction, the paper examines the ways in which print already is hypertextual, and attempts to provide an insight into the future of printed literature in an era no longer governed by the Modem Age principles and paradigms.
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