Hey, I'm doing assignments at the moment and for one of my classes I have to write a 750 word piece, the teacher said it would be preferable if we experimented with postmodernism - the only problem being I have I hard time understanding what this means.
I had this idea to right about this one time I saw a skinny little fox in a town, he was in the road trying to pick at the remains of a rabbit that had been run over - he didn't move even as we slowed in the road, only running away after we honked the horn a few times. I was going to try writing from the foxes point of view, starting from earlier on in this foxes evening and ending with him running from the car. I know that including yourself as a writer in the text is a postmodern aspect, but would anything else about this be?
Thanks,
Bethany
A lot of scholars think that we are living post - postmodernism now. But yes, it is a very slippery thing to try and define.Have you read any postmodern books? It might be worth getting a bit of a feel for the thought processes.
I'd say the fox is definitely a good start but what does it say about life? What can we learn about life through the fox? Why does the fox matter? Why do you matter? Postmodernism tends to overthink things and ask more questions and play with more scenarios. What about a split scenario - what happens if you don't run over the fox/ what happens if you do?
The language use is important in postmodernism too. It's clever whilst being classless, it both excludes and includes at the same time.
Hope that helps, it's a long time since I studied it and even then I was left not able to get a firm grip on the definitions!
As Paul said, it's a fough concept to pin down. The first couple of lines in Wikipedia say
"Postmodern literature is literature characterized by heavy reliance on techniques like fragmentation, paradox, and questionable narrators, and is often (though not exclusively) defined as a style or trend which emerged in the post–World War II era. Postmodern works are seen as a reaction against Enlightenment thinking and Modernist approaches to literature."
It gives examples of postmodern literature like 'Don Quixote' and 'Tristram Shandy' so old stuff can be postmodern too!
Hi Bethany, you will have a hard time understanding what it means as nobody can agree on exactly what it means except maybe it deconstructs modernism. There is no agreed upon definition of postmodernism, it challenges certain structures rather than being something in and of itself. confused, I am and I just wrote it. hope it helps Regards Paul.