Tho much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson

Acknowledgements

My thanks and appreciations go out to three persons who helped me with writing this
project;
To Felix Albersen, for pushing just as far as I needed to go.
To Magdalena van der Burg-Darczuk, for the smart remarks and much appreciated
corrections.
To Brigitte Fafieanie, for the much appreciated help involving the subject matter.

CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Chapter one: How did Postmodernism come to be? ................................................................................................. 4
1.1: How did the Enlightenment change the European way of thinking? ................................................... 4
1.2: The Apple incident..................................................................................................................................................... 6
1.3: the influences of the universal worldview of the 20th century .............................................................. 9
1.3.1: Between Morals and Power ............................................................................................................................. 10
1.3.2: God Is Dead and We killed him ................................................................................................................... 11
1.3.3: Condemned to Freedom .................................................................................................................................... 12
1.3.4: Existence precedes essence ............................................................................................................................. 14
1.3.5:Transition of Time periods ................................................................................................................................ 15
Chapter two: From semiotics to poststructuralism ................................................................................................ 16
2.1: What is the structuralist method?..................................................................................................................... 16
2.2: Beyond the structuralist method....................................................................................................................... 18
2.3: The critique of structuralism and the deconstruction of meta-narratives ...................................... 21
2.4: Derrida on Free Play, theocentric and anthropocentrism shifts. ......................................................... 22
2.5: Foucaults and Boudrillards post-structural approaches....................................................................... 23
Chapter three: From Modernist to Postmodernist Fiction................................................................................... 25
3.1:Modern vs postmodernist Poems....................................................................................................................... 28
3.2:The Postmodern Zeitgeist and its fiction .................................................................................................... 29
3.3:Don DeLillos White Noise ................................................................................................................................. 33
3.4:Paul Austers New York Trilogy ...................................................................................................................... 35
3.5: Thomas Pynchons Gravitys Rainbow ........................................................................................................ 37
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................ 39
Afterword.................................................................................................................................................................................. 40
Notes..............................................................................................................................................................................................43

FOREWORD

My interest in postmodernism has been an interesting development, when I was younger,

around nine to thirteen years old. I was a very active an interested reader, I was not
someone who would spend every moment he could reading but I got my doses from time to
time. I do remember that when I was on vacation my purpose would consist out of reading
for hours on end. Unfortunately this didnt last, when I got older a lot of things changed and
my life consisted of more important aspects to deal with this is why I turned my back to
reading for quite a while.
But then I got back into reading. I started to enjoy it a lot more then I had been while I was
a lot younger, for example when I was on elementary school. I was a lot older as well; this
could be a reason. One thing to point out as well is the fact that I love English in the most
pure form you could think of, after reading a couple of books in Dutch and some translated
books on the side, I became inspired by reading. This is when I thought I ought to be
reading other writers and especially, work from American/British authors. So I started
reading some: Stephen King, Michael Chabon and John Green to give you an idea. At this
point I realized, like I said, that reading really was a perfect match for me. But there was
this problem: I had no idea what to read next (ironically enough, I now know what to read
but no time..) so I would read some short stories to get a feel of what kind of style and
ambiance I was looking for, This is when I found What we talk about when we talk about
love (1989) By Raymond carver. When I read the title story from this collection I was
hooked. So I began browse the internet for books that had a sort of realness to it.
Unfortunately the outcome of this ended in becoming a David Foster Wallace groupie. And
quickly I was invested in all sorts of authors that would be called Postmodernist. Think,
Thomas Pynchon etcetera. I quickly found Postmodernism highly interesting because there
seemed to be no other definition then: An art movement that rejects modernism as guide.
So after a lot of possible topics for my Profile paper I thought: why should I not write it
about the influence of postmodernism on American literature. And the fact that I am
genuinely curious, about what sort of thought/movement altered the established Modern
world image. This seemed to trigger a response, so whats stopping me?

INTRODUCTION

In my foreword I said that I got interested in postmodernism because it seemed to lack a

clear and concise definition, actually this is because there are a great many forms of
postmodernism. And the fact that postmodernism has so many different things it is trying
to address, it is a term that is trying to address more aspects of one particular. Besides this,
there is another problem; postmodernism is such a huge shift from Modernism that it is
impossible to understand the depth it is referring to. You could in fact say that there are
postmodernisms, while still using the old word; Postmodernism. In this paper I will not
be able to discuss all of them, this being quite logical because postmodernism has many
relatives and manifestations within other art movements, and quite a lot in literature as
well. With this said I am going to look for which sorts of influence the movement And
Ideology of postmodernism, has had on American literature. The question I am asking
myself when approaching this project is: what is the influence of postmodernism on
American literature? Hopefully I can get to a concise conclusion in the last part of my paper.
In my first chapter I am looking at what preceded postmodernism in the field of
philosophy. It is my intension to use the modernist philosophy movements (rationalism
and empiricism) and the further development of western philosophy, to firstly, give you a
very clear idea of what the modern movement was all about in contrast to that of the
postmodern. Secondly, I am also going to look closely at which philosophical movements
were leading us to the rise of postmodern thought, in the previous time period (17001980) to get a very clear idea of what these movements were. These movements are very
broad but held together they all are a continuation or critique of one another. The reason
being that there are a number of key developments in human thinking that are key facets of
what postmodern thought were going to become.

3
In my second chapter I will explain the philosophical and linguistic underpinnings of
postmodernism, here I will focus on specific philosophers who are important figures for
postmodernism on itself, and I will direct my attention to explain key elements of how
these philosophical theories get overthrown or criticized, the philosophers who are the
subject of discussion in the chapter two will be much more technical then is the case with
the thinkers discussed in chapter one. Throughout the course of this wholly project we will
hopefully start to see the different points the postmodern thinkers are making, while I
focus on some of the most important postmodern philosophical tenants. In my third
chapter I am going to look at Postmodernism as a literary art form, I am going to explain
important genre conventions, metafiction, intrigue, style to give a clear idea what
postmodern literature is really like. But the biggest question in the second part of my paper
is what the influence actually is, furthermore, how do the tenants of the critical languagedriven, philosophers apply on the works on three of the most praised American authors
And we will contemplate their significant style and tone of their works. And I will analyze
three books from where two are believed to be quintessential examples of postmodern
literature.

CHAPTER ONE
HOW DID POSTMODERNISM COME TO BE?

How did postmodernism come to be? Well, opinions differ immensely, this is because
postmodernism is not an actual philosophy; it is more a way of analyzing things and
criticizing the grounded thought of modernist1 beliefs. And it is a critique of structures; it is
often referred to as post-structuralism. But first I want to devote my attention to the
multiple shifts of worldviews in the course of the last two hundred years, because
postmodernism breaks sharply with all of these. And because the importance of how these
ideas could actually spark so much interest, that philosophers would back it.

1.1 HOW DID THE ENLIGHTENMENT CHANGE THE EUROPEAN WAY OF THINKING?
The Enlightenment (16th/18th century) is also known as the age of Enlightenment. It is
very hard to say when the Enlightenment really began because the end of the renaissance
meant the beginning of the Enlightenment. Many historians point to the beginning of the
scientific revolution; this revolution took place at the beginning of the 17th century and in
the second part of the 17th century minds like Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and Galileo
changed the scientific thought in this time period. Before the beginning of Enlightenment
the philosophers of the renaissance directed their attention to religion and the human
species. This all changed when the philosophers of the Enlightenment directed their line of
thoughts and questions towards nature and most importantly the discovering of real
fundamental truths. Ren Descartes was the first man who discovered one of these
fundamental truths. He was a French philosopher, he said that with the help of pure reason
only, every question could be answered or solved. He is famous for his quote: Cogito ergo
sum, which means: I think therefore I am. This quote was first published in French (je
pense donc je suis) in the Discourse of the Method (1637) Descartes is very known as well
for his method of doubts, before it was published in Latin in Principals of Philosophy
(1644) it was intended to be Descartes ultimate answer to the questions Philosophers
sometimes ask themselves; namely how can one know that anything exists including
oneself, instead of being just a fantasy or some sort of dream. Descartes began to realize
that human senses are deeply unreliable, he said that he did not know if he was sitting in
his room in a dressing gown, or merely dreaming of some sort of thing. But there was one
thing he noticed that he was in fact actually thinking his existence could be proved by a
neat tautological trick: he could not be thinking and wondering if he existed if he did not
exist. Therefor his thinking was a basic proof of his being. Or to return to the phrase I think
therefore I am. This became the first major change in how people thought about problems;

5
no longer would there be people who backed up their arguments with appeals to god. The
other reason why Descartes is very important is because he was a fierce rationalist
(Reliance on reason and logic as the best guide for belief and action) and the first one. It is
interesting that he did not throw away the notion of religion, because rationalism is not in
any way alike to the beliefs of a religion. In this time period huge changes took place in how
people looked at the term Government. Huge breakthroughs took place in scientific and
technical fields. This is referred to as the scientific revolution.
In this time period people no longer argued that the sky was blue for example, because god
had made it that way. They started to use only the emphasis on reason and systematic
observation (rationalism), and then they started to formulate scientific methods to prove
these observations. Because of these developments there is a huge expansion of scientific
knowledge. In those times, a couple of theories changed the way people looked at the
natural world. The most known discovery in that time period is the heliocentric theory.
This theory got introduced by a Polish man named Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543); he
discovered that the sun was the center of our solar system; before this discovery people
thought that the earth had been center of our solar system. (This is called the geocentric
theory). And that all planets revolved around the earth was still true but the sun became
the replacement for the earth. This debunked the idea that humans would be the center of
existence. One hundred years after the death of Copernicus a British man named Isaac
Newton (1642-1727) was born. Newton would totally change things, people of this time
period thought that the earth was in one specific sphere, this being a certain force that only
counts on the earth that kept people and matter stationary on the ground. And that there
were different kinds of these particular rules that applied to the planets in outer space,
These rules preventing the planets from falling down to earth. When Newton came along,
he said that this was not true, he stated that gravity or the pull that two bodies have
towards each other is actually universal. What takes place in outer space is exactly the
same as on the earth. And the only thing that affects the pull of gravity is the distance
between two objects, of the overall mass of either one of these objects; this is just a short
definition that explains that gravity is universal.

1.2

THE APPLE INCIDENT

Newton once said that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravity by seeing an apple
falling from a tree, it has also been stated that this story is nothing more than a myth.
Acquaintance of Newton; William Stukeley wrote in his manuscript account of 1752 that
there should have been an incident like this. He Quotes him in his recorded memoires of
Sic Isaac Newton:
We went into the garden, & drank Thea under the shade of some apple trees;
only him, and me. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same
situation, as when formerly; the notion of gravitation came into his mind.
"Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,"
thought he to himself; occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a
contemplative mood. "Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but
constantly to the earths center? Assuredly, the reason is that the earth draws
it. There must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing
power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side
of the earth. Therefore dos this apple falls perpendicularly, or toward the
center. If matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity.
Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.2

Within the course of the enlightenment philosophers were puzzled by the question of how
human beings acquire knowledge. The camps were split between two major philosophical
trends, in France and Germany we have Rationalism with Descartes being the most
prominent lead figure, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter. In the United
Kingdom we have Empiricism (the position that all human knowledge is derived originally
from the human senses, and that there is no form of knowledge that precedes observation.)
This branch of philosophy originates from Aristotle and Epicurus; it became of major
importance in the 17th and 18th century. I will only discuss some of the key points of John
Lockes (1632-1704) philosophy. There are numerous off-springs, from Empiricism, for
instance: positivism, Pragmatism, analytical philosophy, and logical empiricism. I will now
amplify on this reaction to rationalism. And give some further developments around the
thinkers Empiricists inspired. John Locke was a 17th century British political theorist and
philosopher, He is well known for the fact that he inspired the founding fathers of Americas
so much that they decided to rip off almost all of Lockes ideas on political theory and use
this for the declaration of independence. But before I start to discuss Lockes political ideas
and works, we first have to get a grounding of his works on epistemology3.

John Locke proposed the theory of the Tabula Rasa, or blank slate. He was under the
impression that every person was born completely empty, this went against the
philosophical tradition that every human being at least has some sort of preset of rational
understanding, or in any case a set of desires and intentions; this is commonly referred to
as human nature. Locke was under the impression there was no such thing as human
nature. I and every one of us is the author of our own character. ERGO all men and women
are created equal. This is also the underlying idea in Empiricist thought, Locke
distinguished between simple and complex knowledge.
Simple Knowledge is the knowledge we receive directly from the world. And these ideas
cannot be broken down into simpler objects. Complex knowledge is the knowledge that
consists of all the multiple concepts of knowledge we assemble from simple knowledge. For
example a series of simple knowledge might be: solid, gold, shiny and round. From this we
develop the complex knowledge of a coin, from there we can scale up to more complex
knowledge of trade then to value then to currency then to economy. All of these contents
are constructed entirely from the simple concepts of our senses. This brings us to Lockes
political ideas. John Locke was certainly no fan of large intrusive government, and
proposed that every individual has a fundamental right to life, liberty and property
(Declaration of independence). In his book two treatises of government (1689) Locke
strongly shows that he is against absolutism, and in favor of the separation of state and
church. Lockes political theory is largely influenced by social contract theory. It can be
briefly summarized as follows. Firstly, an individual is born into a state of nature, each
person has god given rights; these rights are not subject to any kind of government. He also
stated that human nature is selfish, but is characterized by reason and tolerance. Secondly,
this state of nature is unstable and individuals are at risk of physical harm. This means that
they are requiring stability or cooperation with others. Thirdly, in such conditions
government arises since individuals can see the benefits which can be gained by
relinquishing a number of their rights to a central authority; this takes place in the form of
a contract. Locke also thought that revolution is not only a right, but an obligation in certain
circumstances. Locke is also seen as the Father of Classical Liberalism. Between the
discussion of rationalism and empiricism a German philosopher changed the whole
landscape of philosophy for good, which engendered the analytic/continental split in
modern and contemporary philosophy. Emanuel Kant (1724-1804), a very known and
admired Enlightenment philosopher, he is seen as one of the most influential thinkers of
modern Europe and of philosophy itself. Emanuel Kant is a philosopher, who searched for
how human beings could be good and kind, outside the rules or blandishments of a religion.
In an essay named what is enlightenment (1784) Kant called the enlightenment a time of
growing secularism.

Kant welcomed the declining of Christianity but in a practical sense he was also alarmed by
it. He was very pessimistic about human character; he believed intensely that we are very
prone to corruption. This awareness evolved into his lifes project. He wanted an answer to
the question of how to replace the authority of religion into an authority of reason. This
would be human intelligence. When it came to religion Kant summed up his views in his
book, entitled religion bound by reason alone (1795). Here he argued that although
historically religion was wrong in the content of what they believed, it had laced up to a
great need for ethical behavior. (The Ten Commandments, for example {thou shall not
steal}) Kants works were dense, abstract and highly intellectual. But in them he sketched a
very important project that remains crucial to this day. He wanted to understand how the
better more reasonable parts of our natures could be strengthened to reliably will out over
our inbuilt weaknesses and selfishness. As Kant saw it he was engaged in the task of
creating a secular rational version of what religion had very imperfectly always attempted
to do: Help us to be good.
Kant on enlightenment:
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is
man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from
another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason
but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from
another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the
motto of enlightenment. Immanuel Kant

After the Enlightenment around the year 1750, the Industrial Revolution changed our
society with great power, a lot of people moved from the countryside to the city. Each with
their own set of reasons, for the search of truths. Within philosophy, German idealism is of
major importance, namely the philosophy of Kant and Hegel; Marx and Engels continued
this, with their own scientific socialism (Marxism & Communism). When Darwin breaks
through with his theory of evolution (on the evolution of species), a huge eruption occurs
that led to the disruption of the grounded image of man of that period of time. Sigmund
Freuds book the interpretation of Dreams (1900) shows a different side of human beings
than that it was shown in previous times. As last Nietzsche The philosopher with the
hammer anticipates the 20th century with his statement that God is dead and the call to
become Master of yourself and to shape your own being.

Within the 20th century, science and technics became of major importance. So important
that a new branch arose within philosophy: The Philosophy of science. Because the human
world view changed in such a radical manner, the question of what it means to be human
became a specific object of investigation, with the rise of philosophical anthropology in
Germany. In France Existentialism arose with Jean-Paul Sartre as its main representor. The
continental philosophy is placed more and more separate from the Anglo-Saxon philosophy
(Analytical philosophy) in which language has the central position. After the Second World
War, there is a crisis revolving the modernist view of progress. Postmodern Philosophy
arises with as a starting point the end of all Grand-narratives.

1.3:

THE INFLUENCES OF THE UNIVERSAL WORLDVIEW OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Born in 1844 was one of the most influential philosophers
who ever lived; he was a source of great influence for most of the contemporary
philosophers of the 20th and twenty-first century. He possessed great literary skills and
wrote many books. He wrote about many categories in philosophy from ethics to esthetics4.
Nietzsche was a moralist, but a moralist who was poisoned with great metaphysical5
sharpness. His motto God is dead was his starting point, For Nietzsche these words got
their first real philosophical value and meaning in a remarkable book of Max Stirner6
(1806-1856) named: der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845) (The Ego and Its Own) it is
important to note that Stirner was a young follower of Hegels philosophy7 (Hegel also
being a huge influence on Nietzsche.) Stirner dismissed the idea that individuals create
their own freedom and self-overcoming, this can be achieved through institutional context.
Stirner was the most extreme of the many that followed Hegels idea of philosophy. He
dismissed every institute, every form of religion, and even all forms of relations; except
those which signify the individual, in contrast to a collective of some sort (individualism).
Nietzsche chose the individual as a starting point in philosophy just like Stirner, but he
remained very skeptical of the possibility that there is intrinsic8 value surrounding an
individual, after the veil of the outside image is pulled away. He regarded the way of
describing and classifying the individual as a mere individual as deleterious; because every
individual gets their character as a predetermined thing by nature. The job of the individual
is merely to overcome this claim. Nietzsche accepted the fact that every description of an
individual only is used as a concept, but added that it takes a detour from the individual
that she describes.

10
Nietzsche was a lifelong writer; his books were often very personal. This is because he had
real talent for writing. Therefore Nietzsche did not only write philosophy, but depictions of
Culture and Art as well. He began with a very original but controversial interpretation of
the antic world and the classic Greek culture; he came to a stop when he wrote a critique of
the morals of Christianity and the positivistic humanism9 of that time. Nietzsche was huge
admirer of Arthur Schopenhauer10; he borrowed Schopenhauers idea of the Cosmos.
According to Schopenhauer the cosmos had an irrational will to fight for its existence; this
will was characterized by a blind rage that would push over anything it its way. With this
Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that this only brings pain and misery. Nietzsche
supposed, in contrast to Schopenhauer that the cosmos is also a place of joy and emotion.

1.3.1

BETWEEN MORALS AND POWER

Nietzsche saw the cycle of evolution of the world in an order of great genealogical context;
He called for a revaluation of all values. This means that he wanted to see man give body to
his or her own sense of morals instead of living a life that is being dominated by grounded
values of society or especially the morals of Christianity. Nietzsche uses a Genealogical
method; this is a good example of a hermeneutic of suspicion, which would seek to
demonstrate that things like morality would be way too complex and uncertain to be seen
from the surface. In this method Nietzsche first locates a particular form of morality, very
unlike our own, among the Homeric11 Greeks he calls this moral ordaining a Master
morality, and this basically revolves around the virtue of excellence. For the Greek this
meant acquiring many capabilities, so that one could exercise the will to power freely
according to ones desires. But the deepest expression of a master morality lies not in the
activity of controlling others but in shaping personal values and new ways of life. In
contrast, the bad in the ancient world would mean having a blocked and limited possibility
to power. So that one could not exercise it freely according to ones desires, basically the
position of slaves in the antiquity. However, the slaves had their own moral ordering of the
world, organized mostly around the resentment of their masters uninhibited will to power.
Nietzsche calls this a slave morality. And it helped the slaves endure their oppression by
reversing the poles of their masters morality, so that their masters became a
personification of evil. And therefore the slaves could see themselves as good people,
because their reward would come in the future. Consequently, a slave morality sees virtue
in the revering of exercising ones powers, and sees evil in terms of doing so with no sense
of compunction. Nietzsche than became aware that the Christian morality, the dominant
morality of our own age, arose precisely in the kinds of enslavement under the Roman
Empire and is still fundamentally a slave morality.

11
This explains why the Christian world view revolves around the dynamics of subservience.
Or for example being obedient to the lord or being a member of a flock. Finally, Nietzsche
genealogical analysis leads the reader of his philosophy to suspect the anterior motives
behind our current dominant virtues.

1.3.2

GOD IS DEAD AND WE KILLED HIM

Many people have interpreted that Nietzsche believed in a literal death or end of God.
Instead, the line points to the western worlds reliance on religion as a moral compass and
source of meaning. As he explains in (Section 125, The Madman the gay science on p181):
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we
comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and
mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our
knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean
ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to
invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves
not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?12

Nietzsche infamously proclaimed the death of god as can be read in the gay science Some
people regard this proclamation as an expression of Nietzsches supposed atheistic beliefs.
However, saying that God is dead would hardly constitute to standard atheistic which
would hold that God never existed in the first place. Consequently, most people regard
Nietzsches idea of the death of God more as a historical or sociological observation rather
than a theological pronouncement. If you look back over the course of history, you cant
help but notice how central god was in every facet of life for many centuries. Especially for
the medieval period in our history, Today, however, God is but one of many facets of our
life and not the most important one. There are of course still churches and believers. But
God is no longer the singular defining presence in our world. This is a curious position for
our oldest, most loved, and most elusive entity of the history of humanity. We are nearly at
the starting point in history where postmodernism rules the landscape of values and
criticism, but before I begin with explaining and describing the theories and dogmas of the
postmodernists, we are going to look at the most glamorous philosophical movement that
kept the modern world in its grasp after the second world war and the first half of the 20th
century, Before postmodernism changed everything that the past centuries of thinkers
were led to belief.

12

1.3.3

CONDEMNED TO FREEDOM

Existentialist thinkers over the last few centuries have created some of the greatest works
of philosophy and literature that western civilization has ever seen. However, putting ones
finger on what Existentialists believe is very tricky and difficult, but I am convinced that I
will work around this problem.
To understand Existentialism it will be helpful to understand what it is not. Existentialism
is not a philosophical system, nor could you see it as a set of doctrines, it is properly best
characterized as a philosophical movement. As a movement Existentialism arose in the 19th
century in Europe. Sren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Friedrich Nietzsche are often
characterized as the founding fathers of the movement. The 19th Century Russian Author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) is also considered as one of its official giants. While the
modern roots of existentialism are found in the 19th century, it was not until the early to
mid-20th century and especially after World War Two, that existentialism really rose to
prominence. This was the time that saw such influential existentialists as Franz Kafka,
Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and probably most famous,
French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Now we have a brief history of the origin of
Existentialism, we can look at what it is that ties all those in the existentialist movement
together? One answer to this question is that those in the existentialist movement in the
past or present all share a deep concern with one another, with what they consider as a
fundamental problem, that being the problem of life as a human being. As Robert Solomon
expressed it in his book from Hegel to Existentialism (1990):
(Existentialism) is an attitude that recognizes the unresolvable confusion of
the human world, yet resists the all-too-human temptation to resolve the
confusion by grasping toward whatever appears or can be made to appear
firm or familiar The existential attitude begins with a disoriented
individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept.13

In other words, existentialists share a common concern at what some have called the
Human Condition they take seriously such questions as. Why am I here?, what does it
mean to be human? And how should I live my life? Existentialists have differed widely
on their evaluation of the human condition. This is one reason the movement is tough to
define. However, what is common among existentialists is that in addressing the human
condition they tend to reject all-encompassing systems be they philosophical or religious
or scientific. That tempts to answer questions regarding the meaning and purpose of
human life in an absolute manner.

13
In other words, systems which have to profess answers to such questions which are not
only seen as timeless or definitive, but also seen as applying to all human beings, If
someone was willing to accept those answers in any case. The most prominent system of
this type in the history of western civilization has been Christianity.
Religious and philosophical systems which offer such definitive answers to lifes questions
have been very attractive throughout history; these systems have been attractive because
they remove a massive burden one would have to face when trying to create meaning and
purpose for themselves in a unique and personal manner. While facing the human
condition and lifes inescapable problems as an individual without a premade religious or
philosophical system is undoubtedly extremely difficult. It is what most existentialists have
advocated. The reason why existentialists are largely in favor of individuals finding
answers to lifes problems on their own, is that they believe that adhering to systems which
expose absolute and all-embracing answers to the existential problems of life are
contributing to someones development as an authentic human being. Existentialists have
pointed out that these systems do not adequately take into account what it is like to be
human. This is because such systems lose sight of the human perspective on life for an
individual on this world and experiencing all the fear, anxieties, hopes and
disappointments that are a part of the human condition. For example, many of the mass
organized religions see the divined perspective as being communicated to us through the
words of prophets. They also give answers on these questions of life from the perspective
of an all knowing and all powerful god. However, existentialists stretch that what we need
most is not a divine perspective, but a human perspective on life. For as Nietzsche put it:
we are human, all too human.
A specific problem with the divine perspective is that it does not take the human condition
as a fundamental truth; the biggest part of our humanity is our mortality which merely a
forgotten shadow in the divine perspective; many religions both past and present have
denied the temporal nature of life and would rather subscribe to some form of immortality.
Some existentialists have suggested that it is essential to face up to our own morality. The
shock that this realization gives us might help us to get the strength to stop living in
conformity with the masses and instead taking control of our own lives. And live by
standards and values of our own choice, with the freedom to create meaning and purpose
in our own lives. This realization is closely related to another famous existentialist idea
which I will explain before I will conclude my first chapter.

14

1.3.4

EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE

Existence precedes essence was an idea that was put forth by Jean-Paul Sartre in a lecture

titled Is Existentialism a Humanism This idea was not shared with all Existentialists of
Sartres time; Martin Heidegger for example was not a fan of such an assertion. So, what
exactly does this statement mean? To understand what Sartre was getting at it would be
helpful to understand the term Essence. The concept of an essence is put forth most
famously by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (284-322BC). Aristotle believed that
every substance, or in other words every independent thing, being a person, a rock or a
tree for example, has an essence; the essence of a substance can better be characterized by
its nature. It can be seen as the necessary properties or characteristics are essential for the
thing to be what it is. Aristotle had a Teleological (I.e. goal-oriented) view of nature. He
believed that all substances tend towards the actualization of their essence. So, for
example, a caterpillar has the potential tendency to turn in to a butterfly. In terms of
humans, Aristotle saw the nature (essence) of humans was acting in full accordance with
reason. Aristotle believed that the human, unlike inanimate matter and other animals were
free to choose whether or not act in accordance with their nature (essence). With that
being said he did not believe that humans were free to create a unique essence for
themselves in the course of their lives.
Likewise those who believe in an omnipotent god, who designed and created the universe
the essence of humans is not something, determent in the course of ones live. But rather is
determined by god prior to the existence of the individual. Thus, for those who believe in
this kind of way, the essence of humans can be preceded by their existence. Sartre, on the
other hand, saw the situation of the humans in the opposite light, thus the statement that
Existence precedes our Essence; In Sartres mind humans are fundamentally different from
things like cars, watches or phones. For things of this type it is obviously appropriate that
their essence precedes their existence, because they are designed with a predetermined
function in mind. But for Sartre, who was an Atheist, humans are not designed with a
predetermined goal in mind. But we come into this world lacking a predetermined essence.
However, our ability to make free choices gives us the opportunity to sculpt a unique
essence for ourselves during the course of our lifetime.
With the theory of the Existentialists we are entering the era of Postmodernism; in the next
chapter we delve into the postmodern skeptics and their critique of social structure,
Language and as stated the end of all grand-narrative. On the next page there is a graph
illustrating the transition in multiple areas, from Pre-modernism to Modernism to
Postmodernism.

15

1.3.5

TRANSITION OF TIME PERIODS

Pre-modernism

Modernism

Postmodernism

Metaphysics

Realism: SuperNaturalism

Realism:
Naturalism

Anti-realism

Epistemology

Mysticism
and/or
Faith

Objectivism:
Social subjectivism
Experience(Empiricism)
and Reason
(Rationalism)

Human
Nature

Original Sin;
Subject to gods
will

Tabula Rasa and

Ethics

Collectivism:
altruism

Individualism

Collectivism:
egalitarianism

Politics &
Economics

Feudalism

Liberal
capitalism

Socialism

When and
Where

Medieval
(500-1500)

The Enlightenment; 20th Late twentieth century

century sciences,
humanities and related
business and technical
professions
fields

autonomy

Social construction and

conflict

16

CHAPTER TWO:
FROM SEMIOTICS TO POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Upon starting this second chapter, it is important to note that all of the past topics I
discussed in chapter one were an introduction to the upcoming topics. The 20th century
starts with influential thoughts in all aspects of the western world. With a new view that
the previous centuries gave humanity, most notable the Enlightenment, there comes a time
when the foundations of future developments are not only discovered but also questioned
and criticized. Of course, I am not able to explain every aspect of this process. Because this
is not only a very complicated process, it is also related to; science, critical theory and
different aspects of these practices.
The thinkers, who I will focus on, in some way or another, got influenced by philosophers
from the modern time period. Furthermore, I will explain what postmodernism is, and the
process of development it embodies in the course of the 1960-1990s. Almost every facet or
manifestation of postmodern philosophy has had great influence on a wide set of subjects,
including literature, politics, art, architecture, cultural criticism, history and sociology. For
this reason it can sometimes be incredibly difficult to draw a thick (or small) line between
certain areas, because most fields of thought continue the previous one but with a different
intension, or borrow small elements from each other. For this reason I will not be able to
convey or explain every facet that postmodernist philosophy consists of. I will focus on
how, at the beginning of the 20th century the Swiss linguist and semiotician14 Ferdinand the
Saussure founded the structuralist method of semiotics (also known as the Saussurean
tradition, which is called Semiology). Then I will focus on how this developed into
structuralism and later into Poststructuralism. After this, I will explain some key concepts
of poststructuralists, most notably: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard,
Jean-Francois Lyotard.

2.1 WHAT IS THE STRUCTURALIST METHOD?

Ferdinand the Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist who is believed to be the father
of Structural linguistics. Furthermore, he is often described as the Father of modern
linguistics. This honor is shared between the Saussure and Noam Chomsky (1928- ) but it
does depend who you ask. This was a radical new theory of language, thought of as a
structured system. His most influential work: course in general linguistics was published
posthumously in 1916. But what is structural linguistics? It is an idea that language is a
system of contrasts and equivalents. In structural linguistics, language consists of strings of
linguistic objects, be they words, signs or themes.

17
And these objects are defined only through the fact that they contrast with other objects
through the language system. This was a radical new idea of thinking about languages, and
presented a very big change from previous approaches. In order to understand structural
linguistics, I first have to explain the key ideas within structural linguistics. Firstly, there is
the Sign Saussure concept of the sign which consists of the signified and the signifier. The
signifier is the sound of the letter that we use to denote what we are talking about. Signified
is the actual concept of the thing. That is the idea of the thing when we hear or read the
signifier. The actual real thing is called the reverend. Not between the thought of a cat and
an actual real cat. The sign is a two sided psychological-entity. That cannot exist without
the other; it just could not be a sign if that was the case. Imagine a coin with just one side,
impossible, right? Secondly, Saussure highlights that there is an arbitrary and a
conventional relationship between the signifier and the signified. This is arbitrary because
there is no real explanation or reason why we call a cat a cat. And that is why different
languages have different words for the same thing.
The convention of language refers to the idea that the speech community needs to adhere
to the same connections as the signifier and the signified. For example, in the English
language, every speaker shares the concept they think of, when the word cat is used. You
could not know that if you said dog, when referring to a cat, people would know that I am
actually referring to a cat, instead of a dog. Thirdly, Saussure distinguishes between the use
of language, Parole (language that the individual speaks) and between langue (what is
shared by the community.) Langue, being the system of language such as: syntax,
phonology.15 Parole, on the other hand, is the use of that language. And this is an individual
matter; Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of individual language. Fourthly,
Saussure distinguishes between: Synchrony and Diachrony. Synchrony refers to the
complete language system at just one point in time. You could see it as a snapshot of
language in a particular time. Diachrony, on the other hand, is how that language develops
over time, this is also known as historical linguistics. Diachrony, at the same time refers to
pronunciation changes, or words that appear or disappear out of nowhere. Before Saussure
started to share his ideas of language, Language was aligned with belief. Saussure explained
that language is structural. Thereby freeing it from associations be they social, cultural,
political or historical.

18
Therefore it means that language only has structural relations. This means linguistic
objects are only understood together with other linguistic objects. When combining the
linguistic methodology of Saussure with different critical developments of modern thought,
such as Psychoanalysis, Marxism. Structuralists demonstrated what the study of signs in
the life within society could achieve. This was done in a wide variety of ways, showing how
cultural meaning relates to the hidden discourses of power and knowledge (Michel
Foucault), the psychic unconscious (Jacques Lacan) myth, kinship and symbol (Claude LeviStrauss), literature and mass culture (Roland Barthes). Saussure made the trail visible; it
was up to his disciples to stake out the wide, unexplored territories which Saussure opened
up.

2.2

BEYOND THE STRUCTURALIST METHOD

The method of the linguistic Structuralism that Saussure proposed were later used to
develop poststructuralism, this is a name for a movement in modern philosophy that began
in the 1960s. And is an evolution or extension of structuralism. Poststructuralism is best
characterized as a set of 20th century ideas about language and representation; these have
been very influential in humanities. The movement is best summed up by the thinkers that
are known poststructuralists. These thinkers being: Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, JeanFranois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and Roland Bathes (most of these thinkers deny being
poststructuralists themselves). At its core, poststructuralism is a search for the limits of
knowledge. This is a common thread running through poststructuralism. Furthermore, it
explains why structuralism needed to be added, since the structural project tries to secure
knowledge through the charting of differences, within structures. It is also important to
note that the philosophy of Nietzsche was a grand influence on poststructuralism. There
are three key areas that stand out in his philosophy: (1) his genealogical method (between
morals and power, Page ten), as a critique of all transcendence16; (2) his emphasis on the
importance of style (Prose, with at its core, a well thought out philosophy) for thought; (3)
his search for a new way of thinking about the metaphysical basis for philosophy.
Furthermore, as a means of disambiguation, I want to stretch that there are lot of
similarities and differences between poststructuralism and critical theory17. If not aware of
these things, it can cause for some unnecessary problems as well as for me. The thing is
that critical theory and poststructuralism are sharing a certain form of analysis. The idea
that reality is not what it seems, a certain naturalized version of a constellation of being
that came out of a certain historical context. So, the goal of both is, to some extent, to
denaturalize a social order that comes across to us as natural (the way things are). The
difference between them lies in their origin, and in their solution. Poststructuralism is less
optimistic towards finding solutions than Critical Theory is.

19
And poststructuralism has a different origin than critical theory; furthermore, because of
this different origin it makes poststructuralism way more compatible with the problems
they are investigating. Now we are setting a very interesting disambiguation;
Poststructuralism often gets confused with postmodernism or used interchangeably.
Opinions differ on why this is the case. Poststructuralism is a social theory (philosophy),
whereas Postmodernism is more a literary form of criticism, more for a general approach
towards the world. This distinction is rather arbitrary; they refer to largely overlapping
sets of practices. But the linguistic structuralism of Saussure is the grand architect of both
schools of thought.
Poststructuralism tries to break away from structuralism; this is because of the
determinism that is attached to structuralism. For structuralism it is very hard to
understand or accept change, because we are just stuck in the language that we use.
Structuralists like Lacan, Althusser and others are all sharing a common idea. Despite all
their differences, this idea is that language is not something that refers to something of an
object out in the world. But rather a system that refers to one another. So, we do not use
language for our own purposes, but rather that language shapes what we are. It is a
structure we live in, so that our social world is structured through our language. This can
even be the case if we have the idea that we use language in a different manner than others.
As has been mentioned before, poststructuralism trys to break away from structuralism,
this is why poststructuralism tries to bring in new types of change and dynamism, but still
retaining the importance of language. So, the central point of poststructuralism is that
language is the house that we live in (Heidegger). This means that we have no access to
the world outside of language; we cannot see, grasp or act, outside of language. So,
poststructuralists shape this idea that everything is textual in some way or another.
Therefore, reality consists out of multiple narratives and discourses that create a
meaningful world to us. So, they are basically saying that language shapes the texture that
is presented to us, as the world and to a larger extent the reality that is perceived or given
to us. But there is a problem that poststructuralists face; this problem is the fact that the
narratives and discourses always come with an element of power. But because we are so
accustomed to this power, we cannot experience this power. This is because the hidden
power inside language (narratives) has become absolutely normal to us, and to larger
extent, into our everyday usage of speaking the world into existence, that is.
Now, we will look at a big facet of poststructuralism and postmodernism. This is a term/
theory, known as a incredulity towards meta-narratives. It came out of a small work of the
French poststructuralist Jean-Franois Lyotard; this was named: La condition postmoderne:
rapport sur le savoir (the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge.) (1979). A simple
explanation for this claim is that it is a skeptical response to all absolute truths.

20
These meta-narratives are in fact big overarching stories. To give an example, human
beings are capable, with help of their rationality, to come up with a solution for every
problem there is. Another would be that with the access to modern medicines we are
capable of curing all ills. In this short but influential work Lyotard argued that the
epistemology from the postmodern culture, was leading to the end of big, dense narratives;
these being overarching philosophical theories of science and history. He was under the
impression that these theories were a part of the modern period in our history. But what
are Meta-narratives?
Meta-narratives are narratives that hold together narratives so to say. They are storylines
that give meaning to our collective being. And they can be seen as the cornerstones or
foundations for our culture. They are the oldest of our common shared story of culture that
gives meaning to our being. These can be traditional (religion) or modern (science) stories.
The stories that we hinge our everyday experiences upon.
So, these meta-narratives are not stories about things, but rather interpretive frameworks
that allow us to give meaning to our everyday experiences. So, these meta-narratives are
naturalized so that we do not perceive these narratives as narratives, but as real. And for
the poststructuralist there is a problem to be found here. We understand the reality of the
world, not through the stories that we tell them, but rather objectively (Real, so to say).
This creates a virtual reality of truths, which is otherwise just built from and in language.
So, poststructuralism is about fighting meta-narratives, but how is this done? Well, in
contrast to critical theorists who argue that the western values of the enlightenment has
gone wrong, and can be replaced. Poststructuralists are very skeptical of replacing one
meta-narrative with another. For them we will always be stuck, with this idea that we have
access to truths, through a narrative that we cannot see. So, this is a very clear explanation
how poststructuralists and critical theorists diverge from one another. Neither
poststructuralists nor critical theorists are under the impression that there is something
fundamentally wrong, with meta-narratives. It is not as if a poststructuralist is saying that
we can do without them somehow. Nevertheless, for them there still is a problem to be
found in meta-narratives, this problem is rather abstract; but they are basically saying that
we mistakenly see meta-narratives as a reality. And that we therefore lose sight for the
power relations that they produce, they create winners and losers.

21

2.3

THE CRITIQUE OF STRUCTURALISM AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF META-NARRATIVES

So, the solution for the poststructuralists is what they call; the deconstruction of metanarratives. This phrase is coined by Jacque Derrida, a French postmodern/poststructuralist
thinker. He sits at the forefront of the post structural movement. Deconstruction is a
method of inquiry that puts forth the assertion that all writings are full of contradictions
and confusions and even the writer is not able to overcome these contradictions, even if he
would deliberately try to dispose of them to convey meaning. So, deconstruction is saying
some things of the very property of language. It precludes the possibility of any meaning in
the most absolute form. It is important to note that Deconstruction is a critique of
structuralism; Derrida accepts the ground of Saussures linguistics only to dismantle it
completely. In 1968 Derrida gave a lecture, in the form of a seminal essay, (Structure, sign
and play in de discourse of human sciences). This essay took the whole western world by
storm, in the room that the lecture was given were some of the great thinkers of that time
present, including; Foucault, who I will discuss in the next subchapter and John Barth, who
later became a well-known postmodern author who was at this time, a professor at the
Johns Hopkins University.
This lecture criticizes the very idea of structure; in any assumed structure, Derrida
questions the finality or definitely of the signified, he believes that in language we keep
moving from one signifier to another, and the ultimate meaning, or the supposed signified
remains elusive, For example, we can take the word mean if someone would ask; what is
the meaning of this word, we say; mean, means, meaning. So, this is sort of the
wormhole that deconstruction lets us open up, because this way we keep moving from one
signifier to another without getting to any definite meaning. In this way language is
constantly in a state of dissemination. It is like language does not allow revealing itself
completely. Opposed to Derrida, Saussure maintained that by virtue of their differences
signs refer to meaning in the external world. But Derrida maintains that there is nothing
outside language, and that language is self-reverential. So, to quote him: There is nothing
outside the text, because language is self-reverential. Derrida attacks these big stories as
well, but he does it in very theoretical and text-driven manner. This phrase, simply put, or
in a larger framework means the denaturalizing of meta-narratives, that we have and that
we find. So we have to try and see as much as possible, behind or through the veil of
language which we use on a day-to-day basis. Of course, this is very difficult to put it mildly.
Because humans have almost no ability to look beyond the language, we are figuratively
speaking, the language, and looking beyond our ability of reason and logic, which is all
attached to language, is nearly impossible. And the fact that we have to explain at some
point the findings we come up with will have to be communicated through language.

22

2.4

DERRIDA ON FREE PLAY, THEOCENTRIC AND ANTHROPOCENTRISM SHIFTS.

In the essay Derrida presented at Johns Hopkins College in 1968, he talked about a shift in
the position of man. In this essay it is revered to as an event that changed the western
culture after the conclusion of the dark ages and to some extend the beginning of the
modern period in history. In this period of time we lived in a theocentric world. In this time
period, man sees himself as a product of divine creativity. As something that is derived
from god, who participate and benefit from the divine presence of god. But then the rise of
Enlightenment, (Chapter one) is also the rise of Anthropocentrism. And by the time
Anthropocentrism is in full cry, you get people like; Blake, Nietzsche & Marx. Who argued
that god did not invented man but that man invented god. Man has become the
transcendental signified. Everything is derived since this historical moment, from human
consciousness. And other forms of concepts from whatever kind, which can be understood
in that light. Derrida having said man is implying that there is something that will come
after man:
That all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center
have always designated the constant of a presenceeidos, arch, telos,
energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia,
transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth.
(Jacques Derrida, Structure, sign and play in de discourse of human sciences, 1968)

Derrida is implying with the use of and so forth that man is replaced by language.
Furthermore the argument that Derrida is making about the emergence of this event is
that a transcendental signified has actually substituted itself for man. In other words the
world is no longer anthropocentric, it became Linguistic. So this rupture of an event that
took hold of man is language. With the absence of man/god as a vital centralized position,
Derrida argues that there is nothing left than Free play.

23

2.5

FOUCAULTS AND BOUDRILLARDS POST-STRUCTURAL APPROACHES

Another key thinker in post-structural thought is the French historical philosopher Michel
Foucault. He had been doing a lot of interesting and fascinating work. Always historically
driven, and always in combination with the growth of Power. He had been investigating
how society has been dealing with people who fall out of the norms proposed by society.
Mentally ill, prisoners, homosexuals, etcetera. And he makes historical analyses of the
terms we see these people in. For example, in his Histoire de la folie l'ge classique - Folie et
draison (1961) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Those
mentally ill people in the dark ages were part of public life, they were part of the public
sphere. But around the 18th century they were considered to be so abnormal that they
would to be removed from society. And only in the 20th century did they become patients
instead of some sort of outcast. Foucault argues that in the course of history we have
started to put the mentality ill in different terms, and treating them accordingly.
Foucault does this for all kinds of categories of outsiders, and he shows that throughout the
development of western modern society as we know it now, we have been moving from a
certain starting point in dealing with the normal towards an increasing state of
surveillance, and disciplining of the subject (the abnormal).
So, all of his writing sort of concurs with the idea that modern institutions (prisons,
schools, supermarkets etc.) are all about measuring and judging on how you can relate to
the norm. And how can we make you relate better to the norm. For example let us look at
the way we get grades in school, because it is all about setting a norm on how you should
be. And then measuring you up to that norm, and then finding that you are not complying
with this norm. Saying that it is a bad thing, which needs to be evaluated and addressed and
then adjusted. And the point is that the education institution can let go of telling you that
you are not upholding the norm, because you have internalized that norm, you have
become that norm. And by yourself, you know, that the people who are telling you this, are
true, and that you have to do better. So, in this way, surveillance even moves to the
surveillance of yourself. And this is the characteristic of all modern institutions. If you look
to the military, law it is all about the measuring you up, to a norm that needs to apply to
everyone. And this happens on a massive scale.
And what Foucault is trying to explain here is what he calls; A Genealogy of subjectivity.
This means that we maybe think that we are free incontrollable agents of our own
subjectivity, but in fact we have been shaped by this constant surveillance, to the point that
we even began to surveil ourselves to uphold the norm of society. We have taken over the
positon of the state itself, and we just do not realize it.

24
The last important thinker to address in short is Jean Baudrillard, who argues that in our
postmodern times reality has ceased to exist, and I want to explain this by means of a quote
from him:
We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning
For Baudrillard, all information that we have accesses to is mediated, it comes to us
through television or books or the media, through stories etc. and therefore reality has
become a sort of text, that can be scripted, can be twisted, and framed. So, for Baudrillard,
media has come to define the reality. It defines what can be seen, and the terms that we see
it in. Baudrillard argues that wars do no longer take place; in fact they have been replaced
by media events; Pictures, opinions, experts on CNN and other news outlets. And we are
lately bombarded by messages, by hypes, by the news by instantaneous information, which
is completely torn away from the war altogether and the realness of it. It has become a
virtual warfare. And this is not just a representation of the war that is going on. No, it is not
possible anymore to separate; virtual warfare has come to define the actors, the processes,
and the ethics of the warfare. Making warfare technical and unhuman, for example, we do
not see blood any more. It makes warfare or at least our warfare always just, and
acceptable.
With this I will conclude my second chapter, which is at the same time the end of the
philosophical part of this project. My next chapter will focus on how these different forms
of postmodern thought have influenced the American literature. And in what way this
relates to the origin of the postmodern novel. Furthermore, I will discuss the different sets
of style, found in postmodern fictional texts.
But before I conclude my second chapter, I would like to make an attempt to define
postmodernism, according to my conducted research:
Postmodernism, is an overarching set of philosophical ideas and form of skepticism, that
attacks the modern values of established truths; furthermore, It is the conclusion that human
beings are not able to come to terms with the very core of language and reality, even if human
beings are not aware of this fact. This form of uncertainty has extreme impact on art,
literature, music, architecture, and, above all else, the way humans think.

25

CHAPTER THREE:
FROM MODERNIST TO POSTMODERNIST FICTION
I dont think the ideas were in the air Rather, all of us found ourselves at the same stoplights in
different cities at the same time. When the lights changed we all crossed the streets.

(Steve Katz, in LeClair and McCaffery [eds], Anything can Happen, 1983)
The uncertainty which I spoke about in the definition I gave of postmodernism, on the last
page of the previous chapter, is not only pertaining to the effects of structural and post
structural skepticism of languages inability, to express the link between language and
reality. Furthermore, after the Second World War the world was in a state of severe trauma
and paranoia. Trauma and paranoia were powerfully present in the generations that came
after the 1940s. The multiple changes after the 1940s i.e. the rebuilding of cities, the search
for a new start and sense of what could be trusted and what not, were undeniable to take
hold of the way we saw the reality for what it was and what it would become in the
development of the coming decades. The horrors of the 20th century play a vital role in the
transition from the modern to postmodern era. When I look back at all the forms of
postmodern thought that I laid out, in this project, it still intrigues me how much there has
been written, talked, discussed and argued about postmodernism, and the incredible
variety of opinions on the matter. For example: we saw that Jean-Franois Lyotards
postmodernism, the end of all meta-narratives, approaches postmodernism in a very
different way than Jean Baudrillards approach, which was more focused on the fictional
information that the media offers us in the postmodern era. An interesting observation that
I want to present is the discussions that arose when people began to pay attention to this
idea of transition a certain number of people are very skeptical about the idea that this
transition took place. Let us look at an example:
Postmodernism is the resentful projection of too many self-important smart people feeling
slighted by the Zeitgeist. (Robert C. Solomon Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and
Contra 1990)
This is just one of the many critiques of postmodernism. The philosopher Noam Chomsky
accuses postmodernism of an overall vagueness, this is because postmodernism is not even
a philosophy; moreover, it does not have any concrete theory. It is simply put like The
French said, an expression for this sort of prose18: la langue de bois, (the wooden tongue),
in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the
arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. (This book) is a pointer to the abysmal state of
mind that prevails in so many of our universities."19

26
It is quite interesting that a movement with the central theme of doubt and the idea that
originality has run its course got a response that is so skeptical, while the postmodernists
are already occupied with this skeptical approach.
Before I turn to the next and final chapter in this project, I need to make a couple of
statements. Firstly, the first chapter in this paper needs to be seen as an example of
modernist philosophy (rationalism and empiricism); the rest of the topics I discussed were
merely important to show how the modern foundation evolved. My intention was to show
the modern sets of thought (Chapter one) in opposition to the later conceived
Postmodernism (chapter two). The intention of using the fields of philosophy and
linguistics is because the foundation of postmodernism in literature is in fact philosophy,
linguistics and the evolution of literature. But, like I have stated multiple times,
postmodernism is no philosophy. It was born like a phoenix from the ashes of modernism,
but with a lot of shortcomings. Another way of thinking about the transition from
modernism to the postmodernist view is in terms of a shift from Art (with a capital A to
culture). Modernism was essentially an affair of the avant-garde who regarded their work
as a deliberate provocation to philistine20, bourgeois sensibilities. Modern art was
antagonistic, elitist, and scandalous, the creation of bohemian genii beyond ones mortal
kin. In the Postmodern Age, however, this elevated aura has dissipated; corporate offices
now buy contemporary art-works by the yard, reproductions of famous prints form part of
interior decorating, and serious novelists must fight for space on airport bookstands like
everybody else. And yet in the sense our entire environment has been aestheticized; what
once belonged to the elevated sphere of art (heightened reality, a rush of stimulation) has
in the age of mass information become the mediascape we all now occupy21.
Secondly, the development of structuralism to poststructuralism, with the structural
linguistics of the Saussure as its foundation, was at the same time the modern starting point
of literary theory22, with strong influences in the literary criticism of the English language.
Interestingly enough, postmodernism as well as structuralism (semiotics) and
poststructuralism are in fact schools pertaining to literary theory. Structuralism examines
the universal underlying structures in a text, the linguistic units in a text and how the
author conveys meaning through any structures, poststructuralism, a catch-all term for
various theoretical approaches (such as deconstruction) that criticize or go beyond
Structuralism's aspirations to create a rational science of culture by extrapolating the
model of linguistics to other discursive and aesthetic formations. And, finally, the biggest
wolf of them all - postmodernism - criticism of the conditions present in the twentieth
century, often with concern for those viewed as social deviants or the other23. Thirdly; The
dominant, which may be defined as the following.

27
the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the
remaining components. It is the dominant which guarantees the integrity of the
structure24.
I follow Brian McHales general thesis, from his book; Postmodernist fiction (1983).
The dominant of modernism is Epistemological. (Endnote 2) That
is, modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage, and
foreground questions such as () this: How can I interpret this
world of which I am a part? And what am I in it? (Dick Higgins)
Other questions can be added, such as: what is there to be known? ;
Who knows it? ; How do they know it, and with what degree of
certainty? ; How does the object of knowledge change as it passes
from knower to knower? What are the limits of knowledge?
The dominant of postmodernism is Ontological25, that is postmodernist fiction deploys
strategies which engage and foreground questions like; which world is this? What is to be
done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?
This third and last chapter will be divided into two different parts; the first one will focus
on our post-modern era and life style that started after the second world war, and came to
a drastically real presence in the 21st century. I will show how American Author Don
DeLillo captures this perfectly in one of most widely read postmodernist works of fiction
around (White noise, 1985). Furthermore, we will look at one or two bits from Paul
Austers The New York Trilogy (1987). And we will look at the difference between
modern and postmodernist poems. Further, we will look how one of the quintessential
American masters of postmodernist fiction (Thomas Pynchon) follows a much more
diverged path than DeLillo or Auster in his epic but dense novel named Gravitys
Rainbow (1973). To some degree, I will try to show how the skeptic poststructuralist
theories of language can be traced back in this (new) form of literature.

28

3.1

MODERN VS POSTMODERNIST POEMS

A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood
isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch'd
forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever
tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded,
detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing,
throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need
be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling
catch somewhere, O my soul26.

If you look at this small, and delicate poem by the father of American modernism you will
find out two things: firstly, it has a clear subject that it is conveying to the reader. secondly;
that subject is a spider, and the soul of someone who must not be named. The searching
aspect of a persons soul gets a beautiful little comparison to the spider slinging its webs to
travel from one place to the next. Next, let us look at a postmodernist poem:
In imagination a building, moving with the seasons, Moving on its axis, and
in the courtyard a tree, revolving with the motion of the planets and
answering each heartbeat in token of the time when time, with sun and
moon, stands still.
And by the courtyard crystal fountains, peonies and Mexicans and music
echoing the spheres of silence upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon
the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound.
Rain will fall and not fall: the dream Of Byzantium interpreted and reinterpreted:
Eternity will swallow time and art Become what is. Art is the building, moved
in, breathed in, All creatures move in this, and praise the motive, reinhabiting.27

The lines are pleasing, exact and meditative, but there is much to puzzle over.

29
Revolving with the motion of the planets, how do trees revolve with planets: a Ptolemaic
conceit? And answering... stands still? Whose heartbeat, and how does it sound if time
stands still? Crystal fountains, peonies and Mexicans. Where do Mexicans come into this
meditation on Byzantium? Eternity will swallow... what is. What's here, beyond that the
truism that the present contains the past? Art is the building . . . re-inhabiting. Interesting,
but left undeveloped.
The second stanza is no clearer, but seems also a dream sequence, with striking but
enigmatic lines:
Countryside almost as white as green: Real scene or tapestry/imagination? Spirit of river,
of tree, tell me, tell me: Tell me what? Immortal spirits of river and tree, Pantheism?,
in Greek orthodox religion perhaps? Hurt as we, can rise no higher. How do immortal
spirits hurt? Golden throne lowered through the ceiling. Where are we now? It was
written over nineteen hundred years ago...Gospels? (Clearly not in Byzantium). So, what is
this poem saying to us? I am not sure, but perhaps something like this: Art, religion and all
that we see around us are creations of our imagination, and are real to the extent we
interpret and inhabit those interpretations. Byzantium understood this better than we do,
and identified a spirit, which resided in things of the world, but came also from God. That is
how we must see their art and religious ceremonies, which seem ethereal but also timeless,
still relevant to us. Does the poem compel that reading?
Not entirely: the lines trail off into silence, into things that cannot be said without
misrepresentation. In token of the time/When time, with sun and moon, stands still.
Become what is and praise the motive, re-inhabiting. Since these would not be out of
place in a devotional piece, in what sense is the poem Postmodernist? Possibly in its
enigmatic nature, which continually exemplifies what Postmodernists believe that there
is no reality beyond words and no final meaning (post-structuralism?), for all that we settle
into comforting interpretations of existence.

3.2

THE POSTMODERN ZEITGEIST AND ITS FICTION

We were the children of the postmodern age, were? Well, it would be much more fitting
if we talked about postmodernism in the present tense. So for the sake of this fact, just keep
in mind that the most of the buzz revolving the postmodern Zeitgeist had a notable
presence in the middle to the end of the 20th century. Postmodernism in the 21st century
became more and more a natural phenomenon. But, I give you the possibility of deciding
for yourself

30

Modernism was the school of thought that permeated the Enlightenment (Chapter 1). As
can be read in this chapter, intellectuals were convinced that human progress came as a
result of using pure reason and scientific knowledge. But the early 20th century brought
things like gulags, and concentration camps that were built in the name of human progress.
Since World War Two people no longer thought that modernism held all the answers.
To make a small remark, this is more aptly formulated in the opening quote at the
beginning of the chapter by Steve Katz.
To explain the postmodern culture, I firstly have to give a counterexample. Which is the
feudal society, in the 12th century in Europe; the people who lived in this period of time had
a prevailing structure that formatted their lives. This was the manorial caste system which
placed them in categories and sub-categories of Lords, Clerks, Knights artisans and
Servants. The feudal society was homogenized, meaning that each person existed as the
subject part of a larger corporate body. There was a place for every man and every man
knew his place. You could imagine there culture as a chain; each link being welded to the
other as one beam holding them together as glue, and that glue was the biblical narrative.
The stories of the Bible provided a centralized constant by which every man could identify
himself as a bigger history. Big stories like these help people unify their knowledge and
consciousness. The myth legitimizes itself to the society to which it is told. These big
overarching stories are of course the Metanarratives that are found in the post-structural
philosophy of Jean-Franois Leotard. This is one of the main subjects explained in Chapter
2.
But if you take a look at our society nowadays, historical identity is fragmented; we cannot
unify past, present and future to recover from a normalized historical consciousness. The
glue of the metanarrative is no longer strong enough to hold the chain together, and all the
links break apart to form smaller stories;
these smaller stories are called micronarratives.
To a large extent we live in a world that is not given to us in a natural way, disasters like
9/11, can be perceived through media outlets like newspapers or TV, or in an individual
way, in the case that you were an unlucky bystander, a fireman who tried to save as many
victims as possible. This is simply the result of the relation we have with a world that forms
a hermetically sealed off landscape with car-parks, public amenities, advertising and gift
shops. For most of us our reality is wholly artificial. Most of our waking hours are spent
behind screens: be they Phone, computer or Television. Our senses are at all times
bombarded with constant flow of mediated information, messages and commercials. The
Postmodern culture represents a kind of merger between a hypermarket and the television
screen, think of Disney park, ordinary theme parks, or Las Vegas. Sightseeing modeled
upon camera-angles, images scored to ubiquitous soundtrack. This is in fact the aesthetics

31
that the postmodern populace cheers on, with big smiles and no regret. I guess it is not that
strange that people do not have any kind of problem with living in a realized recreation of
you biggest dreams. Who would not like it if their life was like their favorite movie? If you
could just connect your brain to an endless virtual reality, and leave the ordinary, mundane
and tedious existence behind and live an endless stimulating simulation: well, who could
resist28. Only the people who still have huge belief in the possibility of a (virtual) utopia,
which has a connection to the authentic, the natural or the real. Postmodernity, however, is
the hyper-real, computer-generated and strategically-doctored. Some sort of hippie-dream.
A character in DeLillos White Noise (1984) said the following about the possibility of
some sort of (virtual) utopia:
You have to open yourself up to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of
psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into
the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern.
There is light, there is sound. I ask my students, What more do you want?
Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the
jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness,
the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. Coke is
it, Coke is it, Coke is it. The medium practically overflows with sacred
formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently and get past our
irritations, weariness and disgust. 29

This in turn suggests one of central tenants of postmodernism, the Simulacrum. This is
defined by Fredric Jameson (by way of Plato) as the identical copy for which no original
has ever existed interestingly enough, it is not so much that the images presented to us by
the mass culture are false or misleading somehow rather they bear no relation or
resemblance to any kind of lived experience at all. Images just pop up in rapid fashion, a
copy of a copy of a copy, until the original source is gone for good. This is also where the
originality of the postmodern lies, in reproduction rather than production, dissemination
rather than creation. But is this true? And if it is, what should be the response of the
contemporary novelist? Does the novel stake its claim to relevance by competing with the
age, taking its place among the other products of the mediascape? But can fiction compete
with simulation? Or can its language capture the bewildering complexity of the flow of data.
At this point, however, it is important that we draw a distinction between the uses of the
word postmodern. In the context of the above, Postmodernism acts as a kind of shorthand
for approaching the general state of contemporary culture, dominated by consumerism, the

32
mass culture and the reduplication of images. In literary terms, however, postmodernist
fiction is frequently used to describe a specific set of practices which draw attention to the
novel as a work of fiction (metafiction30), thereby ultimately exploring language itself.
Hence, these two uses are by no means interchangeable. Postmodernist writing should not
be seen as a symptom of the dominant culture or necessarily sympathetic toward it31.
Back to Modernism; which was a search for the new which will never be so shocking
again, when fine art has removed every speck of paint from the canvas and drawn our
attention to the space where it no longer hangs, when Joyce has put every possible word in
a book and Beckett then erased them, where else is there to go? The reality not simulated
this time is that there is no territory left to discover, everything is already done, and that
gate is forever shut. In his famous Essay, The literature of Exhaustion; John Barth, who
was present when Derrida presented his Essay at Johns Hopkins {Chapter 2}, admits that
it may well be that the novels time as a major art form is up, as the times of the classical
tragedy, grand opera, or the sonnet sequence came to be.32 The Family saga, the historical
chronical, the coming-of-age tale, affairs of the heart, all told out now, worn out, irrelevant
to our accelerated culture. Why not wait for the movie instead? And even then, the trailer is
often enough. Furthermore, Modernist Literature could be seen as to have turned inward to
explore the nature of consciousness, the way they focused on ordering (or narrating) the
world, and ultimately the main feature of fiction, language itself. Robert Hughes writes
Modernism believed that it could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically
changing culture could explain itself33: by means of chaos, flux, disintegration, speed.
Modernism had the freedom to represent the real; this was one of the fundamental
demands modernists had.
But much postmodernist thinkers reject the commonsensical notion of truth or fidelity to
lived or real experience. Moreover, the demand that literature supports what could be,
rather than what really is, sounds to me as a strange kind of dogma; as Roland Hinojosa is
fond of quoting, facts are bothersome things in that they refuse to go away. Would any
realistic writer claim that truth is something that is straightforward or untroubled
anyway? Post-structuralism ties in perfectly at this point, because it provides a
philosophical position from which realism no longer appears realistic. As we saw in
Chapter two Post-structuralism, argues that language is constructed from the connections
between words rather than by the nave notion that words refer to anything outside of
themselves. Furthermore, Jerome Klinkowitz is under the well-spoken impression that
Deconstructive philosophy teaches us that we are never talking about things, only the
relationship between them specifically those relations that indicate what a thing is not.34
One ideal of Post-structuralism thus sounds like a hangover from high-modernism the
purely self-contained system, reliant upon nothing outside of itself; not a reflection or
second-hand copy of something else but self-constitutive, independent, wholly abstract.

33
The other approach of post-structuralism is to discredit those systems which claim access
to real, revealing their meaning to be wholly arbitrary; either way, all books are purely
about other books (intertextuality35 ), with no way out of this linguistic short-circuit. An
airless library, a labyrinth of mirrors, ones own reflection infinitely refracted; is this what
language is? Not a mirror upon the real, but an artificial attempt to impose order upon the
formless (and thereby disguise its own arbitrariness)?36
Our exile from the real, the creation of a wholly artificial world, the loss of the authentic,
the end of individuality, these motives occur again and again in both fiction and theory, and
lie at the heart of our understanding of the postmodern.

3.3

DON DELILLOS WHITE NOISE

Don DeLillo has been touted by some as the greatened living writer in America, but it took
him decades to what he could call literary success. White noise represents a major
turning point in DeLillos career, and although there is much to be said about his earlier
works, his apocalyptic and darkly comic vision of the United States, at least up to that point,
is not better defined than by White Noise (1984) Not only is it an examination of the late
20th century, but has recently become one of the most widely read, and known
postmodernist texts in American literature. White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney. A
Midwestern professor specialist in Hitler studies. Rather than being specialist in the history
of the Nazi-party of the holocaust, Gladney became an extreme expert on Hitler the person;
Hitler the personality. The Book begins with a satirical look at the academia and
consumerist. Culture, which includes sojourns to the mall and academic conferences. Here
we are introduced to Jack and Babette, his wife, both of whom are terribly afraid of death.
Considering the lives they enjoy at the moment, their worries seem completely absurd.
Until something called the airborne toxic event is causing them to flee. A noxious gas spill
similar to the 1984 gas leak incident in Bhopal, which caused the death of thousands
spreads over the town of Blacksmith. But luckily they manage to survive; this event though,
becomes a major turning point in Jacks story. As he feels he looked death right in the eye,
this is not the end of his worries though. Then Jack discovers pills that Babette has been
hiding from him. He later confronts her, resulting in Babette confessing that she uses the
pills to alleviate the fear of death. This leaves Jack, who is becoming increasingly paranoid,
to find out the source the pills are coming from. From there he finds out the drug-related
infidelities of his wife, but, at the same time confronting his personal mortality in more
destructive ways than before.
Irony is often seen as a factor pertaining to post-modernism; DeLillo deploys irony
humorously in this text. But behind the comedic portions there is a much more poignant

34
message being communicated to the reader. As the title of the novel suggests, DeLillo is
demanding answers of the effects on the media, through various electronic devices. DeLillo
stresses how Technology serves to manufacture a sense of unaccountability and
uncertainty, the citizens of the nostalgically titled Blacksmith are unable to name the
products that the factories which ring their Legoland enclave, or to identify the chemicals
in the pre-packaged food which they consume daily. Anxiously recording his sons receding
hairline, Gladney asks:
Did his mother consume some kind of gene-piercing substance when she was
pregnant? Am I somehow at fault? Have I raised him unwittingly, in the
vicinity of chemical dump-site, in the path of air-currents that carry
industrial wastes capable of scalp degeneration, glorious sunsets? (People
say the sunsets around here were not nearly so glorious thirty or forty years
ago).37

Technical processes seem immaterial and imperceptible, impossible to describe or define.

Before the air toxic event occurs, the town-folk are ignorant and illiterate, but after the
event, they realize that their day-to-day life was just as dangerous as the effects the toxic
event might lay down upon them. Suddenly, the picture jumps and the Gladneys are caught
up in a disaster movie, the script dictated by news broadcasts and official announcements;
later the picture is scrambled once more and Jack finds himself in the noirish black and
white German Town, gun in hand and murder in mind. It is as if the channel has been
changed to many, the remote-control only picking up static (or White noise).
Jean Baudrillard proposed that in our modern age we would be so alienated from what is
authentic, that even our reactions, the way we experience things would become a product
of pop culture. There are a few parts in White Noise that suggest this; at one point
Gladney takes refuge in what has been touted as, the most photographed barn in America
but it is inauthentic, because we can only experience, well, the experience. Similarly to
tourists who go to Paris because of the supposed experience it provides. Their experience
will become alienated, by how touristy acutely is. The imagined experience has overwritten
the actual purpose. There is another famous line in the novel that speaks to this alienating
condition: when Jack notices the pollution colored sunset. That is the sunset tainted by the
airborne toxic event he then calls it a postmodern sunset. On the surface he is refering to
the environmental catastrophe creating something beautiful, on the other hand though, he
is saying that the experience of watching the sunset is more important than the authentic
emotions derived from seeing the sun disappear from the horizon. This book is important
because it points out that the language of the 20th century, and perhaps a new millennium,
will exist in a vacuum. No longer is anything authentic, Jack is an expert in Hitler studies,
but he has no access to the authentic Hitler, Only the image he left behind and its symbolic

35
value. This does not mean that nothing is real and that quest for finding something real is
pointless, but rather that technology has driven us far, far away from the real experience.
There is another famous scene at the end of the novel where Gladneys daughter says the
phrase; Toyota Celica in her sleep and Jack, breathtaking, thinks it is one of the most
beautiful phrases he has ever heard. Yes, the postmodern condition has Alienated us from
what we might call the truth (Modernism!). But there is still hope for authentic moments
to exist. But to frame those moments, to expect them, is to erase their value completely.
Technology evolves, language changes, the voice breaks, fate overtakes us.
(Jean Baudrillard 38)

3.4

PAUL AUSTERS NEW YORK TRILOGY

Austers best-known work, The New York Trilogy (1987) opens with one of the most
disorienting scenes in contemporary American fiction. Quinn, a lonely and melancholic
detective writer, is woken by a phone call in the middle of the night. He answers and the
person on the other side of the line asks for Paul Auster, of the Auster detective Agency.
Quinn denies all knowledge, and ends the phone call. However, a couple nights later the
same person calls Quinn again, he acts very differently. He is fascinated by the idea of
becoming somebody else; from this point on there will be no going back, the novel argues,
the line between his true self and a second fictional self hopelessly erased for good.
But what is it that makes this scene (and the trilogy as a whole) so mysteriously disturbing?
The immediate response would be pointing to the fact that Austers own name is popping
up, and that this sets a tone for what kind of work Auster created. Moreover, it is a
fundamental disruption of the fictional apparatus of the work. What on earth is the author
involving himself into, the plot of his own novel? He just wanders onto the stage coffee in
hand, In the middle of all the action. If Auster is a character in the novel, then who is the
third-person narrator? What is the relation between Auster the author and Auster the
character? And, by extension of course, what is the relation (if any) between the work of
fiction and the real world. In an instance the illusion of a self-contained fictional world is
dispelled, and this in turn unsettles the readers own sense of security; after all, if the
boundary between fictional and the real is so unstable then the readers own safety is
compromised too. How solid is our sense of the real?
At this point a second source of existential uncertainty sets in. At the start of the trilogy,
Quinn decides, quite arbitrarily, to become someone else; what if we could walk out of our
own lives, and just shed our skin, assume a different, fictional identity? And what as it
might be easier than we thought it would be. What if we get up in the morning and instead
of going to our bigger-than-life jobs, we turn in our chips, and receive a wholly different life.
Instead of going left we turn right. The question then immerges; how much of our own

36
reality is simply a matter of routine, of going through the same mundane motions again
and again, day in and day out? What if we could change our reality just, by going hundred
degrees out of natural habitat? We would have to live with the fact that there might not be
any us left to go back to.
This part explores the existential anxieties which underpin Austers textual maneuvers. In
doing so, I hope to argue that his consideration of key theoretical concerns language,
authorship, signification has little to do with any kind of intellectual game-playing but
rather point towards the most fundamental of metaphysical doubts, obsessions and
anxieties; the question of who is who and whether or not we are who we think we are39 as
Auster puts it
It is easy to see why The New York Trilogy and in particular the opening section, City of
Glass has been seen as the quintessential of Postmodern introversion, a kind of poststructural game or textual booby-trap, a maze of mirrors reflecting only its own vanishing
point. Auster has artfully composed his text is such a manner that it refers only to itself, a
network of scenes which possess no content, only pattern, an elaborate glass-structure,
which proves utterly empty, a mirrored hall with no way out. What is the book about? Only
its own lack of meaning, less self-sufficient than self-devouring, a giant textual boa
constrictor that is devouring its own tail (or tale), needless to say, that the transparent
sense of how the world is in order. Or worlds where all things possess a vital and
assignable roll and purpose, is inimical to the profound sense of doubt and uncertainty that
underpins postmodern thought. The trick of the New York Trilogy is to introduce an
unreliable narrator into a genre which requires, as a fundamental first principle that we
trust the protagonist point of view. If the very act of looking for meaning is called into
doubt, configured to the fancy full projections of a madman (or woman), then the notion
that there is some stable truth out there, also begins to diminish. If things make sense, the
novel suggests, then that is the result of an artificial arrangement.
At the start of the story, Blue lives in a state of pre-structuralist ignorance, nave believing
that words fit snugly around the things they stand for (New York, 148); by its conclusion,
however, he comes to see words not as windows but as mirrors (the two meanings of city
of glass), signs reflecting other signs, an optical illusion of reality, which actually has
nothing in common with any such thing. As we have seen from structuralism (Chapter 2),
meaning resides in the relationship between signs rather than in turn of any actual
referent; which is to say meaning is all about structure how the signs fit together and
nothing about content. Meaning is language talking about language. The world itself does
not mean anything. Hence, a post-structural reading of city of Glass stresses its status as a
wholly textual artifact which only makes sense in a relation to other textual sources. At the
start of the novel, Quinn admits that what he liked about detective stories was not their
relation to the world but their relation to other stories (New York, 8); Auster has fashioned
a book which deconstructs its own generic conventions and thereby demonstrates their

37
(and its) essential, dizzying emptiness. It is about to achieve the impossible state of the red
note-book which concludes the last volume in the trilogy:
All the words were familiar to me, and yet they seemed to have been put
together strangely, as though their final purpose was to cancel each other
out. I can think of no other way to express it. Each sentence erased the
sentence before it, each paragraph made the next paragraph impossible.
(New York, 314)

As such, the reader may well concur with the narrator who states, and yet, underneath this
confusion, I felt there was something too willed, something too perfect, as though in the
end the only thing he really would have wanted was to fail even to the point of failing
himself (New York, 314). This is a structure which is all scaffolding and no floors: in short a
city of glass.

3.5

THOMAS PYNCHONS GRAVITYS RAINBOW

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchons Gravitys Rainbow (1973), is an 800-pound gorilla that at the time of
its publication had scarcely entered into the literary scene. Published in 1973 it would
become one of the novels ever that would be labeled a postmodern work of fiction. And
also a pioneer of another subgenre, coined by literary critic Linda Hutcheon, known as
historiographic metafiction. Gravitys Rainbow tells the story of Tyrone Slothrop, an
American soldier originally stationed in London, who is apparently attracting guided
missiles, with his erections. Yes, I am not joking, that is the proverbial overarching plot of
one of the most famous novels of the 20th century. But it is only one of many stories,
centered on the maniacal paranoia and chaos of World War Two. There are dozens of
conspiracies, rumors and lies perused ad nauseam, by hundreds of characters, over
hundreds of pages. Pynchon never makes it clear if they are true or not. But it is that
uncertainty that is probably the most important aspect of the book. It is important to note
that none of these plots, however rigorous your method of reading is, ever get fulfilled. But,
that is the fun in it; this uncertainty invites a readily longing that has made Gravitys
Rainbow akin to that of impossible equations professors draw on chalkboards. There are
prominent characters that disappear in the void of the prose, characters that may or may
not exist, and a rocket, not a person, seems to be the character that outlasts all the others.
There are deep investigations into the thoughts of Jung and Pavlov40, interspersed with
lude descriptions of defecation and sex. It sounds like an absolute mess, and it is in a sense,
but beneath this chaos there is a looming presence of an author, who as readers may fear,
has complete awareness and control over what is going on. This Novel is pretty unique in

38
well, pretty everything it does. But, you must understand what I mean when I say it is a
postmodernist novel, when referring to Gravitys Rainbow. During and after World War
One, literature was going through the progress of various changes. You had stream of
consciousness41 Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams experimenting with imagism42,
Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf challenging the readers idea of perspective.
Modernism, itself was not a fixed institution, there was a seemingly collective will to bring
literature to a higher plane of prominence, to see some literature as higher and more
complex than others. T.S. Eliots The Wasteland (1922) for example, made reference to
dozens of obscure and complicated texts before it; Literature became, well, difficult and
complex.
Pynchon, on the other hand, is challenging that Modernism was to establish a metanarrative, this ideal body of truth that literature stows to attain. Postmodernism breaks
this down, by being completely inclusive. Fiction is not about selectively plucking colonels
of higher thought, as much as it is about including anything. Gravitys Rainbow contains
references to academia and memorabilia to science and sex, to astrology and rocket science
and even songs about phalluses. We have to remember that Pynchon is not necessarily
trying to recount air as we capture it. World War Two left Europe and the rest of the world
in absolute terror. And his prose captures the confusion and paranoia nearly everybody
felt. This is a time people disappeared without notice, when anybody could have been a spy,
this is technically speaking a piece of historical fiction, but is does not seek a fixed truth
about what happened.
I previously mentioned the term historiographical metafiction, this is a fairly new subgenre that challenges the way we perceive history, and how written historical record is
only skimming the surface in its treatment of the past. This novel looks everywhere to
define the past, which it does do perfectly, except it is irresolute and confusing. In the Late
20th century, many authors wrote about local histories, but quite differently, fiction has a
new purpose; it is not about what happened, but rather about how people thought and felt.

All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being
broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the
loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow43

39

CONCLUSION
A conclusion; the question I used to ask myself, revolving postmodernism, has been
answered in a bigger way then I thought. This question was; what is the influence of
postmodernism on the American literature? Well, that is an incredible difficult question to
answer correctly. In Chapter one, we watched how the epistemological modern movement
in philosophy started, and later turned in different directions. The foundation of what
postmodern philosophy would become, was a matter of time and historical progress. We
saw that rationalism was considered a major turning point, in the history of humanities.
People started to utilize rationality to overcome the problems and questions(like I am
doing right now..), they faced in everyday life, after this we saw the rise of empiricism, the
empiricists were under the impression that they could find any form of answer or
overcome a problem by means of using their senses. Philosophy, as well as history, works
linearly, so thinkers who came after the major thinkers of these times would, eventually
make up personal or different assumptions, about the acquiring of knowledge, and the
means of obtaining knowledge. In chapter two we looked at a wholly different kind of
philosophical inquiry, this time around it was based on the text or the written word, and in
what way we would get any meaning out of this, and if the words we use in day to day
language can be trusted of conveying the message that we have in our mind. We found out
that this can be a very tricking and often dense practice that does not give its answers away
easily. We than looked at how these structuralist and post-structural practices and to some
degree approaches, were being utilized in American fiction, while being a part of the
postmodern picture as a whole, to get back at the question at hand. My contentions
pertaining the influence of postmodernism in American fiction is that, firstly the
modernists part of approaching fiction was over, there cards were played, and their
magnum opus written, but fiction still needed to be written it could not be, that one of the
oldest of esthetic art forms would seize to exist. With the giant change in the world
preceding the First World War, and the change more imminent than would ever be thought
possible after enduring two of them. Fiction writers turned to different territory. Secondly,
I will formulate it as a general synthesis; the method of deconstruction that was thought
out, by Jacques Derrida, in the field of literary theory/criticism, with the notable influence
of critical theory and the works of Nietzsche, Hegel and Heidegger in their fields of
metaphysics and phenomenology, slowly but surely entered the literary world, were it
caused a blizzard as result of the idea that words, might they written or spoken bear no
resemblance to the outside world. Thirdly, this opened up the possibility of using language
to an extent that modernist fiction authors would have never have. This led to the fact that
authors no longer are attracted to rules of modernist believes and that they can use every
literary technique to an infinite extent. They have reached an era of Free play to quote
Derrida for a change.

40

AFTERWORD
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Language is a system of signs that is used to convey meaning. But, at the same time can be
used to convey, a feeling or a reference to a particular time in your life, It can be used to say
horrible things, or is the tool that is applied when wanting to remedy inflicted damage.
Even if the damage is inflicted upon the body, Language will be the tool for every man,
woman or child and is even used by lions, wasps and caterpillars. Even if we do not speak a
particular language, language helps us to cross a bridge and forces us to cross it.
I approached this project with much enthusiasm and I was very focused on what I wanted
to deliver, I had an idea in my head and for the first couple of months I tried to realize this
perfect image in my writing. But, the more I wrote, the more a nagging idea slithered into
my mind. Would I be able to deliver this beautiful idea just how I imagined it? No, I will not,
because the perfect result is often not a realistic one. It is a common phenomenon that the
perfection you want to achieve is nowhere near the actual result.
The fidelity you have towards something is often not realistic, and it ends up being a tragic
realization, that your perfectness will never be born into our world, these are the limits you
see. Once, you realize this there are two options. The first one is to not give in to the
clouding feeling of doubts, and still believe that your perfect work will be born if you just
keep writing. The second one is of course the hard one, are you brave enough to stop caring
about a result? Or is this no solution at all? When you decide that the writing itself should
be priority number one, and agree that the results in this matter are not important, than
you know that you hit a certain point. For me this was the case, after letting go of overly
shallow and non-existing images of the sublime, you are maybe able to write that
perfection that is clouding your thoughts.
The experience of writing after this point was more than the word satisfaction can clarify,
the meaning of such a feeling. There were, of course, many obstructions that slowed me
down quite a bit, but, when I look back at the past five months I am quite pleased with what
I managed to produce in a time-span of five months, and it will never be the exact
perfection that was my goal at the start. It still will be perfect but in different way than my
intentions where.
Lars Moreira Leonardo
Amsterdam, February 22, 2016

41

NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: HOW DID POSTMODERNISM COME TO BE?
Modern Philosophy is a time period of Philosophy that has his origin in the Western Europe around the 17 th
century. In this century modern philosophy is common worldwide. (There are numerous specific forms of
modern art, music and literature.) Modernism refers to a movement in the arts in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, or more generally to modern thought, character, practice and/or the philosophy/ideology.
1

Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life (1752) by William Stukeley

Epistemology is the Branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, but
more precisely it is the study of knowledge and justified belief. It questions what knowledge is and how it can
be acquired.
3

Esthetics is the dogma of physical observation, more precisely, it is the branch of philosophy that
investigates beauty and art, (Fun fact: after Emanuel Kant released his book critique of judgment(power),
esthetics specialized its self, more to art, it then became a synonym for the philosophy of arts. Before Kants
book, Esthetics was narrowed down to the study of divine beauty.
4

Metaphysics is the philosophical study of everything that cannot be tested on being true with only our sense
organs; instead it tends to investigate everything outside of our senses perception and comprehension. It is
trying to find genuine truths, and how these truths get established. To say it more simplistic it investigates
and trys to find answers on questions outside the physical realm. (What does being actually mean?)
5

The Pseudonym of Johann Caspar Schmidt (1806-1856), a German philosopher and author.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was the biggest thinker in the German Form of Idealism. He
was one of the most influential philosophers of the Modern era.
7

8Intrinsic

value is something that has value attached to the object itself, it is pursuable because the value is
inherent to the object. An example could be Happiness.
Positivistic humanism is a system of thought which values human dignity and achievements: study of the
humanities. (Positivistic is merely a positive form of this system of thought)
9

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher who founded the notion of philosophical
pessimism, among other branches of philosophy, His work on aesthetics, morality, and psychology would
exert important influence on thinkers and artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
10

Homer (Hmros) is best known as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. He was believed by the ancient
Greeks to have been the first and greatest of poets. Homer was the Author of the first known literature in
Europe.
11

12

Section 125, The Madman the gay science on p181

13from

Hegel to Existentialism (1990) Robert Solomon

42

CHAPTER TWO: FROM SEMIOTICS TO POSTSTRUCTURALISM.

Semiotics: The Study of meaning-making (not to be confused with semiology, which is the tradition of
Ferdinand the Saussure.) Semiotics is divided in Three Sections/Branches:
1: Semantics: The study of how signs relate to the things they refer to, their meaning: (linguistics) the key
distinction between models of the sign. This is a reverence beyond the sign-system (e.g. extra linguistic)
simply put thing.
2: Syntactics: relations, among or between signs in formal structures.
3: pragmatics: relation between signs and sign using agents or interpreters.
14

15

Phonology: Study of speech sounds and rules of pronunciation.

Transcendence: (1) For Nietzsche, everything has a historical value/genealogy, everything evolved through
historical struggles; nothing is independent, for its historical value and every value intertwine with one
another. Therefore, all things are part of the same realm, that is, they are all immanent rather than some
being transcendent. This is one of his strongest legacies to poststructuralist thinkers. For poststructuralists,
values are necessarily immanent and abstract external truths are illusions. (2) Derived from the Latin verb;
Transcendere: to rise above within philosophy this term can mean allot of things. Usually it means what rises
above the actuality, supernatural, like God for instance. Within existentialism the use is coined to convey the
idea of the transcendence of human existence. Within postmodern thought, it would be folly to think that
postmodernism rejects or is skeptical of the term transcendence. But interestingly enough, there is an
important mystical element within postmodern thought. That certainly points to something unperceivable,
something which escapes language and thinking as a whole.
16

Critical theory: Critical theory is a type of social theory (sociology) oriented toward critiquing and changing
society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Critical
theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that keep us from a full and
true understanding of how the world works.
17

CHAPTER THREE: FROM MODERNIST TO POSTMODERNIST FICTION.

18

Prose in this context, is directed to the prose of philosophy.

(Quote originally appeared in Christopher Hitchens his article, Transgressing the Boundaries NY Times,
May 22, 2005).
19

In English, as a descriptor of anti-intellectualism, the term philistine a person deficient in the culture of
the Liberal Arts was common British usage by the decade of 1820, which described the bourgeois,
merchant middle class of the Victorian Era (18371901), whose wealth rendered them indifferent to culture.
20

21

Alan Bilton, An introduction to contemporary American fiction (New York University press 2003), P. 2.

Literary theory: in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for
analyzing literature. It can be seen as an outgrowth of critical theory and is often called simply "theory." As a
consequence, the word "theory" has become an umbrella term for a variety of scholarly approaches to
reading texts. Many of these approaches are informed by various strands of Continental philosophy and
sociology.
22

Others; in phenomenology (from Greek phainmenon "that which appears" and lgos "study", is the
philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. Most notable contributors; Edmund
Husserl established phenomenology from some kind of descriptive psychology, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F.
Hegel, Martin Heidegger). Others: In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other each
23

43

identify a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person - the acknowledgement of being real. As
such, the other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of us, and of the same.
Roman Jakobson, the dominant, in Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (eds), readings in Russian
poetics: Formalist and structuralist views (Cambridge, Mass. and London MIT press, 1971), 107-10.
24

Ontological, ontology; Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or
reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major
branch of philosophy known as metaphysics(endnote two), ontology often deals with questions concerning
what entities exist or may be said to exist, and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy,
and subdivided according to similarities and differences. Questions like: What can be said to exist, what
constitutes the identity of an object, are labeled ontological.
25

26

Walt Whitman, A noiseless patient spider, From Leaves of Grass (1900)

(From The Poem As Light by John Riley: Collected Poems 1995, John Riley belongs to the Cambridge
school of Postmodernist poets, but is also deeply involved in the Greek Orthodox faith. )
27

28

Is that not an awful lot like the movie The Matrix? (1999).

29

Don DeLillo, White Noise (1984), London: Picador, P.51.

Metafiction: Fiction that draws attention to its own fictional state. A punctuation of the mimetic derived
from Mimesis which is Greek for simulation, a mimetic piece of writing is founded upon a belief in a genuine
reproduction of external reality Illusion.
30

31

Alan Bilton, An introduction to contemporary American fiction (New York University press 2003), P.4

32

John Barth The Literature of exhaustion (1967), Atlantic Monthly, 220, 2 Aug, pp. 29-34.

33

Robert Hughes the shock of the new (1991), (2 nd edition), London, Thames & Hudson, p.9.

34

Jerome Klinkowitz, structuring the void, Durham: Duke University press, p.1.

35

Intertextuality: texts which refers to other texts in an explicit manner; the relationship between books

36Alan

bilton, An introduction to contemporary American fiction (New York University press 2003), P.11.

37

Don DeLillo, White Noise, P.23.

38

Jean Baudrillard (1990), Cool Memories, London: Verso, p.36.

Paul Auster Red Notebook 1995, p. 109

39
40

Carl Gustav Jung & Ivan Petrovitsj Pavlov, respectively

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness, also known as interior monologue, is a narrative mode or
device that depicts the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. Ulysses (1922) is
considered a prime example of this technical survey, into the flow of human thoughts.
41

42Poetry

movement of the early 20th century, which advocated clarity of expression and the use of everyday

speech
43

Thomas Pynchon, Gravitys Rainbow (Viking Press, 1973), P.233.