Coping with Postmodernity

Coping with Postmodernity
Author: Martin Villwock
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2011-06
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3640933583

Examination Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), language: English, abstract: In the following chapter of this paper, an outline of the present ontological crisis in terms of Lyotard's 'postmodern condition' will be given. Throughout the discussion of Coupland's fiction, this concept will be relevant for its influence on the characters' thoughts and emotions. Furthermore, the chapter will analyze the importance and self-referentiality of narrative structures in Coupland's work. The characters in Coupland's novels often come up with a plentitude of more or less successful strategies in order to deal with the semantic void they experience. For this chapter, material will be presented predominantly from the novels All Families are Psychotic, Generation X and Microserfs. The third chapter will focus on the presentation of working life in Coupland's prose. His novels reveal that work today has lost its former function as a source of orientation. In this analysis, the concept of alienation as introduced by Karl Marx will be used in order to grasp the nature of the conflict that the characters experience in their working lives in Coupland's novels. The chapter will focus on the presentation of working life in Generation X, Microserfs and Shampoo Planet. A fourth chapter will introduce yet a further source of disorientation - the hyperreality constituted by the media. Here, Baudrillard's observations (1983 and 1994) will serve as a starting point in a discussion of the experience of the 'hyperreal' and the possibility of contact with the 'real' in Coupland's work. Again, material will be presented from the novels Generation X, Microserfs and Shampoo Planet. The subsequent chapter will consider the important role that irony plays in several of the analyzed novels. Douglas Coupland, particularly in his first novels, impresses his readers with a smart and thoroughly i

Jung and the Postmodern

Jung and the Postmodern
Author: Christopher Hauke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317798503

What has Jung to do with the Postmodern? Chris Hauke's lively and provocative book, puts the case that Jung's psychology constitutes a critique of modernity that brings it in line with many aspects of the postmodern critique of contemporary culture. The metaphor he uses is one in which 'we are gazing through a Jungian transparency or filter being held up against the postmodern while, from the other side, we are also able to look through a transparency or filter of the postmodern to gaze at Jung. From either direction there will be a new and surprising vision.' Setting Jung against a range of postmodern thinkers, Hauke recontextualizes Jung' s thought as a reponse to modernity, placing it - sometimes in parallel and sometimes in contrast to - various postmodern discourses. Including chapters on themes such as meaning, knowledge and power, the contribution of architectural criticism to the postmodern debate, Nietzsche's perspective theory of affect and Jung's complex theory, representation and symbolization, constructivism and pluralism, this is a book which will find a ready audience in academy and profession alike.

Postmodernity

Postmodernity
Author: Barry Smart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136766642

At last, a short and authoritative critical introduction to one of the most talked about and most misunderstood concepts of current times. Barry Smart provides a clear and readable discussion for students which also manages to be a shrewd and stimulating contribution to the debate about modernity and postmodernity. Brightly observed and totally tru

Coping with Difference

Coping with Difference
Author: Sabine Nunius
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009
Genre: Cultural pluralism in literature
ISBN: 3643101597

Has British literature finally surpassed Postmodernism and are we thus currently witnessing the emergence of a new era? Choosing specific forms of engagement with difference as a starting point, the present study traces recent developments in the field of the novel and illustrates in how far these new ways of dealing with difference may be characterised as "non-postmodern". Moreover, the analysis aims to demonstrate the renewed importance of modern(ist) strategies and their employment in contemporary British fiction. Case studies of six novels complement and illuminate these findings.

The Politics of Postmodernity

The Politics of Postmodernity
Author: Gary Brent Madison
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401007500

The Politics of Postmodernity outlines in a clear and coherent manner the implications for political theory that are inherent in philosophical hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is not only a general theory of human understanding, it is also, in terms of its practical consequences, a general Theory of Democracy. This book demonstrates, with reference to current debates, how hermeneutical theory provides the ultimate philosophical justification for democratic practice and universal human rights. One of the book's most significant features is the way in which it attempts to work through postmodernism and the way in which throughout it shows how hermeneutics, while fully a form of `postmodern' thought, is nevertheless distinctive in this regard in eschewing all forms of relativism and in resolutely defending a nonessentialist universalism. This book will be of interest to all those concerned with the fate of the core values traditionally defended by philosophy and, indeed, with the future of philosophy itself after postmodernity.

Do You Feel it Too?

Do You Feel it Too?
Author: Nicoline Timmer
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2010-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9042029307

Do You Feel It Too? explores a new sense of self that is becoming manifest in experimental fiction written by a generation of authors who can be considered the 'heirs' of the postmodern tradition. It offers a precise, in-depth analysis of a new, post-postmodern direction in fiction writing, and highlights which aspects are most acute in the post-postmodern novel. Most notable is the emphatic expression of feelings and sentiments and a drive toward inter-subjective connection and communication. The self that is presented in these post-postmodern works of fiction can best be characterized asrelational. To analyze this new sense of self, a new interpretational method is introduced that offers a sophisticated approach to fictional selves combining the insights of post-classical narratology and what is called 'narrative psychology'.Close analyses of three contemporary experimental texts – Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace,A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers, and House of Leaves(2000) by Mark Danielewski – provide insight into the typical problems that the self experiences in postmodern cultural contexts. Three such problems or 'symptoms' are singled out and analyzed in depth: an inability to choose because of a lack of decision-making tools; a difficulty to situate or appropriate feelings; and a structural need for a 'we' (a desire for connectivity and sociality).The critique that can be distilled from these texts, especially on the perceivedsolipsistic quality of postmodern experience worlds, runs parallel to developments in recent critical theory. These developments, in fiction and theory both, signal, in the wake of poststructural conceptions of subjectivity, a perhaps much awaited 'turn to the human' in our culture at large today.

The Postmodern Chronotope

The Postmodern Chronotope
Author: Paul Smethurst
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2021-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004483241

The Postmodern Chronotope is an innovative interdisciplinary study of the contemporary. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in relations between postmodernism, geography and contemporary fiction. Some claim that postmodernism questions history and historical bases to culture; some say it is about loss of affect, loss of depth models, and superficiality; others claim it follows from the conditions of post-industrial society; and others cite commodification of place, Disneyfication, simulation and post-tourist spectacle as evidence that postmodernism is wedded to late capitalism. Whatever postmodernism is, or turns out to have been, it is bound up in rethinking and reworking space and time, and Paul Smethurst’s intervention here is to introduce the postmodern chronotope as a term through which these spatial and temporal shifts might be apprehended. The postmodern chronotope constitutes a postmodern world-view and postmodern way of seeing. In a sense it is the natural successor to a modernist way of seeing defined through cubism, montage and relativity. The book is arranged as follows: • Part 1 is an interdisciplinary study casting a wide net across a range of cultural, social and scientific activity, from chaos theory to cinema, from architecture to performance art, from IT to tourism. • Part 2 offers original readings of a selection of postmodern novels, including Graham Swift’s Waterland and Out of this World, Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor and First Light, Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, Marina Warner’s Indigo, Caryl Phillips’ Cambridge, and Don DeLillo’s The Names and Ratner’s Star.

Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance

Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance
Author: Yael Seliger
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2024-01-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1527563146

This book highlights the need for a shift from thinking in terms of memories of traumatic events, to changeable modes of remembrance. The call for a fundamental change in approaches to commemorative remembrance is exemplified in literature written by the internationally acclaimed writer, Etgar Keret. Considered the most influential Israeli voice of his generation, Keret’s storytelling is in congruence with postmodern thinking. Through transferring remembrance of the Holocaust from stagnant Holocaust commemoration—museums and commemorative ceremonies—to unconventional settings, such as youngsters playing soccer or being forced to venture outdoors in a COVID-19 pandemic environment, Keret’s storytelling ushers in a unique approach to coping with remembrance of historical catastrophes. The book is a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in pursuing the subjects of Etgar Keret’s artistry, and literature written in a post modern, post Holocaust milieu about personal and collective traumatic remembrance.

Intimations of Postmodernity

Intimations of Postmodernity
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2003-04-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134917597

This thoughtful and illuminating book provides a major statement on the meaning and importance of postmodernity.

Complexity and Postmodernism

Complexity and Postmodernism
Author: Paul Cilliers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134743297

In Complexity and Postmodernism, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory (like that of Derrida and Lyotard) into his discussion. Complexity and Postmodernism is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.