Abstract
With the postmodern incredulity to the legitimacy of metanarrative, how should we construct a totalizing, “better” theory about postmodernism? Focusing on this paradoxical concern, this article scrutinizes Brian McHale’s and Linda Hutcheon’s different constructions of postmodern poetics with a comparative perspective to expose their respective strong points and drawbacks. The criteria of self-consistency, inner coherence, scope, productiveness and interest, proposed by McHale, are carefully examined to prove their effectiveness as good, but not the absolute, standards of judgment for preferring one construction over the other. Since postmodernism is but a discursive artifact, rather than a real-world object with a clear boundary, literary constructions about postmodernism can only be pluralist, little narratives; there is no true/wrong distinction between them, and each will justify its values, usefulness and interest in its own ways. Comparatively, McHale’s postmodern poetics is more formalist, while Hutcheon’s more cultural and political, but their approaches, viewpoints and interests can be well complementary.
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Notes
In October 2013, another American literary journal Narrative also published a special issue on “Postmodernist Fiction: East and West” with Wang Ning and Brian McHale, two postmodernist scholars with international fame, as its guest editors. The latest boom of publications of postmodernist scholarship containing eight articles by specialists in the study of postmodernist fictions, this special issue focuses on the narrative techniques of postmodern narrative in contemporary fiction “in an attempt to place postmodernist fiction in a historical and global context” (Wang 2013, p. 266). Although Wang Ning observes that “postmodern ideas and ways of thinking have permeated almost all the aspects of contemporary culture and are still influential in many humanities fields” (Wang 2013, p. 265), he admits, not unhesitatingly, that “it has receded into the historical past, albeit a past which is nevertheless still influential and significant to our literary and cultural studies” (Wang 2013, p. 265).
Recently, people began to debate over the end of postmodernism. Just to name a few, Harpham (1995, 389) argues that it died in 1987 designated by de Man’s political scandal, Kirby (2009, 1–15) thinks it was killed by digital technology in the 1990s, while Gregory (2010, 276) highlights the significance of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I think this debate also proves that postmodernism is boundless.
Actually this review essay also involves a comparative study between Hutcheon’s books and Jameson’s postmodern masterpiece Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Considering the concentration of my work, I will not mention the part related to Jameson.
Regarding catharsis as the defining function of tragedy (1449b 28), Aristotle expects highly of the educative function of poetic literature and claims the response of one who is drawn into the experience of a tragedy is first of all to feel fear and pity (1452a 2; 1452b 1; 1452b 34). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle holds moral virtue as the result of habit (1103a 15), and moderate sensibility (including pity and fear), as important moral virtues, can reasonably be cultivated, refined and elevated by habitual exposure to tragedy. According to Aristotle, the imitation of an action in a tragedy, by producing the fear and pity we feel, ends in a ritual purification of our feelings from some polluting impiety, thus to temper and reduce them to a moderate measure, and finally to be helpful for the social life.
Similarly, Jonathan Culler also states one of the main points of Theory as critical of common sense and concepts taken as natural. See Culler (1997), p.15.
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Houliang, C. Constructing postmodernism with incredulity to metanarrative: a comparative perspective on McHale’s and Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics. Neohelicon 42, 283–295 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-014-0252-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-014-0252-y