Abstract
The concluding chapter of the book looks forward to what kind of literature can be presented in light of postmodernism. The chapter looks at types of literature often posited as coming after postmodernism and discusses how those genres (Postpostmodernism, Neo-Victorian, and Post-Ironic and New Sincerity) can be read in light of the postmodern structure of consciousness. The chapter further presents three potential ‘outs’ of postmodernism, ways in which literature could be written in relation to this concept of postmodernism, including looking at optimistic ways to consider the legacy of literary postmodernism, and its continued influence on both literary and theoretical frameworks in the twenty-first century.
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Notes
- 1.
By scholars on both sides of the debate, such as Richard Rorty and Terry Eagleton.
- 2.
For clarity, Andersen identifies and labels the term post-ironic as a philosophical position pushed by Wallace and a few others. He does recognize, as he discusses later in the same article, that such a position is not against postmodernism per se, but against a version of that assimilated by television and the mainstream that Wallace discusses in ‘E Unibus Pluram’ (Andersen 2001, 22).
- 3.
The exact definition, and time period, is still in flux. As Lea Heiberg Madsen argues, “a neo-Victorian novel can indeed have a non-Victorian timeframe and that a new label, for this novel, is unnecessary” (Heiberg Madsen 2009, 74), as she specifically considers Sarah Waters The Little Stranger, but makes a claim which renders the neo-Victorian novel thematic rather than chronological in scope.
- 4.
However, as discussed earlier in Chap. 2, hooks argues that embracing postmodernism is the politically appropriate move, even as I object to her deciding that only after a consideration of the political implications.
- 5.
This reading would presuppose that the celebrations of those in Zion, at the end of the film, are an already-accounted-for possibility within the larger Matrix frame.
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Stephan, M. (2019). Coda: What Comes Next? (Or What to Do with a Problem Called Postmodernism?). In: Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15693-0_8
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