Postmodernism and Fantasy

Background

As a longtime fantasy reader and recent postmodernist, I've spent a decent amount of time googling the words together. I hoped to find works that explored and reinforced my worldview set in one of my favorite aesthetics. But my search for postmodernism in fantasy online was often frustrating and unproductive. I have found a fair number of good candidates in my broader exploration of what the genre has to offer. On the assumption that there are other people out there like me, I decided to summarize what I’d found and hopefully collect some recommendations from you all.

I’ll add the requisite caveat that I’m not a literature scholar by any means, and while I’ve read a bit more widely in both postmodern literature and fantasy literature than most people, I’m not prepared to give a history or synthesis. What would really be ideal is to get a postmodern scholar involved, preferably one also interested in fantasy (surely you exist? Get in touch if you’re real!).

But I am convinced I can improve on the dialogue out there right now. Existing discussions of pomo in fantasy are fairly disappointing. NK Jemisin treats pomo ideas as inscrutable academic concepts available only to people with a graduate degree (though her question "what's modernism in epic fantasy?" is apt). Brandon Sanderson acknowledges his ignorance and then launches a fairly long essay on a flawed provisional definition. Jeff VanderMeer chimed in just to point out the limitations of Sanderson’s piece, but didn’t take the conversation any further.

What is Post-modernism?

The main difficulty comes in getting a grip on this slippery word, postmodernism. There are a few working definitions floating around. “The cultural logic of late capitalism” comes from Frederic Jameson’s 1991 book of the same title. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find that very helpful. Most critical definitions contrast it to modernism. That’s a fine approach for an art historian, but fantasy literature has a different historical trend that isn’t easily coerced into a parallel progression (it would be an interesting exercise, perhaps, but not one I have the experience or wherewithal to carry out right now). Moreover, the first postmodern fantasy book was published in 1605, which sort of flummoxes the chronological approach. 

Postmodernism is a label applied after the fact to a wide array of schools of thought and artistic production, and the search for a definition is doomed to fail. Instead of a definition, it’s useful to look at a series of common threads and uniting characteristics. Broadly, I think postmodernism is characterized by a concern with subjectivity and perspective. In politics, this means acknowledging the ways our community, our language, our class, etc, shape our ideologies. It’s a foundational concern in science (and why I believe, despite some historically acrimonious dialogue between pomo scholars and scientists, that science is a fundamentally pomo endeavor). Modern anthropology grew out of the internalization of cultural relativism.

Wikipedia lists a dozen techniques postmodern literature uses to explore those ideas, from metafiction that highlights the role of the reader in bringing meaning to a story to intertextual approaches that play with the web of references that frame every work. Unreliable narrators, nested framing devices, stylistic pastiche, fragmentation, self-conscious and ironic tone, mixing high and low culture, hyperreality, paranoia, and magical or temporal distortion of reality are all tools that characterize postmodern works. I’m also going to include works that are primarily postmodern in their politics and philosophies.

So that's the concept, and some of the techniques used to explore it. But again, it's a slippery question. It's less about the techniques than how they are used. So framing devices and Inception-style layering are colloquially "meta" but not inherently metafictional; the layers need to interact to comment on the reader's relationship with the text. Irony is of course not unique to postmodern literature. It isn't sufficient to subvert a trope - a work must show some self-awareness, delivering a commentary or an intelligent deconstruction. Postmodernism is not synonymous with novelty or innovation. Nor is every work that builds on existing genre tropes a pastiche of that genre - again, there should be some signs of intelligent and self-conscious commentary.

If that's all sufficiently confusing, I'll just conclude by saying that postmodernism, in the context of this blog, means whatever I feel that it means. :D 

Scope of the Series

My definition of fantasy is going to be quite loose. I may include sci-fi (cyberpunk is a genre that grew up entirely in the wake of postmodern philosophy), New Weird, and some works that would never be shelved as genre fiction of any stripe. The goal is to curate a collection I think my potential audience might find worthwhile.

In addition to the main series of posts highlighting specific works, I'm planning some posts on topics germane to the theme: some recommendations for intro Pomo reading; a few history of fantasy posts, if I can convince myself I'm competent; and a few discussions on what exactly postmodernism has to offer fantasy readers.

Anyway, if you stumble across this and find it interesting, let me know you're here. I hope I can share recommendations and ideas you find new and stimulating.