Postmodernism in Fantasy #2: Intro to Postmodernism

I gave a brief discussion of the concepts encompassed by postmodernism in the intro post of this series, but I thought it might be helpful if I provided some further readings. These books and articles are good sources on what postmodernism is (or at least, what I take it to mean) in literature, politics, science, and criticism. 

These are all works I'd consider accessible, and they're generally pretty short reads (with the exception of the Berger). But I'll also link to some videos, because they can help to frame and simplify complex ideas, before or as a substitute for further reading. 

Nonfiction

Derrida For Beginners

Derrida and his concept "deconstruction" have become largely synonymous with postmodernism in the part of the public eye aware of such things at all. Both names are typically tossed out as superlative incarnations of academic inscrutability. I haven't read Derrida's prose, and I suspect that reputation is not entirely unearned. But he was apparently a brilliant thinker who pioneered many of the concepts that defined postmodern thought.

Jim Powell's comic-illustrated Derrida for Beginners does an excellent job of breaking down Derrida's thought, life, and career into plain English. The concepts are often disarmingly intuitive. Deconstruction is illustrated with a visual analogy that makes the philosophical idea, at least in its broad strokes, feel almost obvious.

Deconstruction takes aim at metaphysical dichotomies: true/false, beauty/ugly, mind/body, normal/abnormal, nature/culture, etc. According to Derrida, these dichotomies are generally aligned in a hierarchy: truth is better than falsehood and beauty better than ugliness, for instance. 

The process of deconstruction begins by recognizing each element of the dichotomy as central in turn - to flip from viewing the face to the vase and back again until one can preserve the understanding that both images are present, but more importantly, that both are defined by the presence of the other. If either face were missing, there would be no vase.

It's a rather facile assertion applied to the vase, and indeed even to a dichotomy like good and evil (how many times have we read a fantasy protagonist pontificate that evil exists to glorify the good?). But Derrida takes the idea well beyond the obvious yin/yang cosmic balance, applying it to language and epistemology and questioning some of our core assumptions about reality. 

By decentralizing the dichotomy between true and false, he suggests the whole relativist premise of modern postmodernism. It is the first bold and significant step away from the premise that the world contains a divinely created order governed by apparent rules. Derrida's revolutionary and still-contentious assertion is that we don't actually have access to those rules. Our language does not refer to the world itself, but only to other ideas that already exist within the framework of language. He sums it up neatly: 

"There is nothing outside of the text."

The implications of deconstruction for fantasy tropes are limitless, and only a few of them have been applied. Perhaps the most profound dichotomies in fantasy are us/them (found in works with only one nation's point of view represented) and good/evil, a defining feature of the fantasy monomyth, (and ultimately a microcosm of the Christian worldview), but there are dozens more: civilized/savage; prosaic/magical; male/female; lawful/chaotic; human/monster; noble/commoner, etc.

If you're still confused and don't have time for Powell's book, here's a YouTube video.

The Social Construction of Reality

Peter Berger's The Social Construction of Reality is a foundational text of modern sociology but it is also one of the clearest statements of philosophical postmodernism to be found. Berger takes Derrida's ideas and applies them to our basic interaction with the world (and he does it with fairly clear prose, to boot!). 

The gist is that all of our concepts about the world, from the most physical and intuitive to the most abstract and esoteric, are framed in learned, cultural ideas. Once again, "there is nothing outside of the text" - no imaginable object can enter our experience without being coated in a thick layer of cultural concepts - even if those concepts simply concern how to respond to the unknown, or grasp for inadequate analogies to past experience. These concepts are learned and propagated through everyday interactions and the use of language - the procedural building blocks of culture. 

Here's a short video I find somewhat inadequate and a longer one that suits my predilection for dour academics. 

Identity Protective Cognition

One of the very first articles on Vox.com laid out the postmodern, science-based approach to politics that defines their content. It is essentially a politics-specific extension of the Social Construction of Reality, showing that the facts we take as reality flow more from our identity groups than from any presumed objective consideration of facts. There is more to it - the article doesn't go into material and economic concerns driving thought at all - but this is a concise explanation of the postmodern approach to politics. 

The Young Turks explain the study cited above.

Death of the Author

If you're prepared for some primary source reading, Roland Barthes' Death of the Author is short, readable, and a landmark essay in postmodernism and literary criticism. Death of the Author can be thought of as an application of deconstruction to works of literature. Barthes undermines the idea of a single, privileged interpretation of the text (historically defined as authorial intent). Instead, Barthes sees the work floating in a vast context of culture: history, other art, social mores, biographical details, etc. 

"The text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture." 

Each time a work is read, it is seen in a new context, by new eyes with new ideas and experiences. The reader, the critic, approach the work and ascribe a meaning to it, but this meaning is never The Meaning.

Work that takes this interaction between text and reader as a given and creates structures that explore it is called metafiction. Dark Souls is the epitome of metafiction in fantasy.

Mike Rugnetta explains Death of the Author in this episode of Idea Channel.

Fiction

Barthes' Death of the Author is perhaps best understood through Borges' fictional illustration, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. The choice of Don Quixote is at once incidental - any historical work would do - and precise, since the book was intended as a meta-fictional satire of existing fantasy romance novels.

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is an orientalist fantasy dreamscape that falls squarely in Borges' tradition, though never approaching his genius (nothing ever does!). Nonetheless, it's a great introduction to postmodernism. Many of the stories are like parables, explaining basic concepts in economical prose, dressed up in imaginative and evocative landscapes.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V is certainly the most famous and widely read postmodern novel. Its simple prose, historical subject matter, and emotional and philosophical resonance make it both accessible and relevant to the public in ways that are not the norm for postmodern works. If you're curious to see what postmodern literature has to offer, this is probably the place to start.

Additional Recommendations

Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire

Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow

Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Many more will be coming in individual profiles through the rest of this series.