Whilst realism strives for an accepted truth, postmodern questions how to say something is true in a world which does not share an agreement on what truth is. And so, as people are rethinking and reshaping their worlds in random and eclectic ways, it begs the question is there anything that can be said to be true anymore?
Which truths are postmodern writers exploring in their fiction?
The point has already been made that postmodernity is an era when the keystones of the Enlightenment, the Grand Narratives, are no longer tenable; this is because they are not considered to be absolute truths. This questioning of truth has impacted upon postmodern writers, and they are responding to these debates within their fiction, in particular the truths of science, history and religion.
What writing techniques are being used to investigate scientific theories?
For the postmodern writer, fragmentation is a celebration of the liberation from fixed beliefs and truths; because the old truths are being broken down, they are free to experiment by rewriting them, thereby creating new forms and new modes of expression. Postmodern writers playfully mix narratives, genres and discourses. This celebration of flexibility, play and self-reflexivity is a central element of postmodern fiction. Postmodern writers delight in playing with language, incorporating puns and language games within their work. In addition, by using ‘intertextuality’, a term coined in 1966 by Julia Kristeva to describe texts born out of, and referencing, other texts, so that a single limited viewpoint is not imposed in the traditional realist sense, the reader draws upon their own areas of knowledge, and in so doing, makes the text one’s own.
Jeanette Winterson explores the difficulties in representing the truth, and questions what the truth actually is. Indeed, she highlights the possibility that there is not one universal truth; there is only the subjective truth and individual perception. As she writes in Sexing the Cherry,‘Did my childhood happen? I must believe it did, but I don’t have any proof … Everyone remembers things which never happened … ’ (p. 92). Through her allusion to conflicting theories of time and space in this novel, Winterson claims that our subjective view is all we really have, hence the only version that we can relate to. ‘In a night 2000,000 years can pass, time moving only in our minds’ (p. 132).
In Sexing the Cherry, Winterson plays, interrogates and deconstructs scientific discourse. During the course of the narrative, she investigates the idea that time is an illusion and introduces the reader to the idea of alternative times: ‘Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle. These are the journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time’ (Winterson, 1989, p. 9). Here, and throughout the text, she explores Einstein’s theory of relativity, playing with the notion that past, present and future all co-exist, that time is an illusion and all there really is, is a continuous present: ‘Thinking about time is like turning the globe round and round, recognizing that all journeys exist simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of another, even though that place cannot be felt or see’ (Winterson, 1989, p. 89).
Coexisting times are continually referred to and by refusing to accept the traditional idea of past, present and future, she questions truth, ‘Either we are all fantasists and liars or the past has nothing definite in it’ (p. 92). At the beginning of the novel, she refers to the Hopi, a Native American tribe, who have, she says, ‘a language as sophisticated as ours, but not tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time?’ (Winterson, 1989, p. 7). Perhaps following Saussure, Winterson is making the claim that time and space can only be represented through language and since language is arbitrary to the extent that different languages have conflicting systems of representation, how can we ever begin to suggest that words have any direct link to the concept which they are trying to evoke?
In the Newtonian model of physics, there is only one reality at a time, absolute time and absolute space; everything in the universe is predictable and simple laws are all that are required to understand how it functions. However, quantum physics has challenged the Newtonian model, leading to a questioning of the certainties of time and space, resulting in the conclusion that multiple times and spaces do exist. As well as exploring Newton’s scientific theories within Sexing the Cherry, Winterson also refers to the contradictory theory of quantum physics. So, what is quantum?
Quantum physics replaced the classical emphasis in science, on separate parts. Quantum is ‘an entangled universe its many parts are interwoven, their boundaries and their identities overlap, and through their doing so a new reality is created’ (Zohar, 1994, p. 258). The most revolutionary idea of quantum physics is that light is both ‘wave-like’ and ‘particle-like’ at the same time. In 1927, George Thompson proved the dual nature of electrons, known as ‘wave-particle duality’. Electric charge travels as waves, both departs and arrives as particles and neither the ‘wave-like’ nor the ‘particle-like’ properties are more ‘real’. Quantum actually refers to a packet of energy, an atom. Electrons, in a previously stable atom, may become unstable for no apparent reason, and there is no way of knowing by which path it may travel. However, the path will be discontinuous, behaving as though it is ‘smeared out all over space and time, and is everything at once’ (Zohar, 1994, p. 26). The electrons put out ‘feelers’ to see which path will suit best; these ‘feelers’ are known as virtual transitions and are the possible journeys which are made before something actual takes place. The actual journey the electron makes is known as a real transition. The existence of virtual states shows us that we can experience more than one reality at a time. Winterson alludes to this: ‘I don’t know if other worlds exist in space or time. Perhaps this is the only one and the rest is rich imaginings. Either way it doesn’t matter. We have to protect both possibilities. They are independent’ (Winterson, 1989, p. 128). Throughout Sexing the Cherry, Winterson illustrates that she is fully aware that what constitutes the real is now no longer straightforward. In fact, she expresses her belief in the real as being something that is ‘multiple and complex’ (Imagination and Reality 1995, p. 136). The concept of reality will be explored in the next chapter.
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Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with Time and Space
Time is an illusion: past, present and future all co-exist. Use this as a writing burst, that is, write without stopping, without censoring yourself, for ten minutes, using the sentence as a stimulus. Now re-write what you have written by crafting the creative writing into a non-linear text.
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Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with a Quantum World
‘Postmodern fiction is fiction in a quantum universe’ (Woods, 1999, p. 51).
Imagine a character who has just woken in a quantum world, one where all things are possible. Write a novel extract in which your character explores this world.
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What writing techniques are being used to deconstruct religious doctrine?
‘They say the postmodern individual is a member of many communities and networks, a participant in many discourses, an audience to messages from everybody and everywhere – messages that present conflicting ideals and norms and images of the world … In the world of religion – or, to be more accurate, in the many worlds of religion – people are overhauling doctrines right and left. How could it be otherwise? If you regard the various truths and practices of a religion as socially constructed, you are likely to feel free to reconstruct them according to the needs (as you perceive them) of the present time’ (Trutti p. 9).
Many writers in the twentieth century have deconstructed, rewritten and played with religious doctrine within their works. In Life of Pi, the writer Yann Martel, who was born in Spain but currently lives in Montreal, explores belief:
“Religion will save us,” I said …
“Reli
gion?” Mr. Kumar grinned broadly. “I don’t believe in religion. Religion is darkness.”
Martel continues:
He spoke again. “Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry in an orphanage. That’s what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed racked with polio. I asked myself every day, ‘Where is God? Where is God? Where is God? God never came. It wasn’t God who saved me – it was medicine’. (pp. 27–8)
Besides playing with scientific theories relating to time and space, Winterson deconstructs the constructed truth of religion within her fiction too. She sees biblical stories as powerful originators of narrative and seeks to celebrate, rather than contest, them in her work. She references Christianity and the mystic, shamanism and Buddhism, revelling in the mixing of narratives from diverse cultures, rewriting and recycling them, placing them in fragmented forms in contemporary contexts, showing them to be stories which can be manipulated as opposed to being fixed and given religious truths. Indeed, to be a postmodern writer is to become an archaeologist of narratives, a writer who discovers myths of the past, fits the fragments together and makes something new out of them.
Winterson is reacting to the relative truth of narratives of origin in her fiction; she uses myths ironically whilst still acknowledging the power of particular myths:
And so it was that on a particular day, some time later, she followed a star until it came to settle above an orphanage, and in that place was a crib, a child. A child with too much hair. (Winterson, 1985, p. 10)
The myth of the origin of the universe is a repeated motif in her work.
This is the theory.
In the beginning was a perfect ten-dimensional universe that cleaved into two. While ours, of three spatial dimensions and the oddity of time, expanded to fit our grossness, hers, of six-dimensions wrapped itself away in solitude.
This sister universe, contemplative, concealed, waits in our future as it as refused our past. It may be the symbol behind all our symbols. It may be the mandalas of the East and the Grail of the West. The clouded beauty that human beings have stared into since we learned to become conscious of our own face’. (Winterson, 1997, p. 4)
Winterson also recycles the myth of hell:
The marriage of Heaven and Hell? The old sceptics used to say that if Hell exists, where is it? What part of the Universe does it occupy … The question ‘Where is it’ could not be answered satisfactorily. Many tried. Traditionally, the afterlife lairs at the centre of the earth: Odysseus got in through a cave entrance in Persephone’s Grove, while Virgil and Dante had only to look under the floorboards in Italy. In 1714, an Englishman, Tobias Swinden, published his Enquiry In The Place Of Hell and concluded that Hell is on the sun. In 1740, Whiston, Newton’s successor as professor Of Mathematics at Cambridge, proved that Hell was somewhere in the regions of Saturn. (Winterson, 1997, p. 3)
As can be seen, Winterson refutes linear expectations, rewriting biblical narratives, with humour, parody and repetition, mixing science and religion, fact and fiction and in so doing, questions all the old defining certainties: male/female, alive/dead, heaven/hell. This blending of styles and discourses, this blurring of boundaries and the rewriting and recycling of narratives is a crucial writing strategy that postmodern writers employ within their work, one experimental writers and readers of this book can incorporate into their writing practice. Postmodern fiction, and indeed Winterson, rewrites many discourses and truths, for example, religion, history, time and space, science, and in so doing, she creates work that is both stylistically and culturally pluralistic.
However, rewriting ‘old’ narratives and subverting conventional linear expectations leads critics to question whether writers such as Jeanette Winterson and Angela Carter, who, it has already been noted, rewrite fairy tales and ‘own’ their own stories, or whether they are simply fragments of recycled ‘old’ narratives. As a response to this criticism, it may be argued that writers who experiment with this practice reclaim the ‘old’ narratives by writing them anew, therefore making them their own. In all her fiction, Winterson is concerned with cultural and philosophical debates and corresponds with Lyotard’s notion of collapsing of Grand Narratives into meta-narratives. Her fiction refutes stability and fixity. The reader most certainly has to engage with, and interpret, her work, create one’s own meaning, whilst enjoying the playfulness and plurality that this experience evokes.
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Experiment with this: Learning to Rewrite Old Narratives of Religion
Rewrite the biblical story of Adam and Eve, put it in a contemporary setting, blend discourses, use humour, subvert linear expectations, and in so doing, create a new story.
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Experiment with this: Learning to Use Language Games, Puns and Intertextuality
Rewrite the Noah’s Ark biblical story and inscribe it with language games, puns and incorporate intertextuality in the retelling.
In Sum, the author David Eagleman rewrites stories of the afterlife: I won’t die, I’ll live forever as a download … Use this as a starting point for a short story.
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How is the concept of history portrayed in postmodern fiction?
Postmodern fiction is an art form which problematizes the making of both history and fiction. And within postmodern works, history can be seen as a narrative form rather than a collection of proven facts. ‘One of the thrusts of postmodernist revisionist history is to call into question the reliability of official history. The postmodernists fictionalise history, but by doing so they imply that history itself may be a form of fiction’ (McHale, 1987, p. 96). And as William Gibson says, ‘History itself is seen to be even more obviously a construct, subject to revision’ (Distrust That Particular Flavour, p. 52). History, then, is no longer a concept that progresses through time; it is simply a set of stories or myths resounding in the present.
Postmodern fiction, therefore, can be viewed as an investigation into ways in which narrative constructs, and reflects upon, history; it recycles history for consumption, deconstructing both history and fiction, thereby remaking them. Many theorists, including Baudrillard, have argued that postmodern fiction appropriates history to create an anti-historical fiction. Fiction remakes the past as nostalgia, linking it with eclectic modes of consumer, information, mass media, popular culture and a service-orientated society. The very fact that postmodern fiction is self-referential and self-reflexive severs the text from actual historical reality, making the fiction into a formalist exercise, one which is not directly related to its social conditions of production. However, while postmodern fiction severs a simple relationship with history, it does attempt to explore different histories.
The genre of fabulist fiction or magic realism opposes traditional realist fiction by its critique of the myth of history as a set of proven facts; for example, in Invisible Cities, Italian writer Italo Calvino uses the imaginary conversations of the ‘characters’ of Marco Polo and Kublain Khan to underline the questionable concept of history. He does this by mixing historical detail, for example, thirteenth-century Marco Polo describes airports and skyscrapers he has seen in cities whilst travelling Khan’s vast empire. Also, by using historical figures, Calvino, the writer, adopts a philosophical, historical stance, one which revises the modern conception of history. It appears that it is only possible to view the present in relation to the past; so there seems little point in representing history. The reader, and for that matter, the writer, is not merely experiencing history, merely using incidents to understand our present predicament. Where postmodernism recognizes a continuum and progression from the past, it subverts the practices of traditional modernist frameworks in order to subordinate history, seeing it simply as a fiction.
What narrative strategies are utilized in the revision of history?
Calvino employs a number of narrative strategies and techniques to man
ipulate the historical content of Invisible Cities, and in so doing, he creates his own version of history, a new history. He does this by fragmenting the cities in order to express the impossibility of discovering an absolute truth. He also juxtaposes the variety of narratives and the cities, employing author intrusion and intertexuality, as well as establishing mood, rather than plot, which establishes the postmodern nature of Invisible Cities; in addition, this serves to create metanarratives and dislocation. By his revision of Marco Polo and Khan, Calvino is subverting the traditional view of history, that is, a history which is traditionally viewed as linear. However, with the juxtaposition of narratives, Calvino creates a non-linear text, implying, perhaps influenced by Lyotard’s claim, that history has ceased to exist; therefore, for the reader, it is impossible to fix meaning; the text is writerly because of the plurality of realities contained within each city. For example, within Invisible Cities, there is the city of Zirma, in which there is ‘a blind black man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper’s cornice, a girl walking with a puma on a leash … streets of shops where tattoos are drawn on sailors’ skin; underground trains crammed with obese women suffering from humidity’ (p. 19). As David Lyon says, ‘the world of meaning fractures and fragments, making it hard even to speak of meanings traditionally conceived’ (Postmodernity, p. 11).
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Experimental Fiction Page 13