Postmodernism Twenty-First Century Culture And American Fiction Establishing The Continuum | Literature

Postmodernism’s ‘end’ is a complex and contentious topic. Yet one overarching consensus emerges: the postmodern has been surpassed. This book poses a thought experiment challenging this position – what if postmodernism persists within the twenty-first century? Rather than designate a new epoch or coherent movement this book interrogates the fragmented contradictory and counterintuitive endurance of postmodern aesthetics within post-Cold War America. An alternative use of postmodern aesthetics becomes possible when they are decoupled from their twentieth-century historical location. Collectively these repetitions posit a postmodern continuum contrasting the widely called-for succession of postmodernism via this decoupling. When postmodern aesthetics are no longer unconsciously repeated within their cultural moment this emergent shift within a period ‘after’ postmodernism presents an alternative historical positioning and use. After their cultural vanguard postmodern aesthetics become a confrontation of the chaotic realism of an inescapable post-Cold War capitalism tapping into this cultural zeitgeist through literature. |Postmodernism Twenty-First Century Culture and American Fiction Establishing the Continuum | Literature