A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction

Citation

Hutcheon, L. (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The book is a study of about 285 pages in thirteen chapters, divided into two parts. Its author, Linda Hutcheon of the University of Toronto, describes it as continuing her earlier work on formal self-consciousness in art (Narcissistic Narrative and A Theory of Parody) while adding a historical and an ideological dimension. It is neither a defence nor a denunciation of the postmodern. Modelled on postmodern architecture, "postmodernism" is the name given to current cultural practices marked by major paradoxes of form and of ideology, and the poetics offered is drawn from those contradictions, as they appear in the intersecting concerns of contemporary theory and cultural practice. Part I (Chapters 1–6) builds the theoretical frame; Part II (Chapters 7–13) develops it through historiographic metafiction and the politics of representation.

Part I, Chapter 1: Theorizing the Postmodern: Toward a Poetics

The opening chapter sets out what a poetics of postmodernism would be and why the term needs one, since the publisher notes that the word is much used and misused across literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, literary theory, history and philosophy.

Chapter 2: Modelling the Postmodern: Parody and Politics

The chapter takes parody, a subject of the author's earlier book, as a central postmodern form, and links it to the political side of the argument.

Chapter 3: Limiting the Postmodern: The Paradoxical Aftermath of Modernism

This chapter places postmodernism in relation to modernism, treating it as a paradoxical aftermath rather than a clean break.

Chapter 4: Decentering the Postmodern: The Ex-Centric

The chapter considers the decentred and the "ex-centric," that is, voices and positions at the margins of dominant culture.

Chapter 5: Contextualizing the Postmodern: Enunciation and the Revenge of "Parole"

Here the argument turns to context and to the act of enunciation, using the distinction between language as system and as individual utterance.

Chapter 6: Historicizing the Postmodern: The Problematizing of History

The final chapter of Part I turns to history and sets up the problem of how postmodern work questions the writing of the past, the theme that Part II develops.

Part II, Chapter 7: Historiographic Metafiction: "The Pastime of Past Time"

The chapter introduces the term most associated with the book, historiographic metafiction, and gives Part II its starting point.

Chapter 8: Intertextuality, Parody, and the Discourses of History

This chapter looks at how fiction relates to earlier texts and to the discourses through which history is written.

Chapter 9: The Problem of Reference

The chapter addresses reference, the relation between texts and the world or the past that they claim to describe.

Chapter 10: Subject in/of/to History and His Story

The chapter deals with the subject and its relation to history, including the position from which history is told.

Chapter 11: Discourse, Power, Ideology: Humanism and Postmodernism

The chapter sets postmodernism against humanism in terms of discourse, power and ideology.

Chapter 12: Political Double-Talk

The chapter takes up the political ambivalence of postmodern practices.

Chapter 13: Conclusion: A Poetics or a Problematics?

The closing chapter asks whether what the book has assembled is a poetics or a problematics.

Key Concepts

Part I: Theorizing and Contextualizing (Chapters 1–6)

• Poetics of postmodernism: an account of postmodern practice drawn from its own contradictions.
• Parody: a form that repeats and ironically revises prior work, treated as political as well as formal.
• Ex-centric: positions away from the centre of dominant culture.
• Enunciation: the act of speaking, placed against the system of language.

Part II: History, Reference and Ideology (Chapters 7–13)

• Historiographic metafiction: fiction that is self-conscious about its own making while engaging with history.
• Intertextuality: the relation of a text to other texts and discourses.
• Reference: how texts point to a world or past outside themselves.
• Humanism and ideology: the values that postmodernism both uses and puts in question.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear two-part design. The table of contents separates a theoretical first part from a second part that builds around historiographic metafiction, so a reader can see where the general argument ends and the specific literary case begins.
• Contradiction as method. The publisher explains that the poetics is drawn from the paradoxes of form and ideology rather than from a definition imposed from outside. This gives the book a consistent stance and explains why the final chapter asks whether the result is a poetics or a problematics.
• Breadth across the arts. The book is modelled on postmodern architecture and takes in the intersecting concerns of theory and cultural practice, so it places fiction beside other arts rather than isolating it.
• Reception. Peter Kitson, in Notes & Queries, called it a reasoned, controlled and intelligent defence of the postmodernist problematizing of history and fiction that should be read by everyone interested in the debate about postmodern culture. Geoff Wade, in Reviewing Psychology, judged it essential reading for anyone interested in current studies of literature, art and "entertainment".

Limitations

• Dated by its publication year. The book was first published in 1988, and the postmodern it describes is the one visible at that time; later fiction and later accounts of postmodernism are outside its range.
• A particular thesis. The book argues for a specific view, that postmodernism is a contradictory practice that both uses and challenges what it inherits, so it is not a neutral survey of postmodern authors or movements.
• Framed in the language of theory. The chapter titles on enunciation, reference, the subject, discourse and ideology show that the argument is conducted in the terms of contemporary theory, so some acquaintance with those terms is needed.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the modernism and contemporary literature books, this is a single-author theory of postmodernism. Butler's Modernism: A Very Short Introduction, Childs's Modernism, Lewis's The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism and the multi-author Cambridge Companion to Modernism give the background of the movement that Chapter 3 treats as the precursor of postmodernism, and they are the better starting points for readers new to the period. Eaglestone's Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction surveys recent fiction in a short, accessible form and can be read before or after Hutcheon to see how a later account of the field is drawn.

How to Use This Book

The book is for advanced undergraduates and graduate students who have taken a course in modern and contemporary literature and have some acquaintance with literary theory.

For a first pass, read Chapter 1, then Chapters 3 and 7, which give the framing question, the relation to modernism and the concept of historiographic metafiction. Read the rest of Part II next, and return to Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 6 as needed. A useful exercise is to take one novel that deals with the past and test Hutcheon's claims about self-consciousness, intertextuality and reference against it. Finish with Chapter 13, which gathers the argument and asks what kind of poetics it has produced.