A Study Of Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics Of Postmodernism

As the most important Canadian literary theorist since Northrop Frye, Linda Hutcheon owns a prestigious position in the galaxy of Western postmodern critics. Focusing on novel but also with an eye to other arts, such as architecture, film and painting, Hutcheon’s postmodernist poetics ponders on the aesthetic forms and practical strategies of postmodern arts distinctively different from modernism. Her systematic and in-depth interpretation of the politics of postmodernism has greatly enriched our knowledge about the complexity and pluralism of postmodernism.Our understanding of postmodernism has been under the influence of the New Leftists long before, with Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton as their representatives, both of whom take generally a critical and rather negative attitude towards postmodernism, seeing it as the cultural equivalent of late capitalism and as the result of Modern avant-gardes’out-and-out subjugation to commodity fetishism. For them, postmodern art is no more than ahistorical, apolitical and playful cultural farragoes. Under postmodern conditions, it is no longer possible for artists to perform as critically and politically serious activities as their Modernist fathers had done. Postmodernist artists have betrayed the sublime social mission of Modernism, their works being not the edgy dagger stabbing at the morbid society, but the sheeps eyes making at commercial sponsors and cultural brokers.For Hutcheon, however, postmodernism is by no means ahistorical, nor is it simply misusing or playing with cultural fragments. Rather, postmodernism is the problematics about history. It tries in an unique way to decode and recode the discourse-power relationship hiding within cultural, literary as well as historical texts, so as to reveal the ideological subtext buried in any cultural practices. Denying the worship of history as certain and stable facts, postmodernism only acknowledges the provisional authority of history, which, as a kind of discursive facts, is the effect of interpretation rather than the sum total of realities. Through analyzing a lot of historiographic metafictions, Hutcheon shows in detail how postmodernism has problematicized the realistic convention of representation in literature and historiography, the textualism of Modernism, as well as the value system of liberal humanism. As such a powerful problematizing force, postmodernism leads us to rethink and interrogate those institutions and notions that have long been taken for granted in our common sense. By exposing the compulsorily unjust mechanism that reproduces power, postmodernism paves the way toward more positive political practices.The basic train of thought in this dissertation is as follows:Hutcheon’s poetics models on postmodern architecture represented by Charles Jencks’works; her theoretical foundation is a compound understanding of text, history and narrative, influenced by Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault and Hayden White; irony and parody are her basic terms and theoretical tools, and historiographic metafiction is the focus of her attention; and her final interest is to reveal the unique historical and political consciousness of postmodernism. Consequently, this dissertation is divided into eight sections:The Introduction consists of a brief portrayal of Hutcheon’s life and thinking, an explanation of the significance, structure, and method of this study, as well as a literature review of related studies both at home and abroad. Because of the influence from Jameson and Eagleton, most Chinese scholars have a rather limited understanding of postmodernism, unaware of its pluralism and complexity. Hence, Hutcheon’s theory can benefit us a lot, for it will enrich our knowledge about postmodernism, to know, for example, that postmodernism is not escaping history, but is challenging and questioning it; it is not the subjugation to cultural hegemony, but its subversion and deconstruction; and it is not the linguistic play trapped in the language prison, but the destruction of and breakthrough from that prison.Chapter I observes the relationship between Hutcheon’s poetics and postmodern architecture, that is, how it has inspired her and has hence led to what virtues and drawbacks in her theory. Resulted from the resentfulness toward and disappointments from modern architecture with its utopian dream to rescue modern society, postmodern architecture throws away modern architecture’s preference for purity, function and unity. It does not regard the past as enemy any more, rather, it let those conventional forms reappear in varied shapes. For Hutcheon, this is neither playful pastiche nor naive nostalgia, but a way to show its critical understanding and inheriting of traditional architecture. Postmodern architecture represented by Jencks’ works provides an excellent model for Hutcheon, who begins her postmodern study from this area and applies her observations to other art forms including literature, painting, films, etc..Chapter II mainly discusses three kinds of thinking that had given Hutcheon the principle influence, that is, Derrida’s deconstructive understanding of text, Foucault’s post-structuralist understanding of discourse and history, as well as White’s postmodern history of narratology. Their compound influence gives birth to Hutcheon’s understanding of the interactive and intermingling relationship between history, text and narrative discourse, which forms the theoretical foundation of her postmodern poetics, that is:Historical text is neither the equal of historical facts, nor the innocent description of past events, but the result of interpretation influenced by various realistic factors; narrative is not the simple representation of history, but the discursive strategy adopted by historians, with their ideological preferences, to process events and produce meaning; history can neither be reduced to a touchable entity, nor to a text of total fiction; text, however, is the only way by which we can approach history.Chapter III revolves with irony and parody, the two basic categories in Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics. As devices most widely applied by postmodern art, how to evaluate them will affect our general understanding of postmodernism as a whole. And the distinctiveness of Hutcheon’s theory rightly results from her excellent interpretation of postmodern irony and parody. For Hutcheon, irony is not merely a figure of speech, and nor is parody a symptom of historical nostalgia. Rather, both are double-coding discursive strategies, whose characteristic ambiguity allows postmodern artists to carry out possible political practices. She believes that, in postmodern times, irony and parody are the only two proper means to deal with history, that is, to involve the already textualized history into present text, and to raise questions about history while revisiting it.Chapter FV studies in detail the central topic of Hutcheon’s postmodernist poetics, that is, the politics of representation and the problematics about history in historiographic metafiction. Historiographic metafiction came into being in the second half of last century. While seemingly sharing certain characteristics with Realistic writing, Modernist metafiction and traditional historical novel, it is subversive of their intrinsically presupposed conceptions, among which particularly are the Realistic historical representation and the Modernist textualism. Under the dual influences of the poststructuralist linguistics and history, historiographic metafiction endeavors to explore the function of language in representing history and reality, so as to denaturalize and demythologize the naturalized notions about history. By toppling the humanistic illusion about history and reality and bringing to eyes their essence as discursive construction, it hopes to bring out the possibility of practical political revolution.Chapter V argues that Hutcheon’s fundamental interest is to reveal the politics of postmodernism, including its critical strategies, political implications, etc.. The New Leftists generally look postmodernism as the aftermath of the defeat of Modernist utopian politics, that is, the depoliticized avant-gardes have subjugated to late capitalist commercialism. For them, the postmodern conditions have made it impossible to carry out any serious political and critical artistic performances and postmodern art has degraded into an out-and-out commercial activity driven by fashion and pop culture. On the contrary, Hutcheon holds that postmodernism is inevitably political, whose political strategy, however, is "complicitous critique", drastically different from the pure critique proposed by the New Leftists. Complicitous critique means to make full use of the double-coding function of irony and parody, to adopt and abuse the cultural codes of its rivals including all traditional and popular elements, hence to criticize and interrogate those codes while seemingly reproducing them. And Hutcheon sees the most positive political potentials in the interfaces between feminism and postmodernism, as well as between postcolonialism and postmodernism.A general evaluation of Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics is given in Chapter VI. Considering that her entire description of postmodernism revolves with how postmodernism has problematized all the naturalized traditional humanistic notions about literature and history, Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics is more akin to a study of postmodern problematics. Compared with other postmodern theorists, Hutcheon is unique in her argument of the paradox of postmodernism, that is, it always incorporates simultaneously its enemies’ codes into itself, while subverting and criticizing them. Although it has only problematized the seemingly innocent relationship between historical and literary representation as well as other liberal humanist notions and social context (power, politics, and ideology), and hasn’t yielded to a final dialectical solution, postmodernism is inevitably political, and likely to produce possibilities for more realistic ideological critique and political revolutions. The drawbacks in Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics consists of a narrow demarcation of postmodernism, a less careful application of historiographic metafiction and other terms, an excessive anxiety of master narrative, and an over optimistic attitude towards the politics of postmodernism.The Epilogue tries to relate Hutcheon’s theory to contemporary postmodern studies in China. It is argued that Hutcheon’s postmodern poetics can be helpful for us on three aspects at least, that is:(1) the discussion about whether there is or not postmodernism in China; (2) the methodology of postmodern literary study; and (3) how to give a proper evaluation to contemporary postmodern literature in China.