Representatives of postmodernism in Russian literature. Postmodernism in Russian literature of the late 20th - early 21st centuries

Term "postmodernism" still causes controversy here and in the West. Came into circulation in the sixties, in pure historical significance it refers to the culture of the West after the Second World War, to post-industrial society, to the era of consumer capitalism, new technologies, electronic communications. All this destabilizes and modifies traditional cultural mechanisms and, which is especially important for literature, leads to the loss of the privileged position of a book, text, or work. The processes taking place in the culture of the postmodern era are described by scientists in different ways. Some consider postmodernism to be a continuation and development of modernism, and postmodern literature turns out to be simply a continuation of the trends of modernist literature in a new historical stage, then postmodernism is simply what comes after modernism. Others see in the culture of postmodernism a break with classical modernism of the first half of the century, others are busy looking for writers in the past whose work already carries the ideas and principles of modernism (with this approach, the French writer turns out to be postmodernists late XVIII century Marquis de Sade, American poet Ezra Pound, who is usually considered one of the classics of modernism, and many others).

One way or another, the term “postmodernism” itself indicates the connection of this phenomenon with the culture of the previous era, and postmodernism recognizes itself in relation to modernism. At the same time, modernism itself is subject to constant revision, and postmodernism theorists offer the following system of oppositions that describe the difference between modernism of the first half of the twentieth century and postmodernism. The following table is borrowed from the work of the American theorist I. Hassan, “The Culture of Postmodernism” (1985).

Theorists of postmodernism argue that postmodernism rejects the elitism and formal experimentation inherent in modernism, the tragedy in the experience of alienation. If modernism was the dehumanization of art, postmodernism is experiencing the dehumanization of the planet, the end of history, the end of man. If Joyce, Kafka and Proust are the all-powerful masters of the artistic worlds they create, they still believe in the ability of words to express the essential truth about the human condition, in the eternal existence of a perfect work of art, then the postmodern artist knows that word and language are subjective and, at best, capable reflect some aspects of an individual point of view, and a book purchased at an airport kiosk will be read during the flight, left behind when leaving the plane, and the reader is unlikely to ever remember it. Modernist literature still depicted the tragedy of the earthly existence of the individual, that is, it retained the heroic principle; The postmodernist writer expresses man’s weariness from life’s struggle, the emptiness of existence. In short, in the era of modernism, the art of words still retained a high value status in society, the artist could still feel like a creator and prophet, but in postmodernism art becomes optional, anarchic, and completely ironic.

At the core of postmodern literature is the concept of play, which has moved far away from romantic irony. The game in postmodernism fills everything and absorbs itself, leading to the loss of the purpose and meaning of the game. Postmodernists say that the time has come to abandon the traditional categories of beauty and authenticity, because we live in a world of ephemeral fakes, false realities, in a world of imitations. The shock of humanity from new historical circumstances that cannot be comprehended by consciousness alone (the Holocaust - the extermination of Jews during the Second World War; the use of nuclear weapons; pollution environment; the extreme leveling of personality in modern Western democracies) leads to the loss of original guidelines and a total revision of the value system, the very ways of thinking. The idea of ​​a single world order, and therefore of a single center of any system, any concept, is lost. It becomes impossible to distinguish the important from the unimportant, to highlight main meaning any concept.

The idea of ​​the absence of absolutes, final truths, the idea that reality is given to us only in the differences between its phenomena, was most consistently developed by the French poststructuralists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Francois Lyotard. These philosophers preached a rejection of the entire tradition of classical philosophy, a revision of the entire system of scientific knowledge, and their unusually complex, “breakthrough” works will still be given a final assessment by time.

The same exhaustion of rebellion, fatigue characterizes the attitude of postmodernists to tradition. They do not reject it outright, like their predecessors: the postmodern writer can be compared to a shopper in a supermarket of world history and world literature, who rolls his cart along the aisles, looking around and dumping into it everything that attracts his attention or curiosity. Postmodernism is a product of such a late stage in the development of Western civilization, when “everything has been said” and new ideas in literature are impossible; Furthermore, postmodern writers themselves very often teach literature at universities or are critics and literary theorists, so they easily directly introduce all these new theories of literature into their works, immediately parody and play on them.

In postmodern works, the degree of self-awareness and self-criticism within the text increases sharply; the writer does not hide from the reader how he achieves this or that effect, he offers the reader for discussion the choices that the author of the text faces, and this discussion with the reader also takes on the character of a sophisticated game.

All the major writers of the late twentieth century are, to one degree or another, affected by postmodernism, which equally manifests itself in the old national literatures of the West (French “new novelists” - Nathalie Sarraute, Henri Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon; Germans - Gunter Grass and Patrick Suskind; Americans - John Barth and Thomas Pynchon; the English - Julian Barnes and Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie; the Italians Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco), both in the heyday of the Latin American novel (Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar), and in the work of Eastern European writers (Milan Kundera, Agota Christophe, Victor Pelevin).

Let us turn to two examples of postmodern literature, which were chosen for purely pragmatic reasons: both belong to the greatest masters of postmodernism, are small in volume and are available in Russian translation.

Postmodernism

The end of World War II marked an important turn in the worldview of Western civilization. The war was not only a clash of states, but also a clash of ideas, each of which promised to make the world ideal, and in return brought rivers of blood. Hence the feeling of crisis of the idea, that is, disbelief in the possibility of any idea to make the world a better place. A crisis of the idea of ​​art also arose. On the other hand, the quantity literary works has reached such a quantity that it seems as if everything has already been written, each text contains links to previous texts, that is, it is a metatext.

During development literary process the gap between elite and pop culture became too deep, the phenomenon of “works for philologists” appeared, to read and understand which you need to have a very good philological education. Postmodernism became a reaction to this split, connecting both spheres of the multi-layered work. For example, Suskind's "Perfume" can be read as a detective story, or maybe as philosophical novel, revealing questions of genius, the artist and art.

Modernism, which explored the world as the realization of certain absolutes, eternal truths, gave way to postmodernism, for which the whole world is a game without a happy ending. As a philosophical category, the term “postmodernism” spread thanks to the works of philosophers Zhe. Derrida, J. Bataille, M. Foucault and especially the book of the French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (1979).

The principles of repeatability and compatibility become style artistic thinking with its inherent features of eclecticism, a tendency towards stylization, quotation, alteration, reminiscences, allusions. The artist deals not with “pure” material, but with culturally mastered material, because the existence of art in previous classical forms is impossible in post-industrial society with its unlimited potential for serial reproduction and replication.

The Encyclopedia of Literary Movements and Movements provides the following list of features of postmodernism:

1. Cult of the independent personality.

2. Craving for the archaic, for myth, for the collective unconscious.

3. The desire to combine, complement the truths (sometimes polar opposite) of many people, nations, cultures, religions, philosophies, visions of everyday life real life like a theater of the absurd, an apocalyptic carnival.

4. The use of an emphatically playful style to emphasize the abnormality, non-authenticity, and anti-naturalness of the prevailing lifestyle in reality.

5. Deliberately quirky weave different styles narratives (high classicist and sentimental or crudely naturalistic and fabulous, etc.; scientific, journalistic, business, etc. styles are often woven into the artistic style).

6. A mixture of many traditional genre varieties.

7. The plots of the works are easily disguised allusions (hints) to well-known plots of literature of previous eras.

8. Borrowings and overlaps are observed not only at the plot-compositional level, but also at the reverse linguistic level.

9. As a rule, in a postmodern work there is an image of a narrator.

10. Irony and parody.

The main features of postmodern poetics are intertextuality (creating one’s own text from others); collage and montage (“gluing together” equal fragments); use of allusions; attraction to prose of a complicated form, in particular, with a free composition; bricolage (indirect achievement of the author's intention); saturation of the text with irony.

Postmodernism develops in the genres of fantastic parable, confessional novel, dystopia, short story, mythological story, socio-philosophical and socio-psychological novel, etc. Genre forms can be combined, opening up new artistic structures.

Günter Grass (“The Tin Drum”, 1959) is considered the first postmodernist. Outstanding representatives of postmodern literature: V. Eco, H.-L. Borges, M. Pavich, M. Kundera, P. Süskind, V. Pelevin, I. Brodsky, F. Begbeder.

In the second half of the 20th century. genre is activated science fiction, who is in his best examples combined with prognostication (forecasts for the future) and dystopia.

In the pre-war period, existentialism emerged and actively developed after the Second World War. Existentialism (Latin existentiel - existence) is a direction in philosophy and the movement of modernism, in which the source of a work of art is the artist himself, expressing the life of the individual, creating an artistic reality that reveals the mystery of being in general. The sources of existentialism were contained in the works of the German thinker of the 19th century. From Kierkegaard.

Existentialism in works of art reflects the sentiments of the intelligentsia, disillusioned with social and ethical theories. Writers strive to understand the reasons for the tragic disorder human life. The categories of the absurdity of existence, fear, despair, loneliness, suffering, and death come first. Representatives of this philosophy argued that the only thing a person has is his inner world, the right to choose, and free will.

Existentialism is spreading in French (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, etc.), German (E. Nossack, A. Döblin), English (A. Murdoch, V. Golding), Spanish (M. de Unamuno), American (N. Mailer, J. Baldwin), Japanese (Kobo Abe) literature.

In the second half of the 20th century. a “new novel” (“anti-novel”) is developing - a genre similarity to the French modern novel of the 1940-1970s, which arises as a negation of existentialism. Representatives of this genre are N. Sarraute, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor, C. Simon and others.

A significant phenomenon of the theatrical avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century. is the so-called “theater of the absurd”. The dramaturgy of this direction is characterized by the absence of place and time of action, the destruction of plot and composition, irrationalism, paradoxical collisions, and a fusion of the tragic and the comic. The most talented representatives of the “theater of the absurd” are S. Beckett, E. Ionesco, E. Albee, G. Frisch and others.

A noticeable phenomenon in the global process of the second half of the 20th century. became “magical realism” - a direction in which elements of the real and the imaginary, the real and the fantastic, the everyday and the mythological, the probable and the mysterious, everyday existence and eternity are organically combined. Greatest development he purchased in Latin American literature(A. Carpenter, G. Amado, G. García Márquez, G. Vargas Llosa, M. Asturias, etc.). Special role In the works of these authors, myth plays a role, which serves as the basis of the work. Classic example magical realism is the novel by G. García Márquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967), where the history of Colombia and all of Latin America is recreated in mythical-real images.

In the second half of the 20th century. Traditional realism is also developing, acquiring new features. The image of individual existence is combined with historical analysis, which is due to the desire of artists to understand the logic of social laws (G. Bell, E.-M. Remarque, V. Bykov, N. Dumbadze, etc.).

Literary process of the second half of the 20th century. determined primarily by the transition from modernism to postmodernism, as well as the powerful development of intellectual trends, science fiction, “magical realism,” avant-garde phenomena, etc.

Postmodernism was widely discussed in the West in the early 1980s. Some researchers consider the beginning of postmodernism to be Joyce’s novel “Finnegan’s Wake” (1939), others - Joyce’s preliminary novel “Ulysses”, others - American “new poetry” of the 40-50s, others think that postmodernism is not a fixed chronological phenomenon, A spiritual state and “every era has its own postmodernism” (Eco), while others generally speak about postmodernism as “one of the intellectual fictions of our time” (Yu. Andrukhovich). However, most scholars believe that the transition from modernism to postmodernism occurred in the mid-1950s. In the 60-70s, postmodernism covered various national literatures, and in the 80s it became the dominant direction modern literature and culture.

The first manifestations of postmodernism can be considered such movements as the American school of “black humor” (W. Burroughs, D. Warth, D. Barthelme, D. Donlivy, K. Kesey, K. Vonnegut, D. Heller, etc.), the French “new novel" (A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sarraute, M. Butor, C. Simon, etc.), "theater of the absurd" (E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, J. Gonit, F. Arrabal, etc.) .

The most prominent postmodern writers include the English John Fowles (“The Collector,” “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”), Julian Barnes (“A History of the World in Nine and a Half Chapters”) and Peter Ackroyd (“Milton in America”), and the German Patrick Suskind (“ Perfumer"), Austrian Karl Ransmayr (" The Last World"), Italians Italo Calvino ("Slowness") and Umberto Eco ("The Name of the Rose", "Foucault's Pendulum"), Americans Thomas Pynchon ("Entropy", "For Sale No. 49") and Vladimir Nabokov (English-language novels "Pale Fire" etc.), Argentines Jorge Luis Borges (short stories and essays) and Julio Cortazar (“Hopscotch”).

An outstanding place in the history of the newest postmodern novel is occupied by its Slavic representatives, in particular the Czech Milan Kundera and the Serb Milorad Pavic.

A specific phenomenon is Russian postmodernism, presented both by the authors of the metropolis (A. Bitov, V. Erofeev, Ven. Erofeev, L. Petrushevskaya, D. Prigov, T. Tolstaya, V. Sorokin, V. Pelevin), and representatives literary emigration(V. Aksenov, I. Brodsky, Sasha Sokolov).

Postmodernism claims to express a general theoretical “superstructure” contemporary art, philosophy, science, politics, economics, fashion. Today they talk not only about “postmodern creativity”, but also about “postmodern consciousness”, “postmodern mentality”, “postmodern mentality”, etc.

Postmodernist creativity presupposes aesthetic pluralism at all levels (plot, compositional, image, characterological, chronotopic, etc.), completeness of presentation without judgment, reading the text in a cultural context, co-creativity of the reader and writer, mythological thinking, a combination of historical and timeless categories, dialogue , irony.

The leading features of postmodern literature are irony, “quotational thinking,” intertextuality, pastiche, collage, and the principle of play.

In postmodernism, total irony reigns, general ridicule and ridicule from everywhere. Numerous postmodern works of art are characterized by a conscious focus on the ironic comparison of various genres, styles, artistic movements. A work of postmodernism is always a ridicule of previous and unacceptable forms of aesthetic experience: realism, modernism, mass culture. Thus, irony overcomes the serious modernist tragedy inherent, for example, in the works of F. Kafka.

One of the main principles of postmodernism is quotation, and representatives of this direction are characterized by quotation-free thinking. American researcher B. Morrissett called postmodern prose “quotational literature.” Total postmodern quotation replaces elegant modernist reminiscence. An American student anecdote about how a philology student read Hamlet for the first time and was disappointed: nothing special, a collection of common catchphrases and expressions is quite postmodern. Some works of postmodernism turn into books of quotes. Yes, a novel French writer Jacques Rivet "The Young Ladies from A." is a collection of 750 quotes from 408 authors.

The concept of intertextuality is also associated with postmodern quotation thinking. French researcher Yulia Kristeva, who introduces this term into literary circulation, noted: “Any text is built like a mosaic of quotations, any text is a product of the absorption and transformation of some other text.” French semiotician Roland Karaulov wrote: “Every text is an intertext; other texts are present in it at various levels in more or less recognizable forms: texts of the previous culture and texts of the surrounding culture. Each text is a new fabric woven from old quotes.” Intertext in postmodern art is the main way of constructing a text and consists in the fact that the text is constructed from quotes from other texts.

If numerous modernist novels were also intertextual (“Ulysses” by J. Joyce, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, “Doctor Faustus” by T. Mann, “The Glass Bead Game” by G. Hesse) and even realistic works (as proved by Yu. Tynyanov, Dostoevsky’s novel “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” is a parody of Gogol and his works), then it is precisely the achievement of postmodernism with hypertext. This is a text constructed in such a way that it turns into a system, a hierarchy of texts, while simultaneously constituting a unity and a plurality of texts. An example of this is any dictionary or encyclopedia, where each article refers to other articles in the same publication. You can read such text in the same way: from one article to another, ignoring hypertext links; read all articles in a row or move from one link to another, carrying out “hypertext navigation”. Therefore, such a flexible device as hypertext can be manipulated at your discretion. in 1976, the American writer Ramon Federman published a novel called “At Your Discretion.” It can be read at the reader's request, from any place, shuffling unnumbered and bound pages. The concept of hypertext is also associated with computer virtual realities. Today's hypertexts are computer literature that can only be read on a monitor: by pressing one key, you are transported to the hero's backstory, by pressing another, you change the bad ending to a good one, etc.

A sign of postmodern literature is the so-called pastiche (from Italian pasbiccio - an opera composed of excerpts from other operas, a mixture, medley, pastiche). It is a specific version of parody, which changes its functions in postmodernism. Pastiche differs from parody in that now there is nothing to parody, there is no serious object that can be ridiculed. O. M. Freudenberg wrote that only that which is “living and holy” can be parodied. During the 24 hours of non-postmodernism, nothing “lives,” much less “sacred.” Pastiche is also understood as parody.

Postmodern art by its nature is fragmentary, discrete, eclectic. Hence such a characteristic of it as a collage. Postmodern collage may seem new form modernist montage, but it differs significantly from it. In modernism, montage, although it was composed of incomparable images, was nevertheless united into a whole by the unity of style and technique. In a postmodern collage, on the contrary, various fragments of collected objects remain unchanged, not transformed into a single whole, each of them retains its isolation.

Important for postmodernism is the principle of play. Classical moral and ethical values ​​are translated into a playful plane, as M. Ignatenko notes, “yesterday’s classical culture and spiritual values ​​live dead in postmodernity - its era does not live with them, it plays with them, it plays with them, it absorbs them.”

Other characteristics of postmodernism include uncertainty, decanonization, carivalization, theatricality, hybridization of genres, reader co-creation, saturation with cultural realities, “dissolution of character” (complete destruction of the character as a psychologically and socially determined character), attitude to literature as the “first reality” (text does not reflect reality, but creates a new reality, even many realities, often independent of each other). And the most common metaphorical images of postmodernism are the centaur, carnival, labyrinth, library, madness.

A phenomenon of modern literature and culture is also multiculturalism, through which the multi-component American nation naturally realized the precarious uncertainty of postmodernism. A more “grounded” multicult) previously “voiced” thousands of equally unique living American voices of representatives of various racial, ethnic, gender, local and other specific streams. The literature of multiculturalism includes African-American, Indian, “Chicanos” (Mexicans and other Latin Americans, a significant number of whom live in the United States), literature of various ethnic groups inhabiting America (including Ukrainians), American descendants of immigrants from Asia, Europe, literature of minorities of all stripes .

The postmodernist trend in literature was born in the second half of the 20th century. Translated from Latin and French“postmodern” means “modern”, “new”. This literary movement is considered a reaction to the infringement of human rights, the horrors of war and post-war events. It was born from the rejection of the ideas of the Enlightenment, realism and modernism. The latter was popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. But if in modernism the main goal of the author is to find meaning in a changing world, then postmodernist writers talk about the meaninglessness of what is happening. They deny patterns and put chance above all else. Irony, black humor, fragmented narration, mixing of genres - these are the main features characteristic of postmodern literature. Below Interesting Facts And best works representatives of this literary movement.

The most significant works

Contemporary foreign postmodernists deserve special attention. This is Haruki Murakami and his “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1997) - a novel full of mysticism, reflections and memories by the most famous in Russia Japanese writer. “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) amazes even connoisseurs of the genre with its cruelty and black humor. There is a film adaptation of the same name with Christian Bale in the role of the main maniac (dir. Mary Herron, 2000).

Examples of postmodernism in Russian literature are the books “Pale Fire” and “Hell” by Vladimir Nabokov (1962, 1969), “Moscow-Petushki” by Venedikt Erofeev (1970), “School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov (1976), “Chapaev and Emptiness” Victor Pelevin (1996).

Vladimir Sorokin, a multiple winner of domestic and international literary awards, writes in the same vein. His novel Marina's Thirteenth Love (1984) sarcastically illustrates the country's Soviet past. The lack of individuality of that generation is brought to the point of absurdity here. Sorokin’s most provocative work, “Blue Lard” (1999), will turn all ideas about history upside down. It was this novel that elevated Sorokin to the rank of classics of postmodern literature.

Classical influence

Which of these masterpieces of postmodernism in Russian and foreign literature did you miss? Hurry up and add it to your electronic shelf. Enjoy reading and immersing yourself in the world of satire, wordplay and stream of consciousness!

Postmodernism as a literary movement originates at the end of the 20th century. It arises as a protest to the foundations, excluding any restrictions on actions and techniques, erases the boundaries between styles and gives authors absolute freedom creativity. The main vector of development of postmodernism is the overthrow of all established norms, the mixing of “high” values ​​and “low” needs.

The convergence of elite modernist literature, which was difficult for most of society to understand, and primitivism, rejected by intellectuals due to its stereotypes, aimed to get rid of the shortcomings of each style.

(Irene Cheri "Behind the Book")

The exact origins of this style are uncertain. However, its origin is the reaction of society to the results of the era of modernism, the end of World War II, the horrors that occurred in the concentration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the first works include “The Dismemberment of Orpheus” (Ihab Hassan), “Cannibal” (John Hawkes) and “The Scream” (Allen Ginsberg).

Conceptual design and theoretical definition postmodernity received only in the 1980s. This was facilitated, first of all, by the developments of Zh.F. Lyotara. The magazine "October", published in the USA, actively promoted the postmodernist ideas of outstanding representatives of cultural studies, philosophy and literary studies.

Postmodernism in Russian literature of the 20th century

The opposition to avant-garde and modernism, where the mood of the Silver Age was felt, in Russian postmodernism was expressed by a rejection of realism. Writers in their works describe harmony as a utopia. They find a compromise with chaos and space. The first independent response of postmodernism in Russia is “ Pushkin House» Andrey Bitov. However, the reader was able to enjoy it only 10 years after its release, since its publication was banned.

(Andrey Anatolyevich Shustov "Ballad")

Russian postmodernism owes the versatility of its images to domestic socialist realism. He is the one Starting point for reflection and development of characters in books of this direction.

Representatives

The ideas of comparing opposing concepts are clearly expressed in the works of the following writers:

• S. Sokolov, A. Bitov, V. Erofeev - paradoxical compromises between life and death;
• V. Pelevin, T. Tolstaya - the contact between the real and the fantasy;
• Pietsukh - the border between foundations and absurdity;
• V. Aksyonov, A. Sinyavsky, L. Petrushevskaya, S. Dovlatov - denial of any authority, organic chaos, combination of several trends, genres and eras on the pages of one work.

(Nazim Gadzhiev "Eight" (seven dogs, one cat))

Directions

Based on the concepts of “world as text”, “world as chaos”, “author’s mask”, “double move”, the directions of postmodernism, by definition, have no specific boundaries. However, analyzing domestic literature the end of the 20th century, some features stand out:

• The orientation of culture towards itself, and not towards the real world;
• The texts originate from the drains historical eras;
• Ephemerality and illusoryness, artificiality of actions,
• Metaphysical closure;
• Nonselection;
• Fantastic parody and irony;
• Logic and absurdity are combined in a single image;
• Violation of the law of sufficient justification and exclusion of third meaning.

Postmodernism in foreign literature of the 20th century

The literary concepts of the French poststructuralists are of particular interest to the American literary community. It is against this background that Western theories of postmodernism are formed.

(Portrait - collage from a mosaic of works of art)

The point of no return to modernism becomes an article by Leslie Fiedler published in Playboy. The very title of the text blatantly demonstrates the convergence of opposites - “Cross borders, fill ditches.” During the formation of literary postmodernity, the tendency to overcome the boundaries between “books for intellectuals” and “stories for the ignorant” is gaining more and more momentum. As a result of development, certain differences can be seen between foreign works. character traits.

Some features of postmodernism in the works of Western authors:

• Decanonization of official norms;
• Ironic attitude towards values;
• Filling with quotes, short statements;
• Denial of the singular self in favor of the many;
• Innovations in forms and methods of expressing thoughts in the course of changing genres;
• Hybridization of techniques;
• A humorous look at everyday situations, laughter as one of the aspects of life's disorder;
• Theatricality. Playing with plots, images, text and the reader;
• Acceptance of the diversity of life through humility with chaotic events. Pluralism.

The USA is considered the birthplace of postmodernism as a literary movement. Postmodernism is most clearly reflected in creativity American writers, namely the followers of the “school of black humor” represented by Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelemy, John Barth, James Patrick Dunleavy.

Perhaps none of them literary terms has not been subjected to such heated discussion as the term "postmodernism". Unfortunately, widespread use has robbed it of any specific meaning; however, it seems possible to identify three main meanings in which the term is used in modern criticism:

1. works of literature and art created after World War II, not related to realism and made using non-traditional image techniques;

2. works of literature and art, executed in the spirit of modernism, “taken to the extreme”;

3. in an expanded sense - the state of man in the world of “developed capitalism” in the period from the late 50s. The twentieth century to the present day, a time called by the postmodern theorist J.-F. Lyotard “the era of the great meta-narratives of Western culture.”

Myths, from time immemorial, formed the basis of human knowledge and legitimized by generally accepted use - Christianity (and more in a broad sense- faith in God in general), science, democracy, communism (as faith in the common good), progress, etc. - suddenly lost their indisputable authority, and with it, humanity lost faith in their power, in the expediency of everything that was undertaken in the name of these principles. Such disappointment and the feeling of being “lost” led to a sharp decentralization of the cultural sphere Western society. Thus, postmodernism is not only a lack of faith in Truth, leading to misunderstanding and rejection of any existing truth or meaning, but also a set of efforts aimed at discovering the mechanisms of the “historical construction of truths,” as well as ways of hiding them from the eyes of society . The task of postmodernism in the broadest sense is to expose the impartial nature of the emergence and “naturalization” of truths, i.e. ways of their penetration into public consciousness.

If the modernists considered their main task at all costs to support the skeleton of the collapsing culture of Western society, then postmodernists, on the contrary, often happily accept the “demise of culture” and take away its “remains” in order to use it as material for their Game. Thus, numerous images of M. Monroe by Andy Warhol, or Kathy Acker’s rewritten “Don Quixote” are an illustration of the postmodernist trend bricolage, which uses particles of old artifacts in the process of creating new ones, albeit not “original” ones (since nothing new can exist by definition, the author’s task comes down to a kind of game) - the resulting work blurs the lines both between the old and new artifact, and between "high" and "low" art.

Summing up the discussion about the origins of postmodernism, the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsh writes: “What was developed by modernity in the highest esoteric forms, postmodernity implements on a broad front of everyday reality. This gives the right to call postmodernity an exoteric form of esoteric modernity.”

The key concepts used by theorists of the postmodernist movement in literature are “the world as chaos”, “the world as text”, “intertextualism”, “double code”, “author’s mask”, “parody mode of narration”, “failure of communication”, “fragmentation” narratives", "meta-narrative", etc. Postmodernists claim a “new vision of the world”, a new understanding and image of it. The theoretical foundations of poststructuralism are, in particular, a structuralist-deconstructivist complex of ideas and attitudes. Among the techniques used by postmodernists, it is necessary to mention the following: refusal to imitate reality in images (generally accepted is associated with the familiar, and is a great delusion of humanity) in favor of Playing with form, conventions and symbols from the arsenal of “high art”; stopping the pursuit of originality: in the age of mass production, all originality instantly loses its freshness and meaning; refusal to use plot and character to convey the meaning of the work; and, finally, the rejection of meaning as such - since all meanings are illusory and deceptive. Modernism, creating historical background for the movement under discussion, later began to degenerate into absurdism, one of the manifestations of which is considered “black humor.” Since the postmodernist’s approach to the perception of reality is synthetic, postmodernists used the achievements of a variety of artistic methods for their purposes. Thus, an ironic attitude towards everything without exception saves postmodernists, like the once romantics, from fixation on something unchangeable and solid. They, like the existentialists, place the individual above the general, the universal, and the individual above the system. As John Barth, one of the theorists and practitioners of postmodernism, wrote, “the main feature of postmodernism is the global affirmation of human rights, which are more important than any interests of the state.” Postmodernists protest against totalitarianism, narrow ideologies, globalization, logocentrism, and dogmatism. They are principled pluralists, who are characterized by doubt in everything, the absence of firm decisions, since they associate many options for the latter.

Based on this, postmodernists do not consider their theories as final. Unlike the modernists, they never rejected the old, classic literature, but also actively included her methods, themes, and images in their works. True, often, although not always, with irony.

One of the main methods of postmodernism is intertextuality. Based on other texts, quotes from them, and borrowed images, a postmodernist text is created. Connected with this is the so-called “postmodern sensitivity” - one of the foundations of postmodern aesthetics. Sensitivity not so much to life phenomena as to other texts. The postmodernist method of “double code” is associated with texts - mixing, comparing two or more textual worlds, while texts can be used in a parody sense. One of the forms of parody among postmodernists is pbstish (from the Italian Pasticcio) - a mixture of texts or excerpts from them, a medley. The original meaning of the word is an opera from excerpts from other operas. The positive point in this is that postmodernists are reviving outdated artistic methods - baroque, gothic, but everything is dominated by their irony, their boundless doubt.

Postmodernists claim not only to develop new methods of artistic creativity, but also to create a new philosophy. Postmodernists talk about the existence of a “special postmodern sensibility” and a specific postmodern mentality. Currently, in the West, postmodernism is understood as an expression of the spirit of the era in all areas of human activity - art, literature, philosophy, science, politics. Traditional logocentrism and normativity are subjected to postmodern criticism. Using concepts from various areas of human activity, mixing literary themes and images are characteristic features of poststructuralism. Postmodern writers and poets often act as literary theorists, and the theorists of the latter sharply criticize theories as such, contrasting them with “poetic thinking.”

For artistic practice Postmodernism is characterized by such style features, as a conscious orientation towards eclecticism, mosaicism, irony, playful style, parodic reinterpretation of traditions, rejection of the division of art into elite and mass, overcoming the boundary between art and everyday life. If the modernists did not claim to create a new philosophy, much less a new worldview, then postmodernism is incomparably more ambitious. Postmodernists are not limited to experiments in the field of artistic creativity. Postmodernism is a complex, multifaceted, dynamically developing complex of philosophical, scientific-theoretical and emotional-aesthetic ideas about literature and life. The most representative areas of its application are artistic creativity And literary criticism, and the latter is often included integral part into the fabric of a work of art, i.e. A postmodernist writer often analyzes both the works of other authors and his own, and often this is done with self-irony. In general, irony and self-irony are one of the favorite techniques of postmodernism, because for them there is nothing solid that deserves the respect and self-esteem that was inherent in people previous centuries. In the irony of postmodernists, some features of the self-irony of romantics and modern understanding human personality by existentialists who believe that human life is absurd. In the postmodern novels of J. Fowles, J. Barth, A. Robbe-Trillet, Ent. Burgess and others, we find not only a description of events and characters, but also lengthy discussions about the very process of writing this work, theoretical reasoning and ridicule of oneself (as, for example, in the novels “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burges, “Paper People” William Golding).

Introducing theoretical passages into the fabric of the work, postmodern writers often directly appeal to the authority of structuralists, semioticians, and deconstructionists, in particular mentioning Rolland Barthes or Jacques Derrida. This is a mixture of literary theorizing and fiction It is also explained by the fact that writers try to “educate” the reader, declaring that in new conditions it is no longer possible and stupid to write in the old way. “New conditions” involve breaking down old positivist cause-and-effect ideas about the world in general and literature in particular. Through the efforts of postmodernists, literature acquires an essayistic character.

Many postmodernists, in particular the writer John Fowles and theorist Rolland Barthes, are characterized by a tendency to pose political and social problems, as well as a sharp criticism of bourgeois civilization with its rationalism and logocentrism (R. Barthes’s book “Mythologies”, in which modern bourgeois “myths”, i.e. ideology, are deconstructed). Rejecting the logocentrism of the bourgeoisie, as well as the entire bourgeois civilization and politics, postmodernists contrast it with “politics language games" and "linguistic" or "textual" consciousness, free from all external frameworks.

In a broader worldview, postmodernists speak not only about the dangers of all kinds of restrictions, in particular about logocentrism that “narrows” the world, but also about the fact that man is not the center of the cosmos, as, for example, the enlighteners believed. Postmodernists oppose and prefer chaos to space, and this preference is expressed, in particular, in the fundamentally chaotic construction of the work. The only concrete given for them is the text, which allows them to enter any arbitrary meanings. It is in this regard that they talk about the “authority of writing,” preferring it to the authority of logic and normativity. Theorists of postmodernism, in essence, are characterized by an anti-realistic tendency, while postmodern writers widely use realistic methods of depiction along with postmodern ones.

Particularly important in the aesthetics and practice of postmodernists are the problems of the author and the reader. The postmodernist author invites the reader to be an interlocutor. They can even analyze the text along with the implied reader. The author-narrator strives to make the reader feel like his interlocutor. At the same time, some postmodernists strive to use tape recordings for this, and not just text. Thus, John Barth's novel "The One Who Got Lost in the Funhouse" is preceded by the subtitle: "Prose for print, tape recorder and living voice." In the afterword, J. Barth talks about the desirability of using additional communication channels (except for printed text) for an adequate and deeper understanding of the work. That is, he strives to connect oral and written speech.

The postmodernist writer is prone to experimentation in written speech, to identifying its hidden communicative capabilities. The written word, which is only a “trace” of the signified, is characterized by polysemy and semantic elusiveness, therefore it contains within itself the potential to enter into a wide variety of semantic chains and go beyond the traditional linear text. Hence the desire to use nonlinear text organization. Postmodernism uses polyvariance plot situations, interchangeability of episodes using associative rather than linear logical-temporal connections. He can also use the graphic potential of the text, combining texts of different style and semantic load, printed in different fonts, within the framework of one discourse.

Postmodern writers have developed a whole complex artistic means Images. These techniques are based on the desire to depict the real world as little as possible, to replace it with a textual world. In doing so, they rely on the teachings of J. Lacon and J. Derrida, who pointed out that a signifier can only be a “trace” of a real object or even an indication of its absence. In this regard, they said that there is a certain time gap between reading a word and imagining what it means, i.e. We first perceive the word itself as such, and only after some, albeit short time, what this word means. This cult of the signifier, of the word, is deliberately directed by postmodernists against the aesthetics and literature of the realists. And even against the modernists, who did not renounce reality, but only spoke about new ways of modeling it. Even the surrealists considered themselves builders of a new world, not to mention the brave futurists who strived to be “sewage men” and “water carriers” of this new world. For postmodernists, literature and text are an end in itself. They have a cult of the text itself, or, one might say, of “signifiers” that are divorced from their signifieds.

Theorists define one of the most important techniques of postmodern writing as “nonselection,” i.e. arbitrariness and fragmentation in the selection and use of material. With this technique, postmodernists strive to create the artistic effect of unintentional narrative chaos, corresponding to the chaos of the outside world. The latter is perceived by postmodernists as meaningless, alienated, broken and disordered. This technique is reminiscent of surrealist painting methods. However, as already noted, the surrealists still had faith, albeit illusory, in the possibility of changing the world. Artistic techniques postmodernists are aimed at dismantling traditional narrative connections within a work. They deny the usual principles of its organization inherent in realists.

The stylistics and grammar of a postmodern text are characterized by the following features, called “forms of fragmented discourse”:

1. Violation of grammatical norms - the sentence, in particular, may not be fully formed (ellipse, aposiopesis);

2. Semantic incompatibility of text elements, combining incompatible details into a common one (merging tragedy and farce, staging important issues and all-encompassing irony);

3. unusual typographic design of the proposal;

However, despite their fundamental fragmentation, postmodern texts still have a “content center”, which, as a rule, is the image of the author, or more precisely, the “author’s mask”. The task of such an author is to adjust and direct the reaction of the “implicit” reader in the right perspective. The entire communicative situation of postmodernist works rests on this. Without this center, there would be no communication. It would be a complete communication failure. In essence, the author's "mask" is the only one alive, a real hero in a postmodern work. The fact is that other characters are usually just puppets of the author's ideas, devoid of flesh and blood. The author’s desire to enter into a direct dialogue with the reader, even to the point of using audio equipment, can be seen as a fear that the reader will not understand the work. And postmodern writers take the trouble to explain their work to readers. Thus, they act in two roles at once - an artist of words and a critic.

From the above it is obvious that postmodernism is not only a purely literary, but also a sociological phenomenon. It developed as a result of a complex of reasons, including technical progress in the field of communications, undoubtedly influencing the formation of mass consciousness. Postmodernists take part in this formation.

It is also obvious that postmodernists, willingly or unwillingly, strive to erase the line between high and popular culture. At the same time, their works are still aimed at the reader of high artistic culture, for one of the main techniques of postmodernism is the technique of literary allusion, association, paradox, and various kinds of collages. Postmodernists also use the technique " shock therapy", aimed at destroying the usual norms of reader perception, which was formed by cultural tradition: the merging of tragedy and farce, the formulation of important problems and all-encompassing irony.

Conclusions to Chapter 1

The characteristic features of postmodernism as a literary movement are the following:

· quotation. everything has already been said, so By definition, nothing new can happen. The author's task comes down to the play of images, forms and meanings.

· contextuality and intertextuality. " The ideal reader must be well erudite. He must be familiar with the context and grasp all the connotations embedded in the text by the author.

· multi-level text. The text consists of several layers of meaning. Depending on his own erudition, the reader may be able to read information from one or more layers of meaning. This also implies a focus on the widest possible range of readers - everyone will be able to find something for themselves in the text.

· rejection of logocentricity; virtuality. There is no truth, only what is taken for it human consciousness, there is only truth, which is always relative. The same thing characterizes reality: the absence of objective reality in the presence of many subjective worldviews. (It is worth recalling the fact that postmodernism flourished in the era of virtual realities).

· irony. Since truth has been abandoned, everything must be viewed with humor, because nothing is perfect.

· text-centric: everything is perceived as text, as a kind of coded message that can be read. It follows from this that the object of attention of postmodernism can be any area of ​​life.

Thus, Friedrich Schlegel (“On the Study of Greek Poetry”) asserts that “the unconditional maximum of negation, or absolute nothingness, can just as little be given in any representation as the unconditional maximum of affirmation; even at the highest level of the ugly there is something else beautiful."

The true world of postmodernism is a labyrinth and twilight, a mirror and obscurity, simplicity that has no meaning. The law that determines a person’s attitude to the world should be the law of the hierarchy of what is permissible, the essence of which is an instant explanation of the truth based on intuition, which is elevated to the rank of the basic principle of ethics. Postmodernism has not yet said its final word.