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PART I
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1. INTRODUCTION:
POSTMODERNITY AS THE AGE OF NIHILISM?
There are no facts, only interpretations.
(Friedrich W. Nietzsche)
Many scholars, belonging to the most disparate schools of thought, have felt
that we are now standing at the end of the modern era. Postmodernity, meant as a
historical period, has to be distinguished from postmodernism, which is instead a
current of thought. In order to deeply understand postmodernism, it is therefore
necessary to analyse the cultural background that originated it. The epochal
transformation which has led to Postmodernity does not exclusively concern
economical and socio-political changes, such as capitalism and mass society, but entails
a drastic modification of the very conceptions of the Self, of History, and of the
knowledge of Truth, which were formulated during Modernity. Areas of knowledge of
humanistic disciplines that used to be clearly separated, such as philosophy,
historiography, and literary critics, now overlap and blur. A telling example is Hayden
White’s Metahistory (1973), in which literary concepts such as ‘emplotment’ and
‘tropes’ are applied to historiography: history is conceived as a linguistic construction
which cannot avoid a certain degree of contamination with fiction. The status of
history as an objective science is therefore challenged, as the result of a broader
questioning which involves the very concept of “objective knowledge” elaborated
during Modernity.
As Richard Palmer (1977: 363) observes, ‘the revolt against positivism is
gaining ground in psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, and other
disciplines. In literature, there is the rejection of tradition, of coherence and
rationality, of nameability.’ Literature has translated these cultural changes into its
own terms, which are roughly assembled under the umbrella-term ‘postmodernism’.
Indeed, almost every scholar has a different and personal conception of what
“postmodernism” is, according to their own sensibilities and areas of interest. One of
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the main issues that hinder the formulation of a stable and shared definition of this
term is its interdisciplinary character. Indeed, the term “postmodern” has now gained
wide, albeit often improper, usage. It has been applied to architecture, literature,
music, painting, dance, urban planning, photography, and ‘cultural tendencies of every
kind’ (Hassan, 1981: 31). The “use and abuse” of the same label for such disparate
forms of artistic expression is revelatory of a new shared concern, which is this new
change in consciousness which characterizes postmodernity as a new historical era
Postmodernism in literature should not be considered exclusively in terms of
rhetorical devices or literary styles, but rather as a ‘representational strategy, a
hermeneutical attitude’ (Ceserani, 1997: 136). This observation does not mean that
there are no recurrent rhetorical devices or styles; there are indeed a certain amount of
recurrent features that allows critics to label novels as postmodernist, but such
techniques have already been used in the past. What is relevant and new, therefore, is
not the rhetoric device in sé, but the ultimate purpose of its employment.
The most relevant changes in culture that have had notable repercussions on
literature concern the conception of the Self, of History, and of the knowledge of
Truth. Starting with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, and through Hans-
Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, postmodernity and postmodernism
can be seen as having led to the end of ‘master narratives’ (Lyotard, 1978), since
unifying and official narratives are no longer believed and believable. The consequence
is a fragmentation of the Self, a subjective conception of History, and an arbitrary
conception of Truth. The spectre that is haunting Europe – and America – is no
longer Communism, dismissed as a master-narrative, but Nihilism. This philosophical
and cultural background will be described in Part I.
Part II, instead, will be articulated in three chapters, each of them analysing a
different novel from the English author Julian Barnes. The theoretical issues risen in
Part I will be paralleled in the novelistic practice of Part II. The first novel analysed,
Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), can be conceived as a parody of a traditional biography, as
many of the epistemological doubts and uncertainties risen by postmodernism are
actualized in this re-writing of Flaubert’s life. It reflects a new conception of Self. A
History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989), instead, parodies conventional
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historiography. The new conception of history likens the writing of the past to the
creation of any artificial linguistic construct. The last novel analysed, Arthur & George
(2005), is a detective fiction and a historical novel, since it is about the real case against
George Edalji, reputed innocent by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who decides to
investigate. The quest for truth, however, proves an impossible task, and the mystery
remains unsolved.
The conclusion of my thesis is that, although postmodernism bears within
itself a tendency towards nihilism, this cultural phenomenon can ultimately be
considered positive, inasmuch as it rises an awareness in the impossibility of gaining a
complete and objective knowledge of the world, the past, or even ourselves. We are left
with a plurality of limited, partial, and subjective truths which created a polyphony of
voices among which it is easy to discern only chaos and confusion. However,
postmodernism rejects the monological and authoritative Truth, embracing instead
many versions of the truth, equally worth of being listened to. While Nihilism means
that nothing can be known, postmodern pluralism implies that it is possible to know
more, not less, and that it is possible to make a truly aware choice about what to believe
in. The recognition of a plurality of truths is the fundamental pre-requisite of
tolerance.
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2. POSTMODERNISM AND POSTMODERNITY
The modern age seems to have now ended, and this is proved by the fact that
the new postmodern culture bases its identity on the difference with Modernity, while
postmodernism is defined through oppositions to modernism. Indeed, its identity is
chiefly based on negating or opposing certain features generally associated with
Modernity. However, every attempt of historical periodization is, for its very nature,
arbitrary and generalizing. Only with hindsight is it possible to interpret the past,
bridging the gaps and drawing connections between diverse events. Labels as
“Modernity” and “Postmodernity” are just useful tools, necessary to put order in the
otherwise chaotic narration of history-as-events. Hassan indeed observes that
‘[m]odernism and postmodernism are not separated by an Iron Curtain or Chinese
Wall, for history is a palimpsest, and culture is permeable to time past, time present,
and time future’ (1981: 32). This process of labelling is even more complex nowadays,
since there is the perception that ‘such a compact and coherent thing as an “age”, a
Zeigeist, a “system”, a “current situation” no longer exists’ (Jameson in Ceserani, 1997:
104). The mistake scholars are more likely to make is to reduce postmodernism in art
and literature merely to a certain poetics or style rather than regarding it as a cultural
phenomenon which is often confounded with postmodernity (Ceserani, 1997: 28).
In his analysis, Remo Ceserani traces the turning point from Modernity to
Postmodernity back in the post-war 1950s, although the effects of this epochal change
started being felt only during the 1980s, under the shape of concrete and symbolic
events, such as Cernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, and mass
migrations from Africa (1997: 9). The changes that took place in the 1950s involved
the deep structures of our world, our ways of thinking and communicating, and our
very consciousness, which led Pier Paolo Pasolini to talk about an ‘anthropological
revolution’ (in Ceserani, 1997: 10-15). Ceserani compares this shift form modernity to
postmodernity to the great transformations that took place in Europe between the 18
th
and the 19
th
century due to the Industrial Revolution, the political revolutions, which
led to a drastic change in the public and collective cultural models (17-23). This
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epochal socio-political transformation in the 1950s was mirrored in a cultural change
which led to a new cultural phenomenon: postmodernism. Therefore, postmodernism
is not just a poetics of a style, but a ‘representational strategy, a hermeneutical attitude’
(Ceserani, 1997: 136), since the way people conceive themselves, their past, and their
contemporary world has changed hand in hand with the transformations in politics,
society, and economy. In postmodernism, like in any historical period in which our
identity is called into question, a relevant role is played by the notion of History,
which, far from being rejected as by the Avant-Gardes, is re-interpreted and re-
evaluated through the literary filters of manipulation, parody, and nostalgia (Ceserani,
1997: 27).
Consequently, postmodernism should be approached bearing in mind its
cultural and interdisciplinary nature. Ceserani divides postmodernism into four
phases, each of them lasting roughly ten years, even if the meaning of the very concept
“postmodernism” varies greatly during the years, and sometimes even among
contemporary scholars belonging to the very same phase. One of the constant
elements characterizing the four phases is the rebellion against the so-called High
Modernism, namely the great experimental literature that characterised modernism,
which is instead replaced with the advent of mass culture and the abolition of the
distinction between highbrow and lowbrow art (Ceserani, 1997: 30-36).
Postmodernism is therefore ‘both academic and popular, elitist and accessible’
(Hutcheon, 1988: 44). Its very nature is multiple and intrinsically contradictory.
Ihab Hassan (1981) outlines a list of dichotomous terms which establish two
contrastive definitions of modernism and postmodernism. Far from being definitive or
exhaustive, the list still provides a useful starting point for any analysis of
postmodernism. As the prefix post- reveals, postmodernism is ambiguously related to
modernism, as it seems unable to define its own original identity but as the period, be
it cultural or literary, that comes after modernism (Ceserani, 1997: 10). However,
Linda Hutcheon observes that the “post-” does not only mean “after” modernism, but
also “against” and “because of” modernism. The connection existing between these
two cultural phenomena is not only chronological, but also one of contrast and causal
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