Instr: Naz Bulamur
Office: CRT 507; 229-6022
e-mail: abulamur@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MW 2:00pm-:15pm; CRT 368
Fiction constitutes a way of looking at the world. ... Realistic fiction presupposed chronological time as the medium of a plotted narrative, an irreducible individual psyche as the subject of its characterization, and, above all, the ultimate, concrete reality of things as the object and rationale of its description. In the world of post-realism, however, all of these absolutes have become absolutely problematic.
The contemporary writer--the writer who is acutely in touch with the life of which he is part--is forced to start from scratch: Reality doesn't exist, time doesn't exist, personality doesn't exist. God was the omniscient author, but he died; now no one knows the plot, and since our reality lacks the sanction of a creator, there's no guarantee of the authenticity of the received version. Time is reduced to presence, the series of discontinuous moments. Time is no longer purposive, and so there is no destiny, only chance. Reality is, simply, our experience, and objectivity is, of course, an illusion. ... In view of these annihilations, it should be no surprise that literature, also, does not exist--how could it? There is only reading and writing, which are things we do, like eating and making love, to pass the time, ways of maintaining a considered boredom in the face of the abyss.
Not to mention a series of overwhelming social dislocations.
Ronald Sukenick, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969)
This course will examine postmodern fictions written in a period beginning in the 60's continuing to the present. We could also call such texts as 'metafictions'--that is, texts which foreground, even insist, on their textual status. Reading Calvino, Federman, and Olsen, we will examine how the novels lay bare their own fictionality and challenge our traditional reading strategies. These texts also blur boundaries between story telling and truth telling. The works of Federman, Olsen, Cha, and Maso imply that history, like fiction, is not objective, and that both storytellers and historians narrate selective accounts of the past. Autobiography, story, theory, and history are merged in their experimental texts. The study of postmodern fictions will enable us to explore how contemporary writers use innovative narrative techniques to reflect on gender/racial ideologies and narrate historical events such as the Holocaust and Japanese occupation of Korea. With Cha, Maso, and Morrison, we will also ask whether women 'do' 'postmodernism' differently and discuss how women experiment with fiction. Finally, we will question the legitimacy of postmodernism in our contemporary society in relation to The Savage Girl. Essays from postmodern theorists-Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Helene Cixous, Bell Hooks—will compliment and enrich our discussion of experimental fictions.
