Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas , Zadie Smith’s NW , and the Metamodern
2018; Routledge; Volume: 99; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0013838x.2018.1510611
ISSN1744-4217
Autores Tópico(s)Narrative Theory and Analysis
ResumoThis article examines David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Zadie Smith's NW (2012) against recent theories of the post-postmodern. It argues that although both texts can be seen to be gesturing towards a reconstructive relationship with the absolute cynicism and scepticism of postmodernism neither represents a sustainable discontinuity with that late-twentieth-century mode. In this context, the essay challenges readings of Mitchell and Smith as representative of a metamodernism as that term is understood by critics such as Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, David James and Urmila Seshagiri. By referring to models suggested by Jean-Francois Lyotard, it suggests that the metamodern, as exemplified in the cases of Mitchell and Smith, represents a subsection of the postmodern rather than a clear break with it.
Referência(s)