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. Time is reduced to presence, the series of discontinuous moments.
Time is no longer purposive, and so there is no destiny, only.
Not to mention a series of overwhelming social dislocations. This course will examine certain experimental fictions we shall call them postmodern without becoming overly obsessed with matters of definition written in a period beginning in the 70 s and continuing to the present. Using a rhizomatic critical frame suggested in Gilles Deleuze s Dialogues , we will see how these fictions deterritorialize various assumptions about reading and writing texts. If on a winter s night a traveler, providing a general overview of many of the issues. That such attitudes, to whatever extent they may be evidenced in these fictions, may be shockingly irresponsible will be one of the more problematic issues of this course.