Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism toward the "grand narratives" of modernism;rejection of epistemic certainty or the stability of meaning;and sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power. Claims to objectivity are dismissed as naïve realism,with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical,political,and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality,epistemological relativism,moral relativism,pluralism,irony,irreverence,and eclecticism;it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions,stable identity,hierarchy,and categorization.
In philosophy and literature,post-structuralism is a collection of forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism,the intellectual project that preceded it. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism,common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism,as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly,post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established,socially constructed structures.
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Since the 19th century,literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history,moral philosophy,social philosophy,and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning. In the humanities in modern academia,the latter style of literary scholarship is an offshoot of post-structuralism. Consequently,the word theory became an umbrella term for scholarly approaches to reading texts,some of which are informed by strands of semiotics,cultural studies,philosophy of language,and continental philosophy.
Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction,which he utilized in numerous texts,and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disowned the word "postmodernity".
Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasises its own narrative structure in a way that continually reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language,literary form,and story-telling,and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality,life,and art.
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic,philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends,particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism,or,The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).
Ivor Armstrong Richards CH,known as I. A. Richards,was an English educator,literary critic,poet,and rhetorician. His work contributed to the foundations of the New Criticism,a formalist movement in literary theory which emphasized the close reading of a literary text,especially poetry,in an effort to discover how a work of literature functions as a self-contained and self-referential æsthetic object.
Critique is a method of disciplined,systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment,it can also involve merit recognition,and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt. The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority,which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.
Homi Kharshedji Bhabha is an Indian-British scholar and critical theorist. He is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary postcolonial studies,and has developed a number of the field's neologisms and key concepts,such as hybridity,mimicry,difference,and ambivalence. Such terms describe ways in which colonised people have resisted the power of the coloniser,according to Bhabha's theory. In 2012,he received the Padma Bhushan award in the field of literature and education from the Indian government. He is married to attorney and Harvard lecturer Jacqueline Bhabha,and they have three children.
Jonathan Culler is an American literary critic. He was Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His published works are in the fields of structuralism,literary theory and literary criticism.
Warren Montag is a professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles,California. He is known primarily for his work on twentieth-century French theory,especially Althusser and his circle,as well as his studies of the philosophers Spinoza,Locke,and Hobbes.
Linda Hutcheon,FRSC,O.C. is a Canadian academic working in the fields of literary theory and criticism,opera,and Canadian studies. She is a University Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto,where she has taught since 1988. In 2000 she was elected the 117th President of the Modern Language Association,the third Canadian to hold this position,and the first Canadian woman. She is particularly known for her influential theories of postmodernism.
Elleke Boehmer,FRSL,FRHistS is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford,and a Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. She is an acclaimed novelist and a founding figure in the field of Postcolonial Studies,internationally recognised for her research in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. Her main areas of interest include the literature of empire and resistance to empire;sub-Saharan African and South Asian literatures;modernism;migration and diaspora;feminism,masculinity,and identity;nationalism;terrorism;J. M. Coetzee,Katherine Mansfield,and Nelson Mandela;and life writing.
Valentine David Cunningham,OBE,MA,DPhil (Oxon),is a retired professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford,and emeritus fellow in English literature at Corpus Christi College,Oxford.
Geocriticism is a method of literary analysis and literary theory that incorporates the study of geographic space. The term designates a number of different critical practices. In France,Bertrand Westphal has elaborated the concept of géocritique in several works. In the United States,Robert Tally has argued for a geocriticism as a critical practice suited to the analysis of what he has termed "literary cartography".
Jay Clayton is an American literary critic who is known for his pioneering work on the relationship between nineteenth-century culture and postmodernism. He has published influential works on Romanticism and the novel,Neo-Victorian literature,steampunk,hypertext fiction,online games,contemporary American fiction,technology in literature,and genetics in literature and film. He is the William R. Kenan,Jr. Professor of English and Director of the Curb Center for Art,Enterprise,and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.
Niall Lucy was an Australian writer and scholar best known for his work in deconstruction.
Kenneth Womack is an American writer,literary critic,public speaker,and music historian,particularly focusing on the cultural influence of the Beatles. He is the author of the bestselling Solid State:The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles and John Lennon,1980:The Last Days in the Life.
Robert T. Tally Jr. is a professor of English at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space,narrative,and representation,particularly in U.S. and comparative literature,and he is active in the emerging scholarly fields of geocriticism,literary geography,and the spatial humanities. Tally is the editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series established in 2013. The translator of Bertrand Westphal's Geocriticism:Real and Fictional Spaces and the editor of Geocritical Explorations,In addition to his numerous essays on literature,criticism,and theory,Tally has written books on Herman Melville,Edgar Allan Poe,Kurt Vonnegut,and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit,as well as a critical introduction to the work of literary critic and theorist Fredric Jameson.
Ankhi Mukherjee is an academic specialising in Victorian and Modern English literature,critical theory and postcolonial and world literature. In 2015,she was appointed a Professor of English and World Literatures by the University of Oxford.
