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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Postmodernism'

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Published: 4 June 2021

Last updated: 11 March 2023

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1

Lemay, Suzanne. "Carbone 14, des traces postmodernes dans le théâtre québécois." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0003/MQ38136.pdf.

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2

Cagney-Watts, Helen. "The contradictions of postmodernism : a feminist critique of postmodernism." Thesis, University of Hull, 1991. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:6975.

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3

Viires, Piret. "Postmodernism eesti kirjanduskultuuris /." Tartu : Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2006. http://dspace.utlib.ee/dspace/bitstream/10062/763/5/viirespiret.pdf.

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4

Sawada, Chikako. "Muriel Spark's postmodernism." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1561/.

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This study explores the shifting notions of postmodernism developed through Muriel Spark’s fiction, and thereby clarifies this artist’s own postmodernism. I use Jean-François Lyotard’s definition of the notion in his The Postmodern Condition (1979), that there is no grand narrative, as my starting point, and deploy various postmodernist theories, which can illuminate Spark’s art and can in turn be illuminated by her art, in my arguments. Throughout the thesis, I focus on two of Spark’s most important themes as crucial keys to understanding her postmodernism: the theme of individual subjectivity and the theme of the interplay of life and art. The thesis begins with the claims Spark makes for her individuality and her individual art through the voice of “I”. Chapter I considers issues about being a woman and an artist, which Spark raises around the narrator-heroine of a fictional memoir, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988). Here I present this heroine as a definition of the strength of Sparkian women who liberate themselves by practicing art. Chapter II discusses Loitering with Intent (1981), a fictional autobiography of a fictional woman novelist, alongside Spark’s own autobiography and her various biographical works. This section illustrates Spark’s notion of the “author” in relation to the “work” - and an author in control in her sense - by investigating the dynamic interplay of life and art in the form of this novel. Chapter III analyses The Driver’s Seat (1970), the novel which most shockingly elucidates the postmodern condition according to Spark and demonstrates her postmodernist narrative strategies. Her concern with the crisis of the “subject” in the world in its postmodern phase is observed in the figure of the heroine, a woman who has tried and failed to be an author in control. I argue that Spark here theorises the notion of subject, by providing her own version of the psychoanalytical “death drive” and also represents the Lacanian real as the unfigurable with this figure. Chapter IV and Chapter V follow the developments of Spark’s discussion of the crisis of the “subject” in two of her later novels. Chapter IV concentrates on the theme of Otherness in Symposium (1990). Chapter V discusses Reality and Dreams (1996), in which Spark pursues the theme of excess and opens up the contradictions inherent in this notion to bring about a new philosophy of life by art as excess.

5

Yu, Kit-yee Flora, and 余潔儀. "Postmodernism and photography." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31950152.

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6

Barry, Marie Porterfield. "Lesson 22: Postmodernism." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/art-appreciation-oer/24.

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7

Chinna, Stephen. "Politics, performance, postmodernism." Thesis, Chinna, Stephen (1995) Politics, performance, postmodernism. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 1995. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/52823/.

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In debates concerning the concepts of modernism and modernity, postmodernism and postmodernity, a recurring critique has been the denial of a political function for postmodernism due to its presumed lack of any effective means of intervention in political processes - chiefly through the putative existence of a gap between theory and practice. It will be argued that this critique is based on the acceptance of modernist criteria for what constitutes political effectivity as well as an endorsement of that dualism which sets up a fundamental separation between theory and practice. This thesis will argue that both postmodern performance and politics resist modernist appeals to metanarratives of totality and the centre, along with the dialectic and dualistic metaphysics which underpin these modernist criteria. This will require an interrogation of the polarising tendencies of both modernist politics and theatre which sought either to separate or collapse the incessant binaries of performance practice - such as those between mind and body, process and product, and representation and reality. It will be proposed that the deconstructive strategies of postmodernism serve to subvert this either/or dualism and set up in its place a performance model which acknowledges the space of play between the poles of these binary oppositions. In short, the thesis will explore the relationships between politics, performance and postmodernism, specifically in order to argue that performance is the paradigm for postmodernism, and that postmodern politics and postmodern performance share a deconstructive mode of operation: a meansoriented process towards specific objectives, not final resolutions. The postmodern will be defined as a performance model – like deconstruction, endlessly deferring unequivocal meaning and final closure. It is the provisional and contingent strategies of performance which set the model for the postmodern. In turn, it will be argued that postmodern performance practices are not only more relevant than modernist political theatre forms in presenting political actualities as well as potentialities, but that they are also more accurate "representations" of the political and ontological "realities" of the late-twentieth century. The thesis is in three parts. Part One analyses the relationships between modernism and postmodernism, focusing on the largely negative constructions of the postmodern and in turn, defining a postmodernism that evades the modernist criteria of its critics. The epistemologies and politics of both modernism and postmodernism are addressed - the former in terms of its adherence to a narrative model based on neo- Aristotelian prescriptions; the latter in terms of its performance characteristics - which work to evade entrapment in the dialectic. Part Two addresses the concept of performance - firstly in modernist theatre, then in the diverse avant-gardes, and finally how it is defined in the postmodern. Major forms of Western modernist theatre are addressed - with a focus on Naturalism, and Dada - leading to the neo-avant-garde performance art of the 1960s to 1980s. It is argued that underpinning all of these forms is entrapment in a hierarchised binary model. Furthermore, it is argued that all of these avant-garde forms were, and are, eventually co-opted and absorbed due to their acceptance of the dialectic that necessarily demands an anti-movement. Part Three first focuses on modernist political theatre in terms of its embracing of the dialectic and its inherent didacticism, and then on postmodern performance - and the attacks on it (as with postmodernism in general) for its seeming lack of an overt political stance, or programme. It is argued that the criteria used to define the political in these attacks are modernist criteria, and are no longer applicable to the postmodern. A major focus in this section is on the role of the spectator (in both modernist and postmodernist performance). In the final chapter, the issue of a postmodern ethics will be addressed. It will be argued that it is the postmodern definition of aesthetics as differance which deconstructs universalist appeals to reason, truth, and justice - as well as a rigid subject/object dichotomy. The thesis concludes with a reinforcement of the argument: performance is the paradigm for postmodernism and its political practices. That is to say, performance is a deconstructive mode of do-ing, constantly aware of the tendency to lose self-reflexivity and seek closure rather than embrace the endless deferral of differance.

8

Warden, Lisa Todd. "The paradox of postmodernism." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0011/NQ34708.pdf.

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9

Hippolyte, Idara. "Jamaican dancehall and postmodernism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.433373.

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10

Tam, Pui-kam Ada, and 譚沛錦. "Postmodernism and popular culture." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B26902448.

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11

Abdullah, Sarena. "Postmodernism in Malaysian art." Phd thesis, Department of Art History and Film Studies, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9457.

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12

Nygren, Anna, and Johanna Berg. "There is something about postmodernism." Thesis, Stockholm University, School of Business, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-6201.

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Förändring och utveckling råder på media - och reklammarknaden. Ökad gränslöshet och tillgänglighet skapar å ena sidan nya kommunikativa vägar, å andra sidan en medveten och kritisk konsument. Aktörerna på marknaden tvingas finna nya sätt att tränga igenom informationsbruset och nå ut med sina budskap. Detta kräver nya kommunikativa uttryck, former och mönster. TV som kommunikationskanal har fler uttrycksmöjligheter. Reklamfilm kan via ljud och rörlig bild kommunicera sådant andra medier inte förmår. Det förekommer en förflyttning av fokus och stil inom reklamfilm. Produktinformation och kännetecken är inte längre det väsentliga i reklambudskapet. Fokus riktas istället mot imaginära och emotionella värden som tar avstånd från kärnproduktens funktion, egenskap och särdrag. Denna nya form av uttryck och innebörd kan ses som ett resultat av den utveckling media – och reklammarknaden undergår. Den yngre generationen tilltalas av nya värden och den aktuella formen av reklamfilm är ett sätt att sticka ut från mängden av budskap. I denna studie undersöker vi bakgrunden till den nya formen av reklamfilm samt hur unga människor uppfattar reklamfilm. Mer specifikt studerar vi om unga människor uppfattar och tilltalas av reklamfilm som är typisk postmodern. Våra resultat visar att unga människor uppmärksammar och tilltalas i större utsträckning av reklamfilm som uppvisar postmodernistiska drag. Postmoderna egenskaper som; fragmentering, hyperreality och fokus på stil och utseende på bekostnad av substans och innehåll visade sig vara särskilt framträdande och betydande enligt vårt empiriska material. Våra resultat visar även på värdet av att reklamfilmen ska vara annorlunda, oväntad, anspela på ideal verklighet samt skapa en känsla. Innebörden av våra resultat tenderar till att postmodernism bör betraktas som ett verktyg i kommunikationen mot unga konsumenter. Postmoderna faktorer tilltalar och uppmärksammas av den yngre generationen och kan därmed fungera som ett kommunikativt vägval med syfte att sticka ut i informationsbruset.

13

Charles, Alec. "James Joyce, modernism and postmodernism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.284287.

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14

Brown, Alistair. "Demonic fictions : cybernetics and postmodernism." Thesis, Durham University, 2008. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2465/.

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Whilst demons are no longer viewed as literal beings, as a metaphor the demon continues to trail ideas about doubt and truth, simulation and reality, into post- Enlightenment culture. This metaphor has been revitalised in a contemporary period that has seen the dominance of the cybernetic paradigm. Cybernetics has produced technologies of simulation, whilst the posthuman (a hybrid construction of the self emerging from cultural theory and technology) perceives the world as part of a circuit of other informational systems. In this thesis, illustrative films and literary fictions posit a connection between cybernetic epistemologies and metaphors of demonic possession, and contextualise these against postmodern thought and its narrative modes. Demons mark a return to pre-Enlightenment models of knowledge, so that demonic (dis)simulation can be seen to describe our encounters with artificial others and virtual worlds that reflect an uncertainly constituted and unstable self. By juxtaposing Renaissance notions of the demon with Donna Haraway's posthuman "cyborg," psychoanalytic demons with the robots of the science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956), and Descartes' "deceiving demon" with Alan Turing's artificial intelligence test, I propose that the demon proves a fluid, multivalent trope that crosses historical and disciplinary boundaries. The demon raises epistemological questions about the relationship between reality, human psychology, and the representation of both in other modes, particularly narrative fictions. When this framework is applied to seminal science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [both 1968]), conventional readings of cyborgs as monstrous Others have to be revised. These fictions are engaged with cybernetic technologies with an epistemological rather than ontological concern, and consequently lend themselves to the kind of sceptical doubt about reality that characterises postmodern thought. Contrary to Descartes, who sees foundational truth through the deceptions of his "deceiving demon," later films like Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999) use the motif of cybernetic technologies to highlight the inescapability of the postmodern condition of the hyperreal. Finally, however, literary fictions like Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (1988) and A.S. Byatťs A Whistling Woman (2002) and Possession (1990) draw attention to their narrative mechanisms through metafiction, and set the creation of literary meaning against computer-generated texts. Consequently, they defy both the determinism of cybernetic sciences, and the postmodern pretence that the "real" is irrecoverably evasive.

15

Cheng, Kam-man Kammy, and 鄭錦文. "Postmodernism and Hong Kong culture." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31950164.

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16

Tsang, Tak-sing, and 曾德成. "Postmodernism in China's cultural modernization." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29939136.

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17

Chan, Yat-ping, and 陳逸屏. "Postmodernism: a study of dance." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29938594.

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18

Parsons, Paul H. "Postmodernism and the English Puritans." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2000. http://www.tren.com.

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19

Heise, Ursula K. "Chronoschisms : time, narrative and postmodernism /." [S.l.] : Cambridge, 1997. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37529958k.

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20

Cheng, Kam-man Kammy. "Postmodernism and Hong Kong culture." [Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong], 1991. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B13018838.

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21

Blumenstock, James A. "A postmodern approach to postmodernism a survey and evaluation of contemporary evangelical responses to postmodernism /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2001. http://www.tren.com.

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22

Mauri, Luján Anna. "La postmodernidad como dominante cultural y fenómeno sociológico: las propuestas estéticas contemporáneas." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/672101.

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Algo tan aparentemente inofensivo como un prefijo -"post"- ha revolucionado el debate cultural de la pasada década de los años ochenta al asociarse a la raíz "modern", una de las más privativas de nuestro siglo. Juntos han espoleado casi todos los ámbitos de las ciencias sociales, planteando esta pregunta como una letanía: ¿Existe un "después" para el proyecto de la modernidad?. Esta sociedad lingüística, que cuenta ya con una breve historia de su gestación, desarrollo e instauración, ha dado lugar a variados términos y a variadas acepciones de estos. En esta investigación, centrada en el ámbito de las artes plásticas, el término utilizado es el de "postmodernismo" (Capítulo 1). Pero no es posible crear un modelo verosímil de este si no es a partir de su oposición con los términos modernismo, vanguardia y tardomodernismo. El término "vanguardia", por su naturaleza "histórica", se presenta en la investigación como el referente más eficaz para ensayar una definición del "postmodernismo" insertada en la diacronía (Capítulo 2). El termino modernismo, por su parte, facilita una definición insertada en la sincronía, a través del análisis, desde la perspectiva del "postmodernismo", de dos de sus conceptos constitutivos en el ámbito de las artes plásticas: la historia y la autonomía (Capítulo 3). Todos estos pasos previos son imprescindibles para plantearse un ensayo interpretativo sobre la manifestación del postmodernismo en las artes plásticas cuya hipótesis principal es la siguiente: el postmodernismo genera objetos metaculturales para la representación de la postmodernidad; o dicho de otro modo, la interpretación de las artes plásticas en la década de los ochenta no puede tener lugar sin hacer referencia a la constelación alegórica del postmodernismo: la muerte del sujeto y de la razón en el arte. Estas alegorías marcan hasta tal punto la interpretación de las artes plásticas, que estas no tienen identidad autónoma.

23

Smith, Benjamin Ashley. "Postmodernism and the theory of significance." [Pensacola, Fla.] : University of West Florida, 2007. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/WFE0000014.

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24

Muggleton, David. "Crossover counterculture : postmodernism and spectacular style." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364366.

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25

Franz, Mark L. "Motion graphics : engaging viewers thorugh postmodernism." Virtual Press, 2007. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1365179.

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This creative project explores engaging patrons of art by exploiting some of the postmodern methods employed in contemporary society. The methods discussed include appropriation, pastiche, and the negation of history. These techniques are used to engage viewers in conversation by their use in Motion Graphics; the medium in which the creative project artwork was produced. Topics also include: why it is important for an artist to engage viewers, how to do so, and a short history of postmodern philosophy.
Department of Art

26

Gower, Ralph Ronald. "Postmodernism, children's thinking and religious education." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.428206.

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27

Gough, Brendan. "Postmodernism, social psychology and everyday life." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.359068.

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28

Pirolini, Alessandro. "Preston Sturges : between classicism and postmodernism." Thesis, University of London, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.418303.

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29

Tsoulou, Martha. "After postmodernism : contemporary theory and fiction." Thesis, Brunel University, 2014. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/13753.

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There is a consensus today that we have witnessed the end of postmodernism in both fiction and theory. Due to contemporary fiction’s break with postmodernism being recent, little research has been done to outline the parameters of what exactly this break entails and its relationship to theory and current socio-political issues. The aim of this thesis is to attempt to differentiate between postmodernist fiction and contemporary fiction that was produced from the late 90’s up to today, outline its main characteristics and suggest alternative ways theory may be used to critically analyse fiction. We will be looking at how Habermas’s, Agamben’s, Žižek’s and Badiou’s theories, as well as, a reconsideration of some of Derrida’s and Baudrillard’s theories, can help elucidate certain aspects of contemporary fiction and vice versa. Some of the novelists that will be considered in this discussion are Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Douglas Coupland, J G Ballard, Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe and Michel Houellebecq due to their close association with postmodernism and its aftermath. The thesis is divided thematically in five chapters. In the first chapter we will be discussing the impact of 9/11 on contemporary fiction in relation to Derrida’s, Habermas’s, Baudrillard’s and Žižek’s responses to the attacks. The second chapter is concerned with notions of reality and its representations in contemporary fiction. It will be discussed how they differ from Baudrillard’s conceptualisation of hyperreality during postmodernity in light of Badiou’s and Žižek’s theory mainly. The realist/antirealist debate will also be addressed. The third chapter is a consideration of notions of subjectivity in both contemporary theory and fiction and how they may be said to differ from playful, schizophrenic representations of the subject during postmodernity. The fourth chapter is concerned with the return of the political in both theory and fiction after the supposed apoliticality of the postmodern novel, which we will also be addressing. The final chapter is an investigation of the re-emergence of the religious in contemporary culture, including the novel, which proves that the death of meta-narratives may not have been that final after all.

30

Schutz, Jeffrey J. "Philosophical and apologetic issues in postmodernist epistemology." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1997. http://www.tren.com.

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31

Cheng, Christina Miu Bing. "Postmodernism art and architecture in Hong Kong /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 1991. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31949861.

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32

Zafar, Yasmeen. "Feminism, psychoanalysis and postmodernism : bridging the discourses." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42051.

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This paper seeks to analyze the inter-relationship of three theories: feminism, psychoanalysis and postmodernism. It attempts to do this by focussing on the issue of sex crimes; how each theory provides an explanation for the phenomenon of sex crimes. It goes on to examine each theory in more detail, using their position on sex crimes as a starting point to a discussion of their theoretical foundations. It acknowledges the major writers in the field and notices the current trend of analysis to be that of merger between the theories. The paper examines both the feasibility and validity of such a merger.
Law, Peter A. Allard School of
Graduate

33

Tracey, Thomas. "David Foster Wallace : American literature after postmodernism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.543596.

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34

Cheng, Christina Miu Bing, and 鄭妙冰. "Postmodernism: art and architecture in Hong Kong." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31949861.

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35

Law, Wing-mei, and 羅詠美. "The challenges to historical time in postmodernism." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29813712.

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36

Cheung, Man-wai, and 張文薀. "Postmodernism in the works of Tom Stoppard." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B26758635.

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37

Gilbert, Jeremy. "After postmodernism : cultures, community and radical democracy." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313970.

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This thesis sets out to elaborate a theoretical framework for Cultural Studies which specifically informed by post-Marxist theory and committed to a radical democratic politics of community.The late work of Raymond Williams is taken as exemplifying Marxist cultural theory and is re-read in the light of Laclau and Mouffe's deconstruction of the Marxist tradition. As a result, a framework is offered for the analysis of 'cultural' formations which seeks to preserve Williams' concern with rigorously assessing the politicality of such formations in a manner appropriate to a radical democratic politics. The thesis then turns its attention to key areas of debate and ambiguity within postMarxist cultural theory. In particular, the debate over the epistemological status of psychoanalysis is addressed. This debate is seen to give rise to an important set of questions regarding the relationships between deconstruction, psychoanalysis and historicism and their relative implications for understanding the nature of subjectivity andsociality. A number of different models of individual and social processes of identification are examined. It is argued that it is necessary to maintain and deploy models which are capable of understanding such processes as forms of irreducibly social experience in ways which models grounded in psychoanalysis cannot do, but without simply discarding the legacy of psychoanalysis altogether. The final section of the thesis applies the theoretical frameworks thus far developed to the study of recent British culture. In the first of these studies, the phenomenon of 'Britpop' is understood as deeply bound up with the success of New Labour and its attempted mobilisation of an inclusive yet socially conservative model of both British identity and political participation. The second study contrasts Britpop /Blairism with contemporary 'dance' culture, characterised as it is by radically democratic tendencies and the absence of any hegemonic project.

38

Grassel, Robert. "Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Examining Epochal Markers." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2005. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/758.

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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf
B.A.
Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
Art History

39

Sonnet, Esther. "The politics of representation : modernism, feminism, postmodernism." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1993. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11076/.

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This study is an investigation into the shifts in ways of knowing which have been subsumed under the label of postmodernism. More specifically, it is concerned to relate theories of Postmodernism to the construction of film as an object of knowledge and to feminism's place in a Modernist/postmodernist divide. Chapter One offers an examination of competing readings of the nature of aesthetic Modernism drawing primarily upon debates on Modernist epistemological legitimation advanced by Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Franicois Lyotard. Chapter Two utilizes Lyotard's notion of Modernism as knowledge legitimated by the grands recits of speculation and emancipation to propose a understanding of the conceptual parameters of avant-garde film Modernism. Chapter Three examines Lyotard's view that postmodernism is acondition of cultural 'incredulity towards metanarratives' by introducing feminist interventions into avant-garde Modernism: it is argued that feminist deconstructionist film plays a crucial role in delegitimating film practices brought under the metanarrative of speculation by challenging the non-gendered mode of spectatorial knowledge claimed for them. Chapter Four extends postmodernist critiques of 'totalizing' discourses to the grand recit of liberty, and advances the view that feminist deconstructiorism, and related psychoanalytical theories of female subjectivity/spectatorship, are in turn delegitimated for instrumentalizing and homogenizing the feminist 'social bond'. Chapter Five considers Lyotard's propositions for a fragmentation of Modernist models of the 'social bond' in relation to his proposal for a theory of resistance defined in terms of 'dissensual paralogy'. Within the context of cultural and technological shifts in contemporary image-culture, the usefulness of a theory of postmodernism which remains embedded within Modernist epistemological differentiations is questioned. A proposal for a theory of film postmodernism which dispenses with the avantgarde/mass culture binary is suggested as a prerequisite for clearing a theoretical space for a politics of resistance which is not founded on instrumentalized and homogeneous spectators. Chapter Six extends this to consider how postmodernist notions of the dissolution of the 'self' and the fragmentation of 'social bond' relate to feminist emancipatory claims. A parallel to the theoretical 'loss' of Modernist foundationalisms; is offered by drawing on black and lesbian perspectives on film spectatorship to argue for theories of film meaning which reflect a multiplicity of modes of spectatorial positioning. The study concludes with an assessment of feminism's place in critiques of totalizing discourses and argues for local contextual rather than metanarrative validations of film as critical discourse.

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Hackett, Jonathan Michael. "Towards the postmodern : Pynchon, psychoanalysis and postmodernism." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.442438.

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Farahbakhsh, Alireza. "Postmodernism in T. S. Eliot's major poems." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.402676.

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McNab, Christopher. "Alterity, religion, and the metaphysics of postmodernism." Thesis, Aberystwyth University, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1de393b6-89b1-46ad-91ba-8d5e8ab34276.

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Postmodernism privileges figures of negativity, figures defined under such terms as alterity, absence, aporia and the Other. The ostensible function of these tropes is the disruption of logocentrism through the introduction of the indeterminate. However, by arguing that the 'metaphysics of presence' is all that exists in social communication, alterity can be reinterpreted as a metanarrative trope whose language and function repeat attributes previously defined by theology. Much postmodern fiction, with its indeterminate style, acts like a negative theology by systematically negating other thematic presences in the text in order to present alterity itself as a dominant with final jurisdiction over all areas of language and being. Because of its dominance, this alterity comes to exercise conceptual powers akin to the metaphysical expressions of the divine: ineffability, infinity, omnipotence, atemporality, ethical force. The religious and mystical references that often crowd postmodern fiction, therefore, support alterity's shift from the aporetic to the transcendent. By examining metaphysical alterity in postmodern treatments of character, death, allegory and history, I argue that postmodern literature is a limited theological discourse that questions postmodern pluralism and populism. The reified negative has such a privilege in postmodernism that it creates an aporetic politics that is only capable of representing otherness rather than others. I suggest that this is a 'natural' philosophy for late-capitalism in that it refuses broad social praxis in favour of a value-free market and anti-foundational argument. I set aside Salman Rushdie as someone whose fiction manages to use metaphysics and fragmentation in a non-transcendental manner. Rushdie locates meaning in the dialogue between the metaphysical and the material, rather than an abstracted absence and presence, and thus he is able to portray metanarratives without transcendence or dogmatism. As such, Rushdie shows that postmodernism's insistence on alterity fafls to engage meaningfully with social conditions.

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Campbell, Catherine. "Hearing the silence a legacy of postmodernism." Thèse, Université de Sherbrooke, 2003. http://savoirs.usherbrooke.ca/handle/11143/2735.

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Although there would seem to be a paradox involved, the practice of examining silence through literature actually has a long and varied history. There are examples to be found in the work of Malarmé and the other symbolists of the 19th century. Views of silence change from one society to another and one age to the next. Where Canadian and Québécois postmodernism are concerned there is a difference in the treatment of silence in early postmodern novels and its treatment in later postmodern novels by the same authors. Early novels treat silence as a fascinating albeit frightening alternative to language which has been disappointing. In later novels language and its effects are still under scrutiny but silence is viewed as more of a companion to language than an alternative. Along with the shift in the view of silence, there is a change in narrative style from early to late postmodern novels. Early novels were marked by fragmentation and discontinuity. Later novels show a distinct return to a more coherent storyline. Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter (1976) and The English Patient (1993) provide the clearest example of these changes. Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues provides a clear illustration postmodern styles and concerns. Although the difference between his early and later work is not as extreme as some, his novels, nonetheless, demonstrate the same sort of evolution of postmodernism. Nicole Brossard brings a decidedly feminist perspective to the mix. The transition from Le Désert mauve (1987) to Baroque d'aube (1995) shows the previously mentioned changes but her feminist agenda places greater emphasis on the effect language and silence have on our experience of"reality." The view of silence and language offered by Obasan (1981) is coloured by Joy Kogawa's Asian heritage. The Rain Ascends , on the other hand, reinforces the view that enforced silence can only be seen as negative. In all of these novels, the return to a more coherent storyline is accompanied by a heightened awareness of the act of writing and its consequences.

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Campbell, Catherine. "HHearing the silence : a legacy of postmodernism." Sherbrooke : Université de Sherbrooke, 2003.

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Cheng, Miu-bing Christina. "Postmodernism : art and architecture in Hong Kong /." [Hong Kong] : University of Hong Kong, 1991. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B13031351.

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Dickson, Samuel John. "The persistence of postmodernism and the sixties." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13374.

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This thesis argues that postmodernism is best understood as an aftereffect, extension or reaction to the 'sixties'. However, what this term designates is not a period of calendar time coterminous with its namesake decade but a set of historical conditions whose period logic doesn't 'end' until the early 1970s. The textual features of postmodernism are interpreted as a response to the sixties as a historical moment of the possibility, and subsequent foreclosure, of a particular mode of radical emancipatory politics. Each chapter identifies the postmodern form as a register of this foreclosure, with cinematic and literary texts ranging from the sixties to present day. Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up is located as a ‘primal’ text for how this political moment is recurrently figured as an intermedial allegory in future postmodernist texts, including his own subsequent film Zabriskie Point (1971) and early features by American director, Brian de Palma (including Woton’s Wake [1962] and Greetings (1968). Joseph McElroy’s novels Hind’s Kidnap (1969) and Lookout Cartridge (1974) are analysed for their unique literary representation of the mass-mediated world of the sixties through an anti-allegorical poetics. Instead, McElroy experiments with a new ‘realist’ means of portraying the immense cognitive activity involved in apprehending and thinking the complexity of the new global economy. Two chapters trace the changes in Thomas Pynchon’s recent fiction into a more explicitly political ‘late style’. The first of these focuses on his ‘California Trilogy’ (The Crying of Lot 49 [1966], Vineland [1990] and Inherent Vice [2009]), where the repeated portrayal of the sixties as a site of failure asserts the period’s unfinished relation to the present. The second chapter explores the use of violence and genre in his 2006 epic Against The Day, arguing that its extensive use of myth, when situated alongside Walter Benjamin’s idea of ‘divine violence’, signifies utopian desire by way of textual exhaustion. The final chapter features an allegorical reading of David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007) as a registration of the transition from the turmoil of the sixties into a melancholic period of the seventies. This period logic is repeated in its own context of the late 2000s which are marked by numerous declarations of the ‘death’ of cinema, a transition locatable in the feature’s own hybrid form of filmic and digital cinematography. In each chapter, the political significance of postmodernism as the registration of lost utopian possibilities, and the perceived persistence of this closure, is allegorised at sites of inter-medial conjuncture. Within each of these meetings of separate media, including written text, photography, cinema and digital images, is an auto-referential, inter-medial allegory whose recurrent content is the anxiety attendant to the lost possible futures since the end of the sixties; the persistence of postmodernism.

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Allen, Claire. "Beyond postmodernism : London fiction at the millenium." Thesis, University of Northampton, 2010. http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/8845/.

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Allan, Cherie P. "Playing with picturebooks: Postmodernism and the postmodernesque." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2010. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/41757/1/Cherie_Allan_Thesis.pdf.

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This thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children’s literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts. The thesis utilises the theoretical contributions by, in particular, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, and Fredric Jameson as well as reference to children’s literature studies. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children’s literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis. This study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts. The three analysis chapters examine twenty-two picturebooks in detail with respect to the ways in which the conventions of narrative are subverted and how dominant discourses are interrogated. Chapter 4: Subverting Narrative Processes includes analysis of narrative point of view, modes of representation, and characters and the problems of identity and subjectivity. Chapter 5: Challenging Truth, History, and Unity examines questions of ontology, the difficulties of representing history, and addresses issues of difference and ‘otherness’. The final textual analysis chapter, Chapter 6: Engaging with Postmodernity, critiques texts which engage with issues of globalisation, mass media, and consumerism. Brief discussion of a further fifteen picturebooks throughout the thesis provides additional support. Children’s texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. This thesis posits that children’s postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.

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Coughran, Christopher John. "Literary ecology and the fiction of American postmodernism /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18752.pdf.

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Larsson, Oscar. "Postmodernismens ambivalens - En korrelation mellan postmodernism och nyliberalism." Thesis, Halmstad University, School of Social and Health Sciences (HOS), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-168.

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Postmodernism and neo-liberalism is often thought of as two opposite conceptions of the reality and the world. This thesis takes on a critical view of this assertion and the main purpose was to perform a correlation between postmodernism and neo-liberalism. With different theoretical assumptions about constructions of thoughts, agency and structure and the welfare-state a theoretical framework was created. According to this framework the two isms were correlated to each other and the welfare-state to see if there where similarities or dissimilarities between the isms. The assumptions of this thesis are that there are correlations between postmodernism and neo-liberalism in the constructions of thoughts, namely similar view on epistemology. The two isms also show similarity between each other towards the foundations upon which the modern welfare-state rests. This is mainly manifested in their common view of the institutions of the welfare-state, which the isms both finds problematic. This results in a mutual problematic view on positive freedom, the foundation of legitimacy, the means and economic democracy as they are manifested in a given welfare-state. However, the motive for criticism rests mostly on different justifications for the two isms. Anyhow, their views share doubts about the legitimacy of the welfare-state in common. This even though postmodernism is partly a result of the welfare-politics. This thesis also shows why postmodernism and neo-liberalism at least in a theoretical perspective can not continue to develop side by side.