РЕАЛЬНІСТЬ ЯК ВИГАДКА? ПОНЯТТЯ “МЕТАМОДЕРНІЗМ” І “МЕТАМОДЕРН” В СУЧАСНОМУ КУЛЬТУРОЛОГІЧНОМУ І ЛІТЕРАТУРОЗНАВЧОМУ ДИСКУРСІ

At the beginning of the 20th century, postmodernism has depleted its cultural and aesthetic potential, and as most critics agree, it has become a phenomenon of the past. Among the conceptions aimed at comprehending the impact of the new media and digital technologies, together with the trend towards globalization, digimodernism, automoderrnism, altermodernism, performatism, and metamodernism can be listed as the most conspicuous ones. Proceeding from the fact that metamodernism is a theoretically developed and strongly institutionalized conceptualization of both current cultural change and 21st-century fi ction, this paper focuses on its cultural and literary strategies. Primarily, the study aims to analyze the fundamentals of metamodernism elaborated in the works by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker and in metamodernist web manifestoes. To achieve this goal, such notions as a “structure of feeling” and “new sincerity” that refl ect an emerging cultural sensibility, along with the principle of the metamodernist oscillation between modernist and postmodernist modes, are highlighted. The claim that the Metamodern era replaces Postmodernity is also under investigation. In addition, the paper explores the main features of metamodernism in the works by David Foster Wallace, one of the most famous and infl uential US writers of his generation, a talented novelist and essayist. Application of nonlinear, rhizomatic structures at the narrative level, modeling of the reality according to the principle “what if this is true?”, and a combination of the principles of “new sincerity” and post-irony in Wallace’s novel “Infi nite Jest” are considered. The paper concludes that metamodernism as a literary trend of the recent decades suggests new fi ctional patterns of aesthetic innovations, primarily in returning multiple facets of reality into a literary text. Key words: metamodernism, Metamodern, postmodernism, Postmodern, “new sincerity”, “structure of feeling”, Vermeulen and van den Akker, “Notes on Metamodernism”, David Wallace, “Infi nite Jest”.

Cultura da conexão, paranoia, sociedade do cansaço e poéticas do romance como enciclopédia aberta

Na cultura da conexão, a sensação de excesso – de informação, de arquivos e de conexões – se faz mais presente. Tais fatores extraliterários influenciam a constituição do discurso literário, como apresenta Italo Calvino (1990), em Seis propostas do próximo milênio, quando discute o romance como enciclopédia aberta. O adjetivo “aberta”, ligado ao substantivo “enciclopédia”, estabelece a relação entre ontem e hoje, entre modernidade e hipermodernidade na cultura do Big Tech. A identificação do aspecto poliândrico da narrativa contemporânea por Carlos Ceia (2007) igualmente enriquece as possibilidades de leitura da poética do romance como enciclopédia aberta, conforme perspectivado nas poéticas de Thomas Pynchon e David Foster Wallace. Objetivamos, portanto, neste ensaio, apresentar aspectos sociais e históricos da era da informação, que auxiliam no entendimento da poética do romance como enciclopédia aberta.

American underground spirit: Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground and the 20th century USA literature

F. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864) exerted a considerable influence on American literature since 1940s. The works by outstanding authors beginning with Saul Bellow (Dangling Man, 1944) or Jerome Salinger’s prose and up to Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, 1991), Percy Walker, David Foster Wallace, show a persistent fascination of American writers with the novella and are based on re-reading and re-interpreting Dostoevsky’s ideas, motives and imagery.

Reconstructing Realism in Post-Postmodern Narrative: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

By analysing Dave Eggers’s autofictional work A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this article attempts to reveal the role of this author in the post-postmodern narrative of the turn of the millennium. Following in the wake of David Foster Wallace, Eggers’s solution to overcome the problems created by postmodernism is a kind of writing based on honesty. Through a rebirth of the author, the objective of Eggers’s New Sincerity is the democratization of narrative in order to create a sensibility network aimed at ending the solipsism brought about by postmodern linguistic relativism. However, this new sensibility is reminiscent of pre-postmodern fundamentalism. The use of meta-metafiction based on the use of neo-Romantic irony enables Eggers to create an escape valve that allows for the creation of a metamodern oscillation—as described by Tim Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.

David Foster Wallace croisiériste. Le méga-paquebot comme destination finale du tourisme de masse

Cet article est consacré à l’essai « Un truc soi-disant super auquel on ne me reprendra pas », dans lequel David Foster Wallace rend compte de son expérience de croisiériste à bord d’un méga-paquebot. Il analyse plus particulièrement les liens que Wallace tisse entre le navire de croisière et le parc, pensé à la fois comme un lieu clos aménagé à des fins de divertissement, et comme un espace flottant mortifère où s’opère un contrôle insidieux des touristes.

A moral jester? : David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest's hidden moral heart

In this thesis, I explore the frequently overlooked moral dimensions of David Foster Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest. I seek to propose, in spite of the commonly cited iconoclasm of the text, an alternative reading of it as an old-fashioned bildungsroman concerned with the possibilities of moral and spiritual growth. In particular, I illuminate the unconventional way Wallace reimagines classic narratives of redemption and salvation under the surface of the novel, and I develop a framework with which to understand their centrality. Furthermore, I address how this belongs to his larger attempts to reconcile many of the traditional thematic concerns of the novel with several of the challenges presented by the postmodern avant-garde. I argue that, in its efforts to do so, Infinite Jest helped to renew, in many powerful and unexpected ways, the classic story of redemption and offer a profound meditation on many larger ills plaguing society today.

A moral jester? : David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest's hidden moral heart

In this thesis, I explore the frequently overlooked moral dimensions of David Foster Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest. I seek to propose, in spite of the commonly cited iconoclasm of the text, an alternative reading of it as an old-fashioned bildungsroman concerned with the possibilities of moral and spiritual growth. In particular, I illuminate the unconventional way Wallace reimagines classic narratives of redemption and salvation under the surface of the novel, and I develop a framework with which to understand their centrality. Furthermore, I address how this belongs to his larger attempts to reconcile many of the traditional thematic concerns of the novel with several of the challenges presented by the postmodern avant-garde. I argue that, in its efforts to do so, Infinite Jest helped to renew, in many powerful and unexpected ways, the classic story of redemption and offer a profound meditation on many larger ills plaguing society today.

The depressed text

North American writer David Foster Wallace wrote two short stories - The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing and The Depressed Person - that depict depression, in each one taking different yet complementary perspectives on this subject. Our aim is to analyze these texts and to discuss the role literature can have in regard to the apprehension of subjective experiences of others. Whereas the first text attempts to describe depression objectively, the second one describes the impossibility of doing so, focusing on literary techniques that create distressing subjective experiences in the reader, possibly resembling those felt by depressed persons. We suggest that literature might be helpful to comprehend some aspects of the experience of being depressed and that such an understanding may enrich psychiatric practice.