aus. Gian Melle Rosturedsarsk Tier. Lonthan | Nes Yor. Hartley 1 A989 (44989), PART ONE: PRELIMINARIES __ The Cognitive Questions (asked by most artists of the 20th century, Platonic or Aristotelian, till around 1958): “How can interpret this world of which Iam a part? And what am Lin itn The Postcognitive Questions (asked by most artists since then): “Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is todo itn” (Dick Higgins, A Dialectic of Centuries, 1978)1: FROM MODERNIST TO POSTMODERNIST FICTION: CHANGE OF DOMINANT* don’t think the ideas were “in the air”. . . rather, all ofus found ourselves the same stoplights in different cities a the same time. When thellights changed, we all crossed the streets. (Steve Katz, in LeClair and McCaffery [eds], Anything Can Happen 1983) “Postmodernist”? Nothing about this term is unproblematic, nothing about is entirely satisfactory. It i not even clear who deserves the credit ~ blame - for coining it in the first place: Arnold Toynt Randall Jarell? There are plenty of candidates," But wh« he or she has a lot to answer fo. “Postmodernist”? Nobody lites the term. “Post,” grouses Richard Kostelanetz, is a petty prefix, both today and historically, for major movements are defined in their own terms, rather than by their relation to something else... No genuine avant-garde artist would want to be “post” anything? John Barth finds the term awkward and faintly epigonic, suggestive less of vigorous or even interesting new direction in the old art of storytelling than of something anti-climactc, feebly following very hard act to follow.” more pungently, the term “postmodernist,” for Charles Newman, “inevitably calls to mind a band of vainglorious contemporary artists follow- ing the circus elephants of Modernism with snow shovels.” Nobody likes the term, yet people continue to prefer it over the even less satisfactory “Adee versionol thi chapters yppearedunderthe ie “Change of dominant om modest ‘postmodern wing" inane Berens and Douwe Foidsma {s), Aprashing Postar (Rims and Pilsen Job Beran, 1985), Tam patel the er and pablaher oe permis to repens mater ee4 POSTMODERNIST FICTION alternatives that have occasionally been proposed (such as Federman’ "Surfiction,” or t's smporary fiction”). And it becomes ict means New! Improved! ely means moderner modern (tn ‘one construction of postmodernism over proposed ~ the criterion of self-consistency and int Instance. Or the citerion of scope: postmodernism should not be defined so liberally thatit covers all modes of contemporary waiting, for then it would be of no use in drawing distinctions, but neither should it narrowly. (if there is no true postmodernist poet except Paul Celan, as ‘someone once proposed to me, then why not simply talk about the poetics of Paul Celan and eliminate this distracting term “postmodernism” altogether?) Another criterion might be productiveness: a superior construction of post- FROM MODERNIST TO POSTMODERNIST FICTION 5 modernism would be one that produces new insights, new or richer tions, coherence ofa different degree or kind, ultimately more discou ierproposis,refutatons, polenice. Above all a Sstmodemisin would be one ‘constructing its referent? Ihab Hassan helps us mi ‘he prints the term soas to emphasize its prefix and sul POSTmodernISM" tautologial. Dut there is more than mere tautology to the relation between tmodernism and postmodernism we can construct an argument abut how the posterior phenomenon emerges from ts predecessor ~ about, ih other ‘words, historia consent "To capture this consequential, the POST of POSTmodersiSM~ whichis