Alexander Payne's Nebraska and the return of the grand narratives

This article analyses Alexander Payne’s film Nebraska from the perspective of the paradigm shift produced after the much-debated passing of postmodernism, announced by theorists such as Ihab Hassan or Linda Hutcheon. We shall examine how the lack of grand narratives makes it almost impossible to give structured meanings to the concept of reality. Payne’s project can be viewed as both an allegorical and a physical journey that takes the character to no specific destination in his search to make amends with the harsh reality that, ultimately, spells the end of the American Dream

Post-postmodern change of sensibility in Paul Auster’s Sunset park

At the turn of the millennium, the young writers of the New Sincerity movement tried to create a new realist literature by getting rid of the destructive power of postmodern irony. The consecrated writers of the old postmodern guard, whose Weltanschauung was conformed to the style and the relativistic reality-processing modes of the previous paradigm, saw this change with scepticism. Nevertheless, there was a change in their sensibility when approaching certain themes. This article analyses Paul Auster’s Sunset Park as paradigmatic example of that shift in order to shed some light on its nature

The Post-Postmodern Turn: Challenging the Application of Kuhn's Model

The point of departure for this article is the much-debated death of postmodernism, heralded by influential experts on the subject such as Linda Hutcheon or Ihab Hassan at the beginning of the new millennium. Although the academic community as a whole has not agreed with this fact, there was an intense debate during the first years of the twenty-first century that was evidence of a change of attitude towards this cultural phase. With this in mind, the aim of this study is to provide a theoretical framework for the change in order to understand its nature. Analysing the theories developed by Thomas S. Kuhn on paradigm shifts in the field of science and applying them to the context of critical theory at the beginning of the millennium serves to challenge the very idea of postmodernism as a paradigm in the terms developed in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Cómo recuperar la realidad. Ironía neorromántica en la ficción estadounidense post-postmoderna

Si bien el trascendentalismo nunca dejó de estar presente en la cultura estadounidense, durante la primera década del siglo XXI, la mirada de artistas y teóricos se volvió hacia las ideas del renacimiento estadounidense con una esperanza que no tenía cabida durante el reinado de la ironía posmoderna. Teniendo esto en cuenta, el propósito de este artículo es discernir la adecuación de la filosofía de Emerson para la recuperación del realismo a través de la trascendencia del lenguaje y un nuevo uso de la ironía romántica. El análisis anterior nos llevará al movimiento de la Nueva Sinceridad. Los escritores de la generación que siguió a la de David Foster Wallace actuaron como puente entre la narrativa postmoderna y la post-postmoderna de comienzos del nuevo milenio. Estos jóvenes escritores basaron su ficción en una crítica de la ironía institucionalizada para allanar el camino a la nueva novela post 11 de septiembre.Even though transcendentalism never ceased to be present in American culture, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the gaze of artists and theorists turned to the ideas of the American Renaissance with a hope that had no place during the reign of postmodern irony. With this in mind, the purpose of this article is to discern the adequacy of Emerson’s philosophy for the recovery of realism through the transcendence of language and a new use of Romantic irony. The previous analysis will take us to the New Sincerity. The writers of the generation that followed in the wake of David Foster Wallace’s acted as a bridge between the postmodern and the post-postmodern narrative of the beginning of the new millennium. These young writers based their fiction on a critique of institutionalized irony in order to pave the way for the new post 9/11 novel

Post-Postmodernism: Mapping Out the Zeitgeist of the New Millennium

At the turn of the millennium, many theorists questioned the survival of postmodernism and, although it is true that their statements were not supported by a general consensus, the new century brought with it an intense debate on the subject. With this in mind, the aim of this article is to map out the taxonomy of the alternatives to postmodernism proposed by several theorists during the first decade of the twenty-first century in order to understand their nature. This article analyses an extensive corpus of theories, to arrive at the conclusion that this period was an interstitial moment of change whose direction seemed to be heading towards the recovery of a muchnuanced unfinished project of modernity, as advocated by Jürgen Habermas. This attempt at debunking postmodern relativism was thwarted by the social dissatisfaction generated by the bank bailout of 2008 and the ulterior intensification of neoliberalism. However, the subsequent attempts to define the zeitgeist of this cultural phase that followed postmodernism started to dwindle. The desired recovery of this unfinished project responds to a need for univocity that, during the 2010s, leads to a hyper-neoliberalism sponsored by populism and constructed on a kind of reactionary post-truth

David Foster Wallace’s democratic normality

David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram” is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace’s alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernis

Post-postmodern Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium: The Transcendentalist Alternative

At the turn of the new millennium, the fiction published by the new generation of writersof the New Sincerity movement, led by David Foster Wallace, questioned the validity of theliterary theories to which the works of the writers of the postmodern old guard conformed.Authors like Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Vendela Vida, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan SafranFoer, Mark Z. Danielewski, Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen, born in the previous culturalphase, formulated the bases of a conscious movement with the search for the resolution of theconflicts that the vision of the previous generation provoked as foundation stone. The debatethat took place—and which is still going on—in the world of theory and philosophy wasreflected in the works of these authors. Sometimes unconsciously, they captured the desireto recover the interrupted project of modernity—as advocated by Jürgen Habermas—fromthe point where the hiatus began, while preserving the knowledge and social advances gainedfrom the ironic identity of postmodernism. This oscillation, as Tim Vermeulen and Robin vanden Akker call it in their article “Notes on Metamodernism” (2010), can act as a safety valvein the face of a social development that might lead to an authoritarian fanaticism similar tothe one that caused the horrors of World War II

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

La normalidad democrática de David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram” is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace’s alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism."E Unibus Pluram" de David Foster Wallace es un relato del predominio de la ironía destructiva a fines del siglo XX. Tratando de liberarse del solipsismo provocado por el relativismo posmoderno, Wallace abrazó la sinceridad como la piedra angular del zeitgeist del nuevo milenio. Este artículo ofrece un análisis de dos fuentes de influencia destacadas que podrían considerarse como inspiración para la alternativa de Wallace a la ironía posmoderna: el trascendentalismo estadounidense y las investigaciones filosóficas de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Se hace con la intención de promover la comprensión del significado cultural de la obra del autor para la generación de escritores que siguieron su estela, y demostrar cómo la recuperación de los ideales románticos puede ser la clave para trazar la naturaleza del cambio de paradigma hacia el posmodernismo

Overcoming Postmodernism: David Foster Wallace and a New Writing of Honesty

The end of postmodernism? Jesús Bolaño Quintero explores David Foster Wallace’s writing, searching for a new form of honesty in American literature after the age of irony