Postmodern literature is unruly, characterized by a playful rejection of traditional literary conventions. It's literature where meaning is fluid, truth is subjective, and the reader is just as important as the writer.
Several key concepts help illuminate this fascinating genre:
The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes's "Death of the Author" (1967) argues that a text's meaning doesn't reside solely in the author's intentions or biography. Instead, meaning is created through the interaction between the text and the reader. This concept liberates the reader from the constraints of authorial intent, allowing for multiple interpretations and a more active role in meaning-making.
Intertextuality
Postmodern literature thrives on intertextuality, the weaving together of multiple texts within a single work. This can involve allusions, parodies, pastiches, and other forms of borrowing and reworking existing texts.
Intertextuality highlights the interconnectedness of knowledge and culture, blurring the lines between original and borrowed material.
Existential Geworfenheit
Geworfenheit, a German word meaning "thrownness," is a concept from existential philosophy that emphasizes the arbitrary and contingent nature of human existence. We are "thrown" into a world we didn't choose, with circumstances beyond our control.
Postmodern literature often explores this sense of existential angst, highlighting the lack of inherent meaning and the freedom (and burden) of creating our own values. Our lives don't necessarily conform to the pattern of a grand narrative with the beginning middle and end. For many people most of the time it's more like being thrown into an episode of larger existence encapsulating history, prehistory, society, culture and all of the cultural and social conventions that go with them.
Iser's Reader-Response Theory
Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory complements Barthes's "Death of the Author." Iser argues that meaning is not inherent in the text but is created through the interaction between the reader and the text. Readers bring their own experiences, beliefs, and values to the reading process, filling in gaps and constructing meaning in a dynamic and subjective way.
The Flawed Narrator
Postmodern literature often features flawed or unreliable narrators, whose perspectives are limited, biased, or even intentionally deceptive. This challenges the reader's trust in the narrative and forces them to question the nature of truth and reality. Flawed narrators can also be used to explore the complexities of human psychology and the subjective nature of experience.
These concepts are just a few of the tools that postmodern writers use to challenge traditional literary conventions and explore the complexities of contemporary life. By embracing ambiguity, fragmentation, and self-reflexivity, postmodern literature invites readers to actively participate in the creation of meaning and to question the very nature of reality.
Informationist Science Fiction: When Data Becomes the Fabric of Reality
Science fiction has always mirrored our world, reflecting our hopes, fears, and our ever-evolving relationship with technology. A burgeoning subgenre, informationist science fiction, delves into the very nature of information and its profound impact on reality.
The Architect of Informationist Science Fiction Literary Theory: Bruce R. Long
Philosopher Bruce R. Long's work has provided the theoretical framework for understanding these narratives. His concept of informationist novums is central. These aren't simply new gadgets; they represent fundamental shifts in how information is structured and interacts with the physical world.
Informationist Novums: Redefining Reality
Informationist novums manifest in various ways:
* Semantic Information as Physical: Imagine information not as abstract, but tangible. This could be data streams reshaping landscapes or code directly altering biology.
* Information as Consciousness: What if consciousness could be uploaded, transferred, or shared across networks? This could lead to new existences, blurring individuality and dissolving boundaries between minds.
* Simulated Realities: A common trope, but informationist narratives explore the philosophical implications of a world where the line between real and simulated becomes irrelevant.
Examples in Literature and Film
While still developing, informationist science fiction has found expression in various works:
Literature
Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 explores language's power to shape reality. Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep features zones of thought where physics itself is determined by information processing. Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem (basis for the Netflix series of the same name) presents a civilization whose very biology is tied to information and its manipulation.
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (containing the novella "Story of Your Life," which was adapted into the film Arrival) explores how different modes of processing information (like the alien's non-linear language) can radically alter perception and experience of time itself.
Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (the basis for the film Annihilation) plays with the idea of a zone where the laws of information and reality break down, leading to strange mutations and a blurring of the boundaries between species and even consciousness.
Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" has numerous informationist tropes and novums including a telepathically networked alien cluster-species and a galactic informational 'slow zone'.
Film
The Matrix is a classic simulated reality narrative. Transcendence and Ex Machina delve into ethical and existential questions around AI and consciousness.
Arrival explores how a non-linear understanding of time, facilitated by understanding an alien language, transforms human perception. Crucially, the information learned from the aliens isn't just about their language; it's about their experience of time, which becomes accessible to the protagonist, effectively allowing information to travel through time and reshape her own understanding of past, present, and future.
Annihilation depicts a region where the laws of reality are distorted, reflecting the mutability of information itself at a fundamental level.
Television
The Netflix adaptation of 3 Body Problem expands on the novel's themes, visually representing the alien civilization's manipulation of information to disrupt human science and psychology.
Postmodern Features of Informationist Science Fiction
As our world becomes increasingly data-driven, informationist science fiction provides a powerful lens. It challenges us to critically examine information, consciousness, and reality. By exploring these themes, it not only entertains but offers valuable insights into the future we are creating.
Informationist science fiction frequently exhibits postmodern characteristics, reflecting the subgenre's focus on the fluid and subjective nature of reality in a data-saturated world. The destabilization of grand narratives is a key element, as the traditional boundaries between objective truth and subjective experience blur. In worlds where information can be manipulated, consciousness uploaded, and reality simulated, the very concept of a singular, fixed reality becomes suspect. Characters often grapple with the ontological uncertainty of their existence, questioning what is "real" and what is merely a construct of information. This questioning extends to identity itself, as the lines between individual minds become porous and the possibility of merging with or being overwritten by other consciousnesses becomes a tangible threat or promise.
The postmodern emphasis on intertextuality also appears, as informationist narratives often draw from and remix existing science fiction tropes, philosophical concepts, and technological anxieties, creating a complex tapestry of ideas about the nature of information and its influence.
Furthermore, informationist science fiction often plays with the postmodern concepts of simulation and hyperreality. Simulated realities are not just plot devices; they become spaces where the very nature of reality is interrogated.
The hyperreal, where simulations become more real than the real, is a common theme. Characters may struggle to distinguish between the "real" world and its simulations, leading to a breakdown of traditional notions of authenticity and meaning. The constant flow of information and the ease with which it can be manipulated create a sense of fragmentation and a loss of grounding in a stable reality.
This mirrors the postmodern condition, where individuals are bombarded with information from various sources, making it difficult to discern truth from falsehood and leading to a sense of epistemological vertigo. The focus on information as the fundamental building block of reality allows informationist narratives to explore these postmodern themes in a particularly compelling and relevant way, reflecting our increasingly data-driven world.
References
* Long, B. R. (2018). A Scientific Metaphysical Naturalisation of Information: with an indication-based semantic theory of information and an informationist statement of physicalism. University of Sydney.
* Long, B. R. (2014). Information is intrinsically semantic but alethically neutral. Synthese, 191(14), 3447-3467.
* Liu, Cixin. (2008). The Three-Body Problem. (Translated by Liu Yukun).
* Chiang, Ted. (2002). Stories of Your Life and Others.
* VanderMeer, Jeff. (2014). Annihilation.
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