Subjekty a fragmenty
Subjects and fragments

Theorizing and interpreting literary postmodernism

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with a conception of postmodernism that is based on the ideas of the American Marxist theorist Frederic Jameson. The first, theoretically-based section does not define literary postmodernism as a particular style, but as a cultural landmark, basically associated with the broader socio-economic, epistemic and ideological context. The basis of postmodern epistemology, which critically opposes the epistemology of modernism comprises a critique of the Carthesian subject and the concept of reality as a whole. This critique results in the problematization of the subject as an autonomous entity and the fragmentation of reality. My study asserts that the ideological function of this postmodern critique also works to delegitimize all “totalitarianizing” tendencies, while legitimizing a particular kind of cultural reproduction. The second part of the study focuses on interpreting prose works by Emil Hakl (Skutečná událost, An Actual Event, 2013) and Václav Kahuda (Vítr, tma, přítomnost, Wind, Darkness, Presence, 2014), which I believe artistically portrays the consequences of conceptualizing the subject and reality that are typical of postmodern culture. The fragmentation of reality, the self-alienation of the subject and the collapse of historicity in Hakl’s prose does not allow for the creation of a space in which radical acts are possible. Václav Kahuda’s prose is a fragmentation of reality, and the loss of the essence of the subject is overcome by the construction of a paranoid universe and a shift towards a monistic view of an all-pervasive transcendental principle.

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