Postmodernism, essentially, came about in an age when it seemed appropriate to question everything. The ability of mankind to destroy itself progressed to a degree of realism unprecedented in history. Existentialism had cast a critical eye toward the possible futility of our assumptions and the pointless errors made by man in attempting to concoct a belief system that would answer the profound questions asked almost as a matter of nature.
Postmodernism suggests that all paradigms can be deconstructed and that empirical data are questionable because they are arbitrarily inserted into paradigms. This is, of course, an old theory of Zen Buddhists stretched into more intellectual and contemporary terminology.
“According to Zen teaching, freedom that depends on things of the world can be undermined, and freedom that can be granted can be taken away. Aiming for freedom that cannot be undermined and cannot be taken away, Zen liberation reaches out from within. By its very nature it cannot enter in from outside the individual mind.” Both Zen Buddhism and Postmodernism are a revolt against the “imperially assumed.”
The methodology of science cannot be superimposed upon individual experience. The unknown carries as much teleological weight as the known, hence the individual is left vacillating in a world of his own understanding. Specifically for that reason, a tool often employed by the postmodern novelist is one of self-conscious authorship. If he holds a name over the reader, he will divulge that he holds no special access or monopoly to any primary truth that will benefit his audience.
~Suggested by Jean-Francois Lyotard’s “Conflict with Narratives.” Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, tr. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massum (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
Zen Essence: the Science of Freedom (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2000).
Linda Hutcheon, “Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980).
