Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm

267 Pages·2020·3.623 MB·English

by  Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau

“Scholars and students seeking insights into how to think about fiction
in the global era will profit in several ways from Transcending the Post-
modern. The essays herein are not only a wonderful introduction to the
power of transmodernism as a theoretical frame but also exemplary in-
stances of critical work. The authors should be commended for the clar-
ity and insightfulness with which they discuss key contemporary literary
texts from the perspective of transmodernist theory.”
—Christopher K. Coffman, Boston University

Transcending the Postmodern
Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature
to the Transmodern Paradigm gathers an introduction and ten chap-
ters concerned with the issue of Transmodernity as addressed by and
presented in contemporary novels hailing from various parts of the
English-speaking world. Building on the theories of Transmodernity
propounded by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Enrique Dussel, Marc
Luyckx Ghisi and Irena Ateljevic, inter alia, it investigates the links
between Transmodernity and such categories as Postmodernity, Post-
colonialism and Transculturalism with a view to helping define a new
current in contemporary literary production. The chapters either follow
the main theoretical drives of the transmodern paradigm or problema-
tise them. In so doing, they branch out towards various issues that have
come to inspire contemporary novelists, among which: the presence of
the past, the ascendance of new technologies, multiculturalism, terror-
ism, and also vulnerability, interdependence, solidarity and ecology in a
globalised context. In so doing, it interrogates the ethics, aesthetics and
politics of the contemporary novel in English.
Susana Onega is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the Univer-
sity of Zaragoza (Spain) and a member of the Academia Europaea.
Jean-Michel Ganteau is Professor of Contemporary British Literature at
the University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 (France).
Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature
40 The Working Class and Twenty-First-Century British Fiction
Deindustrialisation, Demonisation, Resistance
Phil O’Brien
4 1 Reading Contingency
The Accident in Contemporary Fiction
David Wylot
4 2 Death-Facing Ecology in Contemporary British and North
American Environmental Crisis Fiction
Louise Squire
4 3 Poetry and the Question of Modernity
From Heidegger to the Present
Ian Cooper
44 Apocalyptic Territories
Setting and Revelation in Contemporary American Fiction
Anna Hellén
4 5 Displaced
Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and Trauma
Edited by Kate Rose
46 Masculinities in Austrian Contemporary Literature
Strategic Evasion
Matthias Eck
4 7 Transcending the Postmodern
The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern
Paradigm
Edited by Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
Transcending the Postmodern
The Singular Response of Literature to
the Transmodern Paradigm
Edited by
Susana Onega and
Jean-Michel Ganteau
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-86055-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03758-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Transcending the Postmodern 1
SUSANA ONEGA AND JEAN-MICHEL GANTEAU
PART I
The Poetics of Transmodernity 21
1 The Transmodern Poetics of David Mitchell’s Cloud
Atlas: Generic Hybridity, Narrative Embedding and
Transindividuality 23
SUSANA ONEGA
2 Transnational Latino/a Literature and the Transmodern
Meta-narrative: An Alternative Reading of Junot Díaz’s
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 49
SARA VILLAMARÍN-FREIRE
3 The Novel of Ideas at the Crossroads of Transmodernity:
Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island 68
ANGELO MONACO
PART II
Ethical Perceptions 89
4 Problematising the Transmodern: Jon McGregor’s
Ethics of Consideration 91
JEAN-MICHEL GANTEAU
viii Contents
5 Using Transculturalism to Understand the
Transmodern Paradigm: Representations of
Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah 109
MATTHIAS STEPHAN
6 Transmodern Mythopoesis in Kazuo Ishiguro’s
The Buried Giant 133
LAURA COLOMBINO
PART III
Migrancy and the Possibility of Reenchantment 155
7 A Transmodern Approach to Post-9/11 Australia:
Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist as a
Narrative of the Limit 157
BÁRBARA ARIZTI
8 Diversity, Singularity, Reenchantment and
Relationality in a Transmodern World: Arundhati
Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 177
MERVE SARIKAYA-ŞEN
PART IV
Perspectives on Biopolitics 193
9 Transcorporeality, Fluidity and Transanimality in
Monique Roffey’s Novel Archipelago 195
JULIA KUZNETSKI
10 A Transmodern Approach to Biology in Naomi
Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman 213
JESSICA ALIAGA-LAVRIJSEN
Contributor Biographies 231
Index 237
Acknowledgements
The idea for the present volume originated in a monographic seminar
of the same title organised by the editors at the fourteenth International
Conference of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)
that took place in Brno (Czech Republic) in August–September 2018.
But the idea of devoting a seminar and a volume of collected essays
to this subject should be set in the context of a wider, ongoing collab-
orative research activity carried out by the editors over the last two
decades, which has materialised in the co-edition of six volumes: The
Ethical Component in Experimental British Fiction since the 1960s
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), Ethics and Trauma in Con-
temporary British Fiction (Rodopi, 2011), Trauma and Romance in
Contemporary British Literature (Routledge, 2013), Contemporary
Trauma Narratives: Liminality and the Ethics of Form (Routledge,
2014), Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st-Century Fiction (Rout-
ledge, 2017) and The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction: A Par-
adoxical Quest (Routledge, 2018).
The co-authorship of the Introduction, the co-editing of the book
and the article on Jon McGregor by Jean-Michel Ganteau are part of
a project funded by the French Ministry of Education through the lab-
oratory to which he belongs (EMMA-EA 741). The co-authorship of
the Introduction, the co-editing of the book and the article on David
Mitchell by Susana Onega form part of her ongoing research activity
as research leader of the excellency team Contemporary Narratives in
English (code H03_17R), financed by the Government of Aragón and
the European Development Fund (ERDF) through its 2014–2020 pro-
gramme “Building Europe from Aragón.” Within this frame, Susana
Onega has participated, respectively, as research leader and as member,
in two subsequent competitive research projects financed by the Spanish
Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (METI) and the European
Regional Development Fund (DGI/ERDF) that are directly concerned
with the subject of the book: “Palimpsestic Knowledge: Inquiries into a
Transmodern Literary Paradigm” (code FFI2015-65775-P) and “Liter-
ature in the Transmodern Era: Celebration, Limits and Transgression”
(code FFI2017-84258-P). Together with her thanks to the Government