The Presence of Postmodernism in Contemporary American Literature

The year 2014 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Fredric Jameson’s seminal essays “Periodizing the 60s” and “Postmodernism; or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” and the twenty-fifth anniversary of David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity. More generally, the works that form the cornerstones of our understanding of postmodernism and its periodization, including seminal works by Linda Hutcheon, Ihab Hassan, Andreas Huyssen, John Barth, and Jean-François Lyotard, are by now on average 30–40 years old. Most of these macrotheoretical models of postmodernism that continue to influence analyses of contemporary literature mainly base their insights on cultural artifacts dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. Given the changes American literature has undergone over the course of the past five decades or so, this begs the question: can the term postmodernism and its associated concepts and debates offer us a relevant set of tools for the analysis of recent literary production? What might we stand to gain from talking about postmodernism now? Or, to put this question more awkwardly (though fittingly, as will become clear, for this essay will deal with a range of awkward terms and temporal and logical propositions): what is the time of postmodernism’s presence?

Already in 1993 Raymond Federman proclaimed the end of postmodernism in his book Critifiction, and since the 1990s discussions of postmodernism’s possible exhaustion and its aftermath have become increasingly frequent.¹ Still, as Andrew Hoberek argues, citing Jeremy Green, in his introduction to the 2007 special issue of Twentieth Century Literature dedicated to the status of postmodernism and its potential aftermath, while “declarations of postmodernism’s demise have become critical commonplace” (233), there exists no fully developed theory of what precisely distinguishes contemporary literature from postmodern literature. The three books that occasion this essay-review together offer us a set of insights into this problem. I say “together” since their positions are often disparate, if not contradictory, yet, read together and at times against each other, these studies by Amir Eshel, Timothy Melley, and Jeffrey T. Nealon highlight an important set of logical problems, historical determinations, and cultural changes that allow us to arrive at some fundamental insights regarding the status of postmodernism as both a moment in literary history and periodizing term, and of American literature in the present.

In The Covert Sphere (2012) Melley makes a passionate argument for the continued relevance of the term postmodernism. “The covert sphere,” Melley writes,

is a cultural imaginary shaped by both institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state. . . . It is a cultural apparatus for resolving the internal contradictions of democracy in an age of heightened sovereignty. . . . [T]he covert sphere is dominated by narrative fictions, such as novels, films, television series, and electronic games, for fiction is one of the few discourses in which the secret work of the state may be disclosed to citizens.

(5–6)

One central contribution of his stunningly researched history of the covert sphere is Melley’s examination of the continued importance and specific function of culture in our moment that has not diminished but rather increased since the beginning of the Cold War. The covert sphere, Melley argues, is the crucial cultural terrain in which the process of developing, implementing, and supporting some of the most important elements of recent sociopolitical life in the US can be carried out. What emerges alongside Melley’s history of the covert sphere is a persuasive argument for the continued importance of cultural and literary study today that avoids those romanticizing and instrumentalizing notions of literature and culture that too often emerge as a consequence of attempts at defending artistic and literary critical production in the twenty-first century.

Indeed, Melley shows, it would be impossible to grasp fully the complexities of the rise and current functioning...