ABSTRACT

Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm gathers an introduction and ten chapters 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, Postcolonialism and Transculturalism with a view to help define a new current in contemporary literary production. The chapters either follow the main theoretical drives of the transmodern paradigm or problematise 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, terrorism, 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.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

Transcending the Postmodern

part I|68 pages

The Poetics of Transmodernity

chapter 1|26 pages

The Transmodern Poetics of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

Generic Hybridity, Narrative Embedding and Transindividuality *

chapter 2|19 pages

Transnational Latino/a Literature and the Transmodern Meta-narrative

An Alternative Reading of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

chapter 3|21 pages

The Novel of Ideas at the Crossroads of Transmodernity

Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island

part II|66 pages

Ethical Perceptions

chapter 4|18 pages

Problematising the Transmodern

Jon McGregor’s Ethics of Consideration

chapter 5|24 pages

Using Transculturalism to Understand the Transmodern Paradigm

Representations of Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

part III|38 pages

Migrancy and the Possibility of Reenchantment

chapter 7|20 pages

A Transmodern Approach to Post-9/11 Australia

Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist as a Narrative of the Limit *

chapter 8|16 pages

Diversity, Singularity, Reenchantment and Relationality in a Transmodern World

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness