ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the politics of post-millennial theories of realism. It argues that theories of realism have moved away from the project of identifying characteristics of realism or taxonomizing texts into the category of realism. Instead, they pose the question: what does realism do? The chapter identifies three key problematics addressed in theories of realism—philosophical realism, totalizing realism, and fatalist realism—and it raises questions about the assumption that realism is a mode of representation. Some have argued that realism may best be understood as a self-contained semiotic system that models rather than represents the world. It is therefore not condemned to merely reproduce status quo power structures; it can model new ones. The chapter uses Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones as a case study for thinking through the conflicts and contradictions in post-millennial theories of realism from a non-Eurocentric context, and it argues that realism is both representation, which enables a totalizing critique of the status quo, and model as an aesthetic form.
