Introduction

Common to many theories of what comes after postmodernism is the idea of a return to sincerity, realism or ethics via deployment of postmodernist devices. In terms of contemporary narratives, existing studies recognise that postmodernist devices are being used for sincere purposes, but the specific formal devices, strategies and techniques at work within narratives are not always examined in detail via stylistic, narratological and/ or semiotic analyses. McHale locates ontological self-reflexivity across postmodernist fiction and maintains that ‘all postmodernists draw on the same repertoire’. The ontological scandal that McHale identifies in some forms of postmodernist fiction is caused when reality and fiction come into contact and ultimately merge. The ontological ambiguity that McHale observes in postmodernist fiction is, as the people have shown, perpetuated by contemporary narratives across different media. Virginia Pignagnoli pays attention to the affordances of digital media and explores the ways in which stories told on Instagram attend to current post-postmodern interest in relationality and the intersubjective.