Postmodernist narrative: in search of an alternative

Abstract

The development of the novel form is an exploration of the possibilities for realistic representation which is increasingly informed by an understanding that distortion and fabrication are inevitable consequences of the mediating process of narrative. The search for alternatives to conventional modes of representation as a way of defamiliarizing this state of affairs draws attention to the fact that the ordered human constructs that compose knowledge are fictitious systems that inevitably invade reality. A number of contemporary authors, through a variety of strategies emphasize the inevitable distortion involved in representation. The world is always transposed, reality is always framed in terms of the conventions we know and becomes an unfamiliar absence continually deferred by the fictitious construct we call knowledge. Martin Amis, Angela Carter and Ian McEwan are just a few of the authors who question existing realisms and posit alternatives but in the knowledge that reality is always other than what we make it.