Echoes of Hybridity in Postmodern Literature
: Ghasemi Mehdi
: Joel Kuortti, Jopi Nyman, Mehdi Ghasemi
: New York
: 2023
: Engagements with Hybridity in Literature
: 119
: 148
: 30
: 978-1-00-326967-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003269670 (external)
: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003269670-5/echoes-hybridity-postmodern-literature-mehdi-ghasemi?context=ubx&refId=978953dd-509f-48e3-8821-35d79d4b04eb(external)
This chapter studies the notion of hybridity in relation to postmodern literature. As an antithesis to essentialism and fixity, it shows how the plural, relative, and fragmented hybrids that abound in postmodern literature question hegemony, monologic forces, and metanarratives. The chapter introduces in theory and practice several hybrid postmodern techniques, including bricolage, historiographic metafiction, intertextuality, magical realism, palimpsest, and so on, to describe how mixed forms within postmodern literature function. The texts used as practical examples are Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven (1987), Suzan-Lori Parks's The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988).