CRITICISM OF THE POSTMODERNISM FROM POST-POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE: A REVISION OF SIMULACRA IN THE BRITISH NOVEL

Abstract

In the paper, I examine criticism in the contemporary British post-postmodern novel “Cloud Atlas” by D. Mitchell, as well as other works, analyzing one of the key postmodern strategies related to the concept of hyperreality and the J. Baudrillard's simulacra. It is proposed to define the post-postmodern narrative as post-ironical. The general cultural situation, which has replaced postmodernism, is discussed as characterized by the rejection of irony, since the ironic view on the world cannot fulfill the characters' desire to know reality in its ontological entirety. The transformation of postmodern irony into post-irony has been investigated and the causes of such changes determined by criticism in postmodern novels of ideology exploiting the strategies of simulacra and replacing true reality with the illusory one that conceals ideology have been analyzed. I state that the post-postmodern narrative explicates revisionist outlines in understanding the traditions of postmodernism. The British novel “Cloud Atlas” explores the possible negative consequences of postmodern attitudes and postmodern politics related to the formation of implicit ideologies and the reduction of critical attitude toward the reality. The postmodern critique offered by P. Barry has been analyzed in terms of engaging its key factors in analyzing the post-postmodern narrative. The search for post-postmodern characters in the aspect of the “ontology of life” has been characterized, which would be impossible in the paradigm of postmodern irony due to the interaction of the contemporary British novel with the paradigm of literature of fact and the involvement of "fragments non-literary texts” (by T. Bovsunivska).
Key words: contemporary British novel, post-postmodernism, postmodernism, simulacrum, ontology of life, irony, post-irony.