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Thesis
THE BEST THAT HAS BEEN THOUGHT OR SAID
University of West Florida
Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida
2009
Abstract
In After the Great Divide, Andreas Huyssen argues that, motivated by the desire to self-construct their own elite canon, modernist intellectuals, such as Aldous Huxley, encouraged a force of separation by attempting to separate high and low culture. However, Huxley's novel, Point Counter Point, dissolves such hierarchies that privilege reason over passion, activity over passivity, and production over reception in its discursive attempts to achieve what Huxley calls intellectual balance. In The Postmodern Turn, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner contend that postmodernism became possible when there was a conscious awareness of the instability of boundaries. I argue that the collapse of binary oppositions evident in Point Counter Point offers an example of the turn to postmodernism that the modernist project encouraged. The recognition of the intent behind the modernist force of separation invalidates the attempt by collapsing the separation, subsequently leading to the fragmented development of the superficiality of play and pastiche in postmodernist literature.
Details
- Title
- THE BEST THAT HAS BEEN THOUGHT OR SAID
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Publisher
- University of West Florida
- Format
- text
- Identifiers
- 99380090867806600
- Academic Unit
- English
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Arts (MA)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida