Paranoia and Multiple Personalities In Postmodern Fiction

Yıl 2020, Cilt: 6 Sayı: 2, 169 - 187, 01.12.2020

Nurten Şen

Öz

May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton's sleep.
—William Blake

Post modernism is a movement which starts in the second half of the twentieth century and continues onwards. It is hard to find out the exact beginning of this movement or to make an absolute definition of it. The only thing one can precisely say about postmodernism is that it has made a radical break from Modernism in sense of thought. It has changed the way how people think and behave. Lyotard in his book of The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge posits that “[Postmodernism] designates the state of our culture following the transformations, which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature and the arts” (1979, p.9). In this view, the way how Postmodernism differs from modernism is apparent. As implied, whilst in modernism, there are strict boundaries between high and low art forms, in post modernism these forms are given equal weight. Common assertion is that in Modernism, truth and knowledge are based on science and there is the singularity and absolute precision of truth(s). However, with the Postmodernist movement, we encounter the plurality of truth. It may be suggested that this phenomenon takes us to the sphere of paranoia. Namely, in postmodern era, style and thought take a very different stance from the previous movements and this occurrence causes paranoia characterized in different dimensions. Considering all the changes upon thought and perception of reality in postmodern age, this paper will analyse certain elements that trigger paranoia and the reflection of multiple personality issue on protagonists based on the works of City of Glass, The Locked Room and Fight Club. These three works were chosen in particular because they are proposing a certain way of dealing with paranoia and multiple personality problematique within the scope of Postmodernism.

Anahtar Kelimeler

POSTMODERNISM, CITY OF GLASS, THE LOCKED ROOM, FIGHT CLUB, PARANOIA, MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

Kaynakça

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