[DOWNLOAD] "Orly Castel-Bloom and Yoel Hoffmann: On Israeli Postmodern Prose Fiction (Essay)" by Hebrew Studies Journal # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

April 13, 2021

eBook details

Title: Orly Castel-Bloom and Yoel Hoffmann: On Israeli Postmodern Prose Fiction (Essay)
Author : Hebrew Studies Journal
Release Date : January 01, 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 83 KB

Description

1. Introduction It might be a bit unconventional to open a paper with the bottom line, but since postmodernism is all about the deconstruction of conventions, I will open with my conclusion. One of the central components of postmodernism, be it European or American, is absent in Israeli postmodernism. Postmodernism is characterized by absence or deconstruction: the absence of a coherent plot, the deconstruction of character and psychology, the deconstruction of narrative and of the representational function of language. The basic absence, upon which all these deconstructions seem to be founded, is the active deconstruction of the search for, or belief in meaning. When the text questions the very existence of a meaning and exposes it as nothing more than a convention, we are forced to doubt almost everything else: if there is no meaning, there is no one story leading to it; there is no one narrative, acceptable as the route towards enlightenment or significance; there is no one story about our character or "self" since someone else might see us in a different manner and tell a different story about our "selves"; there is no certainty that language has a meaning other than a conventional one, pointing back unto our linguistic conventions. This central doubt, the one about the very existence of meaning, be it even a far promise to be deciphered in the future, seems to be absent in Israeli postmodernist prose fiction. One might almost say that Israeli prose fiction cannot really afford it.