Postmodernism in the United States and Canada

Abstract

In this chapter, I will treat postmodernism in the United States and in Canada predominantly as a historical phenomenon, which peaked in cultural production and scholarly discussion from the 1960s through the 1980s. Exploring the field of literature, my survey of post-modernism in both countries will chart what I deem the heyday of the critical reception and promotion of post-modernism in the respective national literatures, while also pointing out the blind spots and fault lines that come with this perspective. More precisely, I will examine, for the United States, the literary production and critical debate of the 1960s and 1970s—notably the “theoretical turn” of writers and critics toward experiment and “surfiction” (Raymond Federman). For Canada, the 1970s and 1980s will be of major relevance, with literary texts and scholarship concentrating on a postcolonial revaluation of marginality, “ex-centricity,” and the rewriting of history. The focus will be on Anglophone Canadian literature, while neglecting the literary production of Quebec and other French-speaking literatures in Canada (see chs. 7 and 8 for approaches across linguistic and intranational borders). Likewise, for reasons primarily of practicability, I will narrow down my exploration of postmodernism to the genre of fiction writ-ing, thus eclipsing poetry and drama.¹