The study of postmodernism in this class has proved to still be pretty confusing to me.  I feel as though I am closer to understanding the area, but there seems to be so many contradictions that I’m left with this blurry vision of what postmodernism actually is.  After reading the assigned packet, I came upon yet another defintion of postmodernism.  For the purpose of coming up with a more concrete idea of what postmodernism is, the following defintion needs to be further unpacked:

                                      “The postmodern, as I have been defining it, is not a degeneration into “hyperreality” but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it.  It is not that representation now dominates or effaces the referent, but rather that it now selfconsciously aknowledges its existence as representation – that is, as interpreting (indeed as creating) its referent, not as offering direct and immediate access to it”

                         After reading this definition, I must admit that I’m just as confused about postmodernism as I was before.   But one of the areas that I found interseting would be in relation to reality.  I can see how many of the works we have read often deal with a questioning of reality.  In Fight Club, the main character is cast into a world where there is a fine line between reality and fantasy.  In Written on the Body, the author uses a style which creates a questioning of the reality of the true sex of the main character.  But I’m left wondering if every literary work must in some way deal with the meaning of reality.  It almost seems as though this could hinder the quality of the works if they must stick to this kind of template. 

                        In terms of representation, it seems as though the author is trying to say that representation as a literary tool has come to accept it’s limitations becuase it is an unchanging tool.  This idea could be way off from what the author is trying to say, but its almost as though representation is a form of perception and it is integral in terms of reality.  What we see or perceive can be a representation of reality.  This representation, as the author says, accepts that it is only representation.  But when represenation accept that it’s no more than that, then it must come to terms with not being reality, but only a symbol of what reality was.  When I think of this idea, I seem to think of the idea as viewing a photograph.  Whatever is captured on a photograph is indeed a represenation of a single moment, but is it actually reality.  I would say no, that it is only a representation of what that moment was.  The event that occured was reality, but the picture is not.