Ideological Disruptions and the Fragmentation of Identity in Postmodern Narratives

Abstract

Postmodernity imposed a new mode of writing and philosophy over literature. There are no longer the simple psychological or social dilemmas that the characters face. The readers are expected to read novels with new, challenging ideas that appeal to human intellectuality. Postmodern literature tends to break the traditional structures of notions such as identity, race, history, and power. It seeks to deconstruct them and routinize new modes of ideas. Such a deconstructing challenge is best found in works like Beloved by Toni Morrison, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf, and Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. Each of these works proposes new questions through fragmentation, ideological disorientation, unreliability of voices, and dispersion of unified narratives. For example, in Beloved, the boundaries between past and present are blurred by casting racial trauma and historical fragmentation. The voice becomes unreliable in Lost in the Funhouse, making it difficult for the reader to find a stable and singular self. Coetzee in Disgrace presents postmodern attitudes towards race, ethical responsibility, and power. Time and space become unstable in Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall. These postmodern literary works threaten traditional works' stable narrative and philosophical line, being replaced with a loss of coherent identities and histories.