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Violence should best be seen in the context of an individual alienation caused, most likely, both by the apparent lack of moral norms and, at the same time, by the continuous development of the individual, in a constant quest for the absolute (and this can be the absolute feeling, the absolute perception, the absolute manifestations and sensations etc.).
With the underlying belief that everything is permitted, the modern or the postmodern individual is willing to go along with all types of experiments that are likely to help in his quest for continuous development. The sexual fetish presented here is clearly abnormal, especially since it is not a remote sexual practice, but the individual permissiveness allows for this to happen. At the same time, it almost becomes a new normality for the group, a normality which is accepted as such (or rather not discussed) by the group. This new normality accepts all things that are seen as abnormalities by the other members of society. This could be a thesis that Ballard supports throughout the novel: the relativism of normality, the incapacity of accepting a basic set of clearly valid and generally accepted moral norms.
Further more,...
In order to reach this objective, the postmodern man will resort to any type of instruments that will help him reach that particular stage of development. However, a society where the only primary objective of its members is to physically 'feel good' in any conditions and without any other values is definitely a corrupt and reduced society.
One word on the subject of celebrities in Ballard's book. Once more the author becomes a visionary, because the obsession with celebrity has increased exponentially from 1973 to the present day. In the book, the main character has an obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, dreaming of a crash into her car. The attempt fails at the end of the book, as he plunges over a bus instead. What is with this fascination with celebrities? It is born out of the consumer society that promotes such values, but also from the subconscious need of individuals to have some static coordinates around which one's life can rotate. The postmodern world is a consumer society, one in which celebrities can offer such false coordinates.
With the underlying belief that everything is permitted, the modern or the postmodern individual is willing to go along with all types of experiments that are likely to help in his quest for continuous development. The sexual fetish presented here is clearly abnormal, especially since it is not a remote sexual practice, but the individual permissiveness allows for this to happen. At the same time, it almost becomes a new normality for the group, a normality which is accepted as such (or rather not discussed) by the group. This new normality accepts all things that are seen as abnormalities by the other members of society. This could be a thesis that Ballard supports throughout the novel: the relativism of normality, the incapacity of accepting a basic set of clearly valid and generally accepted moral norms.
Further more, the novel seems to imply that the postmodern individual will eventually resume his existence to a single important objective during his lifetime: feeling good. In order to reach this objective, the postmodern man will resort to any type of instruments that will help him reach that particular stage of development. However, a society where the only primary objective of its members is to physically 'feel good' in any conditions and without any other values is definitely a corrupt and reduced society.
One word on the subject of celebrities in Ballard's book. Once more the author becomes a visionary, because the obsession with celebrity has increased exponentially from 1973 to the present day. In the book, the main character has an obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, dreaming of a crash into her car. The attempt fails at the end of the book, as he plunges over a bus instead. What is with this fascination with celebrities? It is born out of the consumer society that promotes such values, but also from the subconscious need of individuals to have some static coordinates around which one's life can rotate. The postmodern world is a consumer society, one in which celebrities can offer such false coordinates.
feminists book ISLAND OF THE SEQUINED LOVE NUN Christopher Moore. To, general trend feminism Beyond Conventional Feminism There are a number of reasons why contemporary feminists would find fault with Island of the Sequined Love Nun, a novel published in 1997 by author Christopher Moore which may be considered an example of postmodern literature due to the variety of subjects, cultures, and sexual orientations it deals with (Powell 1). The book
Yarbrough quotes Ihab Hassan, who describes postmodernism as the "literature of silence" in that it "communicates only with itself," a reference that initially astounds the rational mind. Then, reading further in Yarbrough, Hassan is quoted as saying the term postmodernism applies to "a world caught between fragments and wholes, terror and totalitarianism of every kind." In Vonnegut's novel, characters reflect the deconstruction of American society in the 1950s, during the
The best evidence for this suffusion in the author's own life is in the final chapter, when the main character/author returns in full force. Traveling peacefully and happily in a plane above Berlin, during a moment he considers "one of the nicest ones in recent times" (Vonnegut, p. 211), removed in time and space from Dresden, Vonnegut "imagined dropping bombs on those lights, those villages and cities and towns," (Vonnegut,
But this does not mean that this family cannot be understood as a political constellation. The family members relate to the world with violence, trying to make others conform to their desires with guns and drugs, a path that leads finally to a terrible action. This action transforms the novel from a type of ethnography and the characters from symbols of a certain kind of cultural actors into themselves,
Greasy Lake Gregory Clayton "Greasy Lake" is one of the most notable, readable and critically acclaimed contemporary short stories written by T. Coraghessan Boyle. The fact that he took the a line and an idea from the iconic, venerable rock star Bruce Springsteen has gained Boyle's book a lot of press although the story stands on its own as a piece of biting social satire, mixed with humor and drenched in bad
697). Rutherford goes on to submit that Graham's narrative is more about the city within a city (cyberspace), in "all its forms and functions," than it is about the utopian of "dystopian visions of technology" that some authors have alluded to. As for Graham's book, in the Introduction he explains that he has put together a book with a myriad of inputs from scholars in several technology-related fields; and, in