The start of an inquisition into post-postmodernism: observations from reading David Mitchell's Number9Dream

Abstract

The following essay seeks to examine literary texts of the 21st century that precedes an era of postmodernism in what can arguably be labelled post- postmodernism. In studying the experimental works of David Mitchell, post-postmodernism is suggested to take on a notion of totality and globality in the great wake of postmodern traits such as fragmentation and a destabilized reality. Postmodernism has been defined as an “incredulity towards metanarratives” (Lyotard 25). In challenging such metanarratives, post- postmodernism seeks to further question if a new Metanarrative with a capital M can ever be defined, within the encapsulation of intertextuality.