PoMo

"And so, for me, the only fiction that still means something today is the kind of fiction that tries to explore the possibilities of fiction beyond its own limitations; the kind of fiction that challenges the tradition that governs it;the kind of fiction that constantly renews our faith in man's intelligence and imagination rather than man's distorted view of reality; the kind of fiction that reveals man's playful irrationality rather than his righteous rationality."
- Raymond Federman

A bit of reflective writing a did for my professor (I'm taking a senior seminar on "House of Leaves"):

I feel like my thinking quickly spirals out of control and loses focus when I grapple with postmodern ideas and texts. When reading House of Leaves, I still wanted meaning, strove to find meaning. I can’t get out of the goal-oriented philosophy of the classroom to accept that what I get out of House of Leaves may be something totally different than I expect or want. I feel like I’ll never “get” House of Leaves and I’m struggling with that fact. The fact that “getting it” may not be the point. Right now, one of my biggest struggles is understanding how to enact or apply (as a student/writer/artist/person) postmodern theory and the issues inherent in House of Leaves because they blow apart all my assumptions about meaning and communication.

I have this feeling that I’m right on the edge of comprehending something important, even if part of that means NOT comprehending. In my ENG 200 class (which seems a long time ago now), I hit a point on day in class when I realized, suddenly, that things were not as I’d always assumed and that the question of right/wrong was far more complex than I realized in high school. The memory of that moment is still very strong; it was a kind of intellectual vertigo that opened up a new way of thinking. I feel like I’m hovering near the edge of that again, only with a new and different realization.

... Postmodernism and I have a complicated relationship.