Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Zadie Smith’s NW, and the Metamodern

Bentley

Abstract

This article examines David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Zadie Smith's NW (2012) against recent theories of the post-postmodern. It argues that although both texts can be seen to be gesturing towards a reconstructive relationship with the absolute cynicism and scepticism of postmodernism neither represents a sustainable discontinuity with that late-twentieth-century mode. In this context, the essay challenges readings of Mitchell and Smith as representative of a metamodernism as that term is understood by critics such as Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, David James and Urmila Seshagiri. By referring to models suggested by Jean-Francois Lyotard, it suggests that the metamodern, as exemplified in the cases of Mitchell and Smith, represents a subsection of the postmodern rather than a clear break with it.

Citation

Bentley. (2018). Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Zadie Smith’s NW, and the Metamodern. English Studies, 723-743. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1510611

• Acceptance Date: Mar 8, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 16, 2018
• Journal: English Studies
• Print ISSN: 0013-838X
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 723-743
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1510611
• Keywords: literary criticism, language studies, postmodernism
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1510611