Literary Strategy Perspective Of Linda Hutcheon’s Postmodern Cultural Politics Theory

“Cultural politics”is also called micropolitics which is a postmodern concept. Itechos the great change of the western world since the1960s.“Politics” began toinfiltrate largely in contemporary literaturary and artistic practices. In contrast withgrand social politics, cultural politics is a micro political appeal in the cultural domain.It means almost all cultural forms, such as, fiction, painting, music, photography andfilm, are political. All of them are the fighting fields of ideology. Meanwhile, thewestern literary theory also began to be politicalized. The literary theories afterDerrida’s Deconstruction emphasized much on the cultural political appeal. This trendneeds to be payed attention.Linda Hutcheon, the Canadian female postmodern theorist,was also ware of this important turn, and put forward her unique ideas and theories oncultural politics.This dissertation attampts to study Hutcheon’s cultural politics idea. And raise thepoint that she grasped the character of postmodern politics through the perspective ofliterary strategy. According to Hutcheon, the literary tactics such as, paradox, double-coded, history presentation, parody, irony, text-image border tension matchs the criticalmode of postmodern cultural politics.That is to say, these strateges helps to reveal thehidden text of ideology and Power.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter1introduces Hutcheon’s theoreticalvision, theory source and her research model for postmodern politics. Firstly, thischapter introduces the historical context of cultural politics, and traces back thedefinition and development of cultural politics. Secondly, Derrida’s deconstructiveoppion of text, Foucault’s post-structuralist understanding of power and discourse,White’s new historical narratology give influce on Hutcheon’s cultural politics idea.Furthermore, Hutcheon’s postmodernism got the inspiration from postmodernarchitecture theory and practice represented by Jencks. It provided the modol forHutcheon’s cultural politics research. The principal concepts in Huctcheon theory arebased on this model.Chapter II mainly discusses the core of Huctcheon’s cultural politics ideas. According to Hutcheon, postmodern politics is the “politics of ambivalence” whichmeans it could not dispense the system it attampts to subverse. The relation between itand its opposite side is both cooperation and criticism. Therefore, its compromisedstance makes its model complicitous critique. To subverse the opposite in the oppositeside, postmodernism employs both/and instead of either/or thinking model andadvocates the pluralism and ambivalence political attitudes.Chapter III analized Hutcheon’s theory of parody. In Hutcheon’s theory, parody isthe important strategy for postmodern political practice. As a literary tactic, parody isapplied not only in literature but also largely in photography, painting, architecture,music and film. Postmodern parody is not modern narcissistic self–reference any more.Instead, it is a doubly-coded cultural political strategy. Double-coded model enablepostmodern politics to be both inward to art world and outward to the real world.Chapter IV studies Hutcheon’s theory of irony. Besides parody, irony is anotherliterary tactic which Hutcheon emploied to study the cultural politics. She argues ironyis a appropriate strategy for postmodern politics. Being different from the traditonalirony, with its edge, it has already become a political practice which postmodernistutilize to social intervention. Merely, in today’ s cultural text, irony’s meaning is morecomplex and risk-taking. In postmodern artistic practice, irony operates doubly-codedwith complicitous critique.Chapter V studies the cultural political representation in the form of historiographicmetafiction. Hutcheon defines those fictions with distinct postmodern character ashistoriographic metafiction which is the representative form of postmodern fiction.Historiographic metafiction is the popular fiction in the paradoxical form which reflectsunique political consciousness. This chapter studies the historical representation andpolitical intervention of historiographic metafiction.Chapter VI analizes the political representing of postmodern photography and film.Photography in postmodern time is a part of concept art which subverses the objectiveprinciple of documentary photography. Which arouse Hutcheon’s concern most is thosephotoes with text in them. The text-image border tension expresses the artist’s criticalpropersiton effectively and reveals the ideology and power operation. Furthermore, theappllication of parody in postmodern photography also helps to bring about the criticalconsciousness. This chapter also studies the political representaion in postmoern film.Being similar to historiographic metafiction, parody and metafilm makes thepostmodern film political.The conclusion part summarized Hutcheon’s theoratical achievements as well asthe weak points. Hutcheon’s contribution is that she made unique illustration onpostmodern cultural politics. Through the angle of literary tactics and artistic practice,she presents the evidence for us to recognize the ambivalence and pradox ofpostmodernism objectively and soberly. Hutcheon’s cultural politics idea is regarded asa constructive contribution for the “controversial” postmodernism. However, willpostmodern politics stop at that ambivalence and compromise position? The solutionneeds to be explored.