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If we knew what postmodernism meant, we would not have this trouble defining it. This claim is only nonsensical if we believe we ‘know’ other terms in a way we do not know postmodernism. Wilson lets this slip when he speaks of analyses that grant to ‘postmodern’ a "hanging-togetherness that one would no longer cheerfully accord to, say, "Renaissance"." (111-2) Some shift in our approach to knowledge has led us to question such overarching terms as "Renaissance". Nevertheless, because we have "known" what we meant by "Renaissance" for several hundred years, we are able to question its internal contradictions, to disrupt our definitions, without losing our grasp of the term. Postmodernism, without that historical assumption of cohesion, threatens to shatter when we turn such questions to it. That shift in our approach to knowledge is, precisely, postmodernism - in the broader sense to which I am returning it here. We have not "forgotten" how to think historically: we know how we used to think, and question its value.

Postmodernism’s internal contradictions do not write it off as a term: feminism is as internally divided, tenuously held together by a concern "with the specific, historical oppression of women" (Michael, 1) and a common label. Its approaches might differ drastically, while stemming from the same motivating impulse. Similarly, postmodernism can be seen to hold a common concern: disrupting the empirical, hierarchical approaches to knowledge and meaning that have dominated since the Age of Englightenment. It is not just an academic theory; it is part of a shift in the collective unconscious of the Western World.

In Jung’s alchemy I outline the notion of a collective unconscious; in Western world and the Individual I show how postmodern texts and theory reconceive our positions as ‘individuals’; and in Hypertext fiction I illustrate how hypertext fictions can make specific postmodern tenets ‘obvious’ and observable.

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Postmodernism

Jung's Alchemy

Western World & The Individual

Hypertext Fiction

Process of Transformation

Bibliography