Ihab Hassan (1925 - )
Related: Postmodernism - USA
"No, I didn't coin the term [postmodernism]. Some claim that a British painter called John Watkins Chapman used the term casually in the 1870s. Since then, Federico de Onis, Bernard Smith, Dudley Fitts, Arnold Toynbee, Charles Olson, Irving Howe, and Harry Levin have all used the term variously--with diverse meanings and degrees of insistence--before I did." --Ihab Hassan
Biography
Ihab Hassan (born 1925) is a literary theorist.
He was born in Cairo, Egypt, and emigrated to the United States in 1946. Currently he is Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. His writings include Radical Innocence: The Contemporary American Novel (1961), The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971) and The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (1987). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihab_Hassan [Jan 2005]
Modernism/Postmodernism table
The following table is taken from a part of The Dismemberment of Orpheus that was reprinted in Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology (1998). It has helped many students understand the differences, both concrete and abstract, between modernism and postmodernism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihab_Hassan [Jan 2005]
On coining the term postmodernism
Well, you coined the term "postmodern" in reference to a certain kind of literature; indeed, you helped define a literary movement--or do you not want credit for this?
IH: No, I didn't coin the term. Some claim that a British painter called John Watkins Chapman used the term casually in the 1870s. Since then, Federico de Onis, Bernard Smith, Dudley Fitts, Arnold Toynbee, Charles Olson, Irving Howe, and Harry Levin have all used the term variously--with diverse meanings and degrees of insistence--before I did. But I guess I did stick with the term, and I did try to clarify for myself an emergent movement. --http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_3_33/ai_62828818 [Aug 2004]
The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971) - Ihab Habib Hassan
The following table is taken from a part of The Dismemberment of Orpheus that was reprinted in Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology (1998). It has helped many students understand the differences, both concrete and abstract, between modernism and postmodernism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihab_Hassan [Jan 2006]
| Modernism | Postmodernism |
| Romanticism/Symbolism | 'Pataphysics/Dadaism |
| Form (conjunctive, closed) | Antiform (disjunctive, open) |
| Purpose | Play |
| Design | Chance |
| Hierarchy | Anarchy |
| Mastery/Logos | Exhaustion/Silence |
| Art Object / Finished Work | Process/Performance/Happening |
| Distance | Participation |
| Creation/Totalization | Decreation/Deconstruction |
| Sythesis | Antithesis |
| Presence | Absence |
| Centering | Dispersal |
| Genre/Boundary | Text/Intertext |
| Semantics | Rhetoric |
| Paradigm | Syntagm |
| Hypotaxis | Parataxis |
| Metaphor | Metonymy |
| Selection | Combination |
| Root/Depth | Rhizome/Surface |
| Interpretation/Reading | Against Interpretation / Misreading |
| Signified | Signifier |
| Lisible (Readerly) | Scriptable (Writerly) |
| Narrative / Grande Histoire | Anti-narrative / Petit Histoire |
| Master Code | Idiolect |
| Syptom | Desire |
| Type | Mutant |
| Genital/Phallic | Polymorphous/Androgynous |
| Paranoia | Schizophrenia |
| Origin / Cause | Difference-Differance / Trace |
| God the Father | The Holy Ghost |
| Metaphysics | Irony |
| Determinacy | Indeterminacy |
| Transcendence | Immanence |
The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971) - Ihab Habib Hassan [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Please note the use of the term towards which is typical of postmodern critical writing.
See also: Ihab Hassan - postmodernism - postmodern literature - modernism
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