Postmodern Language-centered Writing and the Question of Ideology: A Polish Perspective

Abstract

Many postmodern writers who denounce and renounce established cultural and artistic canons, on aesthetic as well as ideological grounds, point out that literature does more than solely reflect repressive societal conditions, and that, in fact, at various stages in the development of modern civilization, works of literature significantly contributed to the creation of such conditions, by giving artistic legitimacy to the dominant worldview. The most often quoted example of this phenomenon is the way in which nineteenth-century realistic fiction promoted the rationalistic/scientistic worldview intrinsic to the ideology of capitalism.