Contemporary narrative: revisiting the imagined community

Abstract

This paper seeks to discuss some of the features of modernity still present in the complexity of our contemporary social and artistic experience, despite the writing of “post” in relation to the modern. It presents a survey of meanings attributed to the idea of the postmodern as well as essential aspects of its critique, embodied in the voice of such authors as Lyotard, Jameson, Eagleton and Rouanet, who have been in different positions in the course of the debate about the postmodern since the twentieth century. The scope of this study evokes the discussion of representations of the national, one of the cornerstones of the construction of modernity and one of the very first targets of postmodern discussions about forms of identification and belonging in the modern subject. Associated to these issues, and taking into account the specificity of working on literature, the analysis of some of the tensions of the modern and the postmodern in a contemporary Brazilian novel is presented.