The Future as Literary Category

The earlier post about Mamatas, Kunkel, Wood, etc., got me thinking about the role of the individual in the artistic enterprise. In the Kunkel/Wood view of things High Realist fiction is about the psychological realism of well drawn characters. High Modernism is also about the individual, but it takes a fragmented stream of consciousness approach where psychology is less stable and more flowing. Post-modernism works against the idea of the individual to show how social forces shape circumstances. But like modernism it uses strategies of fragmentation and disconnection to show how things fall apart, and anarchist miracles and coincidence to show how they come back together. What then would a truly collectivist, coherent literature look like? It would look like myth or religion where the emphasis is on the transcendent and the apotheosis of meaning. So for lack of a better term, I'll call this pre-modernism.

In summary:

• Realism: Individualistic, Coherent - Psychology
• Modernism: Individualistic, Fragmented - Stream of Consciousness
• Pre-Modernism: Collectivist, Coherent - Transcendental
  
• Post-Modernism: Collectivist, Fragmented - Post-human

So if sci-fi is related to post-modernism, and PoMo is collectivist and fragmented, then the organizing principles that will define The Future, will also be collectivist and fragmented. Anarcho-Socialism, or something like that. Everyone working for the common good, but in a highly unregulated, decentralized way. Once the scarcity problem is solved, we'll all live in The Culture.