SOURCE: "The Problem of the Postmodern," in Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy, edited by Ingeborg Hoesterey, Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 22-39.

In the following essay, originally published in 1988, Chabot argues that postmodernism eshibits more continuity with traditional literary methods than most critics admit.

During the past fifteen years we have increasingly heard and read about something variously termed "fabulism" (Scholes), "metafiction" (McCaffery), "surfiction" (Federman), and, with growing unanimity, "postmodernism." The former terms were typically developed in efforts to account for apparent changes of direction and emphasis within recent fiction. "Postmodernism," on the other hand, is a broader term and has been pressed into service to describe developments throughout the arts; it is even said that we live in a postmodern society. Any number of people obviously believe that a cultural rupture of some moment has occurred, and that its mark is discernible across the range of our...