OSCILLATION BETWEEN MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM: A METAMODERNIST READING OF DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ’S TAKE MY HAND

Abstract

This paper examines Dolen Perkins Valdez’s Take My Hand (2022), applying the lens of metamodernism to analyze how the novel shifts between Postmodern critical doubt and modernist ethical conviction in relation to past suffering. Focusing on two sides of Civil Townsend's story, which is set in both 1973 and 2016, the study shows how the novel challenges postmodernism while addressing important issues. Based on Vermeulen and Van den Akker’s (2010) theory of metamodernism and Allan McKee’s (2003) model of textual analysis, this study examines how the novel moves between modernism and postmodernism. This study shows that Take My Hand shows the methods of metamodernism. such as oscillation, ambivalence, relationality, and sincerity mixed with irony give many ways of connecting again with reality and meaning beyond the limits of fixed ideas of modernism and postmodernist nihilism. The research also shows how Take My Hand takes back storytelling as a tool of both honesty in knowledge and emotional truth, therefore showing a metamodernist philosophy of sincerity after irony. This paper also aims to develop and explain ideas about how society changes. Also, the research is very important because it provides a move away from postmodernism. This great change also shows how society is moving forward and how society can be further understood and developed. This is an important change in philosophy and understanding society.