Final answer:
Postmodern literature reflects chaos and violence through fragmented narratives, multiple perspectives, metafictional elements, and a playfulness with genre conventions. These techniques disrupt traditional storytelling and challenge readers' perceptions of reality and literary form. Postmodern works often emphasize language and text as constructs that shape our understanding of the world.
Step-by-step explanation:
Postmodern literature often reflects an atmosphere of chaos and violence through fragmented narratives and multiple perspectives. This style breaks away from traditional storytelling and linear plotlines, instead embracing techniques that make the reader work to piece together the disjunctive elements of a story. Characters and plot may be secondary to the exploration of language and structure, with the latter often contributing to a sense of disorientation or ambiguity.
For instance, a postmodern work might incorporate metafictional elements that challenge the boundaries between fiction and reality, as seen in Donald Barthelme's short story, "The School." Similarly, the use of excessive footnotes in David Foster Wallace's essay, "Consider the Lobster," is a postmodern technique that disrupts the conventional essay form.
Moreover, postmodern authors like Adrienne Rich in "Diving into the Wreck" play with genre conventions of detective stories and science fiction to explore deeper themes of gender and history.
According to post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, our understanding of the world is shaped by language and texts, which are seen not as reflections of reality, but as frameworks that construct it. Modernist authors aimed to represent the world accurately, while postmodernist authors are more concerned with representing a diversity of experiences through the creation of distinct literary worlds.