Abstract
Modernism as a literary movement can be periodized from the point of literary history where postmodernism follows modernism. However, modernism as an aesthetic innovation was ever-present in so-called postmodernism and is present in the contemporary literary world. In other words, because of modernism’s open-ended nature as an aesthetic innovation as well as the essential presence of newness in the term, the contemporary is forced to rely on modernism as the frame that can help it define its own identity. Contemporary authors reveal their relationship with modernism and contemporary literature demonstrates the recurring presence of modernism even beyond historical periodization. As a stylistic mode, modernism becomes more dominant in the contemporary. In today’s neoliberal capitalism, key components of modernist thinking and art reappear in contemporary situations to serve a specific purpose. Thus, modernism is not a closed movement of the past but is a recurring presence in the contemporary literary world as an aesthetic intervention. This paper through the conceptual analysis of the term as well as its usage, investigates the contemporaneity of modernism to comprehend how modernism is not only back or can be said to have resurfaced, but also how modernism is ever present as an aesthetic innovation in contemporary literature.
Keywords: Aesthetics, Contemporary, Contemporaneity, Modernism, Post-modernism, Residual modernism