Narrating the difference : the fiction of Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson

Looking back at postmodernism, one is now able to grasp the image of a cultural phenomenon best epitomized by the metaphor of the question mark. Its intense preoccupation with interrogating and challenging all the systems of thought and values, as well as its symptomatic distrust of metanarratives (if we are to echo Fredric Jameson’s words), have often made it susceptible to accusations of parasitism. Accordingly, its detractors have emphasized its vital dependency on the very systems it attacked.