Beyond Borders

This collection of essays explores the ways in which concrete literary works and films open loopholes that variously undermine ontological and/or generic closure and compartmentalization. By delving into this technique, recurrent in contemporary fiction, the contributors pose a series of questions which will surely be thought-provoking to anyone interested in the teasing dynamics of postmodernist narrative: are boundaries necessary, even just in order to be rejected? Up to what point is their redefinition possible? Can any tentative definition coincide with itself, or should we give up to never-ending indecision and indeterminacy? Does the ation "postmodern genre" sound like a contradiction in terms? However pointless it may seem to classify and label texts that refuse established categories, is it possible to read a given text without bringing to it a particular set of generic expectations?