What does this question mean?

Question:

What does this question mean?

David Harvey quoting Brian McHale says, ??The postmodern novel??is characterized by a shift from an ??an epistemological?? to an ??ontological?? dominant. By this he means a shift from the kind of perspectivism that allowed the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but nevertheless singular reality, to the foregrounding of questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate?? (Harvey 302). Do you think that this is adequate for discussing Robert Coover??s novel?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I've never read Robert Coover, so I can't speak to the last part. But the quote is just putting forward a basic position within post-modernist thought (not that any of them are really clear...my smug answer would be that David Harvey probably couldn't explain what he means in plain language). The idea is that modernism depends on belief in an absolute version of events. By "epistemological" he means a single position drawn from empirical evidence or observations. A world of absolutes. An "ontological" argument is one which rejects any single position based on a given argument in favour of a more subjective position. One's beliefs (a priori) can lead to many different possible positions which are worth examining. Basically, he's talking about relativism, but as a pugnacious postmodern, he'd probably never admit it. There are lots of philosophy sites around that deal with this debate/those positions. They'd be worth checking out.

"The foregrounding of questions" is an impossibly vague phrase, and the whole idea is slippery. Don't worry about it. Just understand that he's trying to say the author's work can't be understood through absolutes. According to Harvey (as you quoted him -- I don't have the luxury of proper context), Coover's novel has multiple perspectives which need to be considered in relation to each other.

Hope that helps. I'm not particularly fond of postmodernism, but these ideas are in most academic work in the humanities, so if you're in that field, you'll have to get used to them. Good luck!