All postmodern narrative involves,

All postmodern narrative involves, according to Lyotard, a paradoxical dynamic of (de)realization that combines the task of ''perpetually flushing out" artifices of representation (The Postmodern Condition 79) with the task of reinventing the familiar rules and categories of thought seeking a new urealiza- tion" (81). This process of narrative (de)realization is especially complicated in historical fiction, which requires complex establishment procedures that at best produce an incomplete, dilemmatic encoding of reality. For Lyotard, as the self-questioning philosopher-historian of a post-Auschwitz/postgulag world, reality "is not what is 'given' to this or that 'subject'" (Differend 4), but a state of "the different: that is, an irreducible, litigious object that can only be negotiated through partial "testimonies" and questionable cognitive appropriations (9). For the postmodern historio-grapfter, these establishment procedures always involve "totalizing metaphors" that need to be foregrounded critically.