In his theory of fiction, Henry James claims that the artist must draw the material from what he/she sees in "life." As is clarified in his literary quarrel with H. G. Wells, James employs the term "art" to refer to "every conscious human activity." Since life itself is nothing more than "all inclusion and confusion" and art is re/presentation of "life," art is derived from the most fundamental conscious activity, which is, according to James, seeing. James, however, cannot be regarded as a subjectivist, like his contemporary aesthetes. Rather, as his metaphor of "the house of fiction" clearly shows, he is an intersubjectivist, who assumes that others see the world in their subjective ways. Seeing is the essential subject of James's works. In his "international" works, the protagonist who sees the world subjectively collides with others who see the world differently. He/she learns that the world is not as it seems to him/her and that he/she is also seen by others. The typical plot of these tales centers on the story of "how one cannot see." James's "supernatural" tales also narrate the story of "how one can see." In these tales, the ghosts bear a similarity in a way to those who see and look back at them. They appear as the alter egos of those who see, and they suggest an alternative way of seeing the world. Most of James's "supernatural" tales are written after 1890, when supernatural fictions achieved certain popularity against the background of flourishing spiritualism. Since spiritualism can be related to colonies under the circumstance of imperialism-as we find out the prominent example of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society-supernatural tales in the late Victorian period have an affinity with colonies. Fredric Jameson argues that the spatial disjunction between the home country and the colonies invests the latter with otherness within the empire, and in consequence of a representational strategy, the colonized otherness becomes invisible. The colonized other, then, easily transgresses the boundary between the home country and the colony as invisible "ghosts." Their apparition in "Imperial Gothic" stories, following Patrick Brantlinger's categorization, expresses anxieties about weakening of imperial hegemony. The ghosts in "Imperial Gothic" represent the colonized otherness and seeing the ghosts symbolically implies the disruption of imperial order. "The Turn of the Screw" epitomizes imperial order and the disruption of it. There is a hierarchy in the household in Bly, and the distance and indifference of Harley Street transforms it into an approximation of imperial order, where the governess by proxy for the employer dominates everyone else as the governor of their "small colony." The ghosts disrupt her governance by transgressing class boundary. It should not be overlooked that what the governess is afraid of is not the ghosts themselves but their incitement of Miles to claim the "title for independence" and to "strike for freedom," which is unmistakably followed by "the revolution." While the ghosts in "The Turn of the Screw" thus represent the colonized otherness, they are the alter egos of the governess. They embody the way of seeing the world differently from the imperialistic view, and she is disturbed not only as an imperial subject but also as an epistemological subject. It is fruitful to consider the connection between these two kinds of subject in order to see what is not seen in James's works.

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  Seit der antiken griechischen Mimesis bis heute ist es für die Künstler eine der größten Herausforderungen, ob und wie man das, was vor unseren Augen als Realität erscheint, wahrnehmen und darstellen kann. Im 21. Jahrhundert scheinen außerdem die rasanten Entwicklungen im Bereich der Technologie und die damit einhergehenden Veränderungen der Kommunikationsformen noch größere Veränderungen zu bewirken, nicht nur in der Literatur, sondern in den verschiedensten Bereichen der Gesellschaft. Insbesondere ist die Verbreitung der sozialen Medien und die rasante Ausdehnung von Diskursen, die nicht immer auf nachweisbaren Fakten basieren, in den letzten Jahren augenfällig geworden. Der Ausdruck „postfaktisch“ (oder „post-truth“) wurde zum Beispiel in mehreren Sprachräumen zum Wort des Jahres 2016 gewählt. Zahlreiche Kommentare und Bücher, die in Auseinandersetzung mit dem Wahlkampf zur US-Präsidentschaft und dem Brexit im Jahr 2016 veröffentlicht wurden, kritisieren die Sprache der neuen Rechten, in deren Hintergrund manche im weiteren Sinne auch den Einfluss der als relativistisch wahrgenommenen postmodernistischen Erkenntniskritik sehen.
  Der vorliegende Aufsatz versucht den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Begriff „postfaktisch“ und dem Postmodernismus anhand der Rede „Kayfabe und Literatur“ (2019) des österreichischen Schriftstellers Clemens J. Setz zu klären. In dieser Eröffnungsrede zum 44. Tag der deutschen Literatur in Klagenfurt nennt Setz zahlreiche Beispiele für die Vermischung von Fiktion und Realität. Vergleicht man diese Beispiele mit seinen Werken, so kann man feststellen, dass Setz, der selbst ein wichtiger Repräsentant der postmodernen Literatur unserer Zeit ist, dieser Vermischung von Fiktion und Realität nicht immer kritisch, sondern im künstlerischen Sinne auch positiv gegenübersteht.
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