Abstract
Despite the emergence of new trends in culture (metamodernism and alter-modernism), postmodernist philosophy and aesthetics continue to steadily influence contemporary artistic discourses. Humanism as an episteme has been developing since the Renaissance; today its conceptual field continues to be refined: philosophers, literary scholars and other representatives of the humanities are asking the question: What are the limits of humanism, should it be qualified as a declaration of the value of life and the dignity of the individual subject, or is it a social phenomenon that should be considered diachronically? Postmodernism is a movement that seems to reject humanism as such. On the contrary, its main vector is the dehumanization of the individual and of society. The deliberate travesty of the narrative, the concentrated intertextuality and the modification of the canonical texts of the past provide a mode of perception that makes it impossible to view humanism as a whole idea without a satirical or ironic undertone. Nevertheless, in Kazakhstan's modern prose we can find examples of fiction that overcome this trend.