POSTMODERNCULTUREPOSTMODERNCULTURE
P RNCU REPO ODER E P O S T M O D E R N
P TMOD RNCU U EP S ODER ULTU E C U L T U R E
P RNCU UR OS ODER ULTURE
P TMODERNCU UREPOS ODER ULTU E an electronic journal
P TMODERNCU UREPOS ODER E of interdisciplinary
POSTMODERNCULTUREPOSTMODERNCULTURE criticism
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Volume 4, Number 2 (January, 1994) ISSN: 1053-1920
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Editors: Eyal Amiran
John Unsworth, issue editor
Review Editor: Jim English
Managing Editor: Jonathan Beasley
Editorial Assistants: Chris Barrett
Jason Haynes
Amy Sexton
List Manager: Chris Barrett
MOO Administration: Chris Barrett
Lisa Brawley
Paul Outka
Ted Whalen
Editorial Board:
Kathy Acker Stuart Moulthrop
Sharon Bassett Larysa Mykyta
Michael Berube Phil Novak
Marc Chenetier Patrick O'Donnell
Greg Dawes Elaine Orr
R. Serge Denisoff Marjorie Perloff
Robert Detweiler Fred Pfeil
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. David Porush
Joe Gomez Mark Poster
Robert Hodge Carl Raschke
bell hooks Avital Ronell
Graham Hammill Andrew Ross
David Herman Jorge Ruffinelli
E. Ann Kaplan Susan Schultz
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett William Spanos
Arthur Kroker Gary Lee Stonum
Neil Larsen Tony Stewart
Tan Lin Chris Straayer
Jerome McGann Rei Terada
Jim Morrison Paul Trembath
Greg Ulmer
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CONTENTS
AUTHOR & TITLE FN FT
Masthead, Contents, Abstracts, CONTENTS.194
Instructions for retrieving files
Editor's Introduction INTRO.194
DELILLO CLUSTER:
Glen Scott Allen, "Raids on the Conscious: ALLEN.194
Pynchon's Legacy of Paranoia and the
Terrorism of Uncertainty in Don DeLillo's
_Ratner's Star_"
Peter Baker, "The Terrorist as Interpreter: BAKER.194
_Mao II_ in Postmodern Context"
Stephen Bernstein, "_Libra_ and the Historical BERNSTEI.194
Sublime"
Bill Millard, "The Fable of the Ants: MILLARD.194
Myopic Interactions in DeLillo's _Libra_"
-- Edited by Glen Scott Allen and Stephen Bernstein
POETRY CLUSTER:
Judith Goldman and Lisa Jarnot, Two Poems GOLD-JAR.194
Tan Lin, "One or Two Ghosts for LIN.194
One or Two Lines"
Virginia Hooper, "Hauntings," "Temples and HOOPER.194
Follies" and "A Reading"
John Yau, "Buffalo and Marshmallows" YAU.194
Albert Mobilio, "The Geographics: Step Five" and MOBILIO.194
"The Geographics: Step Six"
Michael Gizzi, "Ode To Woody Strode," "Removing GIZZI.194
The Obelisk," "Parental Guidance," and
"The Permanence of Whim to Providence"
-- Edited by Tan Lin
POPULAR CULTURE COLUMN:
Elisabeth Crocker, "'To He, I am For Evva True'; POP-CULT.194
Krazy Kat's Indeterminate Gender" (Hypermedia)
FROM: PMC-TALK
Excerpts on Silber, Strauss, and Post-Democratic PMC-TALK.194
Politics in the Academy
REVIEWS:
Gayle Wald, "Anna Deveare Smith's Voices REVIEW-1.194
at Twilight." Review of The Mark Taper
Forum Production of "Twilight: Los Angeles,
1992," a work-in-progress that is part of
the "On the Road: A Search for American
Character" series conceived, written and
performed by Anna Deavere Smith. Directed
by Emily Mann. Set design by Robert Brill.
Costume design by Candice Donnelly. Lighting
by Allen Lee Hughes. Original music by Lucia
Hwong.
Lynda Goldstein, "Queer Bodies of Knowledge: REVIEW-2.194
Constructing Lesbian and Gay Studies."
Review of Abelove, Henry, Michele Anna
Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds.
_The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader_.
New York: Routledge, 1993, and Gever, Martha,
John Greyson, and Pratibha Parmar, eds.
_Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian
and Gay Film and Video_. New York:
Routledge, 1993.
Linda Ray Pratt, "A Postmodern Foundation REVIEW-3.194
for Political Practice." Review of
McGowan, John. _Postmodernism and
Its Critics_. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1991.
Lance Olsen, "Virtual Light." Review of REVIEW-4.194
Gibson, William. _Virtual Light_. New
York: Bantam, 1993.
Susan Schultz, "Exaggerated History." Review REVIEW-5.194
of Susan Howe, _The Birth-Mark: Unsettling
the Wilderness in American Literary
History_. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 1993, and Susan Howe,
_The Nonconformist's Memorial_. New York:
New Directions, 1993.
Kevin Harley, "Grown-Ups and Fanboys." Review REVIEW-6.194
of Sabin, Roger. _Adult Comics: An
Introduction_. London and New York:
Routledge, 1993.
M. Daphne Kutzer, "_Malice_: The New American REVIEW-7.194
Hero." Review of _Malice_, Directed by
Harold Becker. Screenplay by Aaron
Sorking and Scott Frank. Castlerock, 1993.
-- Review Editor: Jim English
Announcements and Advertisements [WWW Version only]
(22 files)
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ABSTRACTS
Glen Scott Allen, "Raids on the Conscious: Pynchon's Legacy of
Paranoia and the Terrorism of Uncertainty in Don Delillo's
_Ratner's Star_."
ABSTRACT: The frequent use of terrorists and
terrorism in DeLillo's novels seems, at first glance, a
direct legacy of the omnipresent paranoia in Pynchon's work,
especially _Gravity's Rainbow_, where Pynchon forecasts the
postmodern condition of the surveilled subject as one based
on institutionalized "intrastate" terrorism. However,
unlike Pynchon's alienation from historical institutions,
DeLillo's portrayal of terrorism focuses on the desire,
shaped and reinforced by the mass media, for a "role" in
history as an agent/victim of conspiracies, the desire for
an individual voice in the midst of a blizzard of competing,
conflicting, and potentially meaningless signals. Finally,
while Pynchon seems to argue for dissolution as the only
future for the increasingly terrified subject, DeLillo
offers some support, however tenuous, for the development of
an alternative postmodern consciousness, one more grounded
in Descartes than Lyotard, and perhaps more romantic than
postmodern. --GSA
Peter Baker, "The Terrorist as Interpreter: _Mao II_ in
Postmodern Context"
ABSTRACT: Through the issues it raises, the kind of
writing style it employs, and coming as it does in a series
of other novels by Don DeLillo, _Mao II_ demands to be
treated seriously in the context of postmodern work and
theory. I want to develop a series of themes and
meditations through a comparison of _Mao II_ with two other
texts that are roughly contemporary, Thomas Pynchon's
_Vineland_ and Neil Jordan's film, _The Crying Game_ (1992).
That is, rather than attempt to define "postmodernism," I
will take as a given that all three of these works *are*
postmodern and explore what this might mean. The comparison
of DeLillo to Pynchon has become rather widespread, but _Mao
II_ specifically presents the character of a hyper-reclusive
novelist, Bill Gray, who may interestingly be compared to
the real-life figure of Pynchon. The comparison with
Jordan's film rests principally on the way _The Crying
Game_ stages an encounter between a "terrorist" and a
hostage that is not dissimilar from some of DeLillo's
meditations on this theme. As novelist Bill Gray travels,
first to London, and finally to Lebanon, he seeks to engage
the relationship he has theorized between novel-writing and
"terrorism" through his own person. Gray (and maybe DeLillo
as well) is fundamentally--and in Gray's case, at least,
fatally--mistaken in his view that equates the role of the
novelist with that of the "terrorist." As Jordan's film
carries this theme out, it becomes clear that the
"terrorist" occupies a role more like that of the
interpreter.
Stephen Bernstein, "_Libra_ and the Historical Sublime"
ABSTRACT: The terror so frequently noted in Don
DeLillo's novels is attributable to his manipulation of
several different theories of the sublime. This essay
discusses his use of Kantian and Burkean sublimes in
_Libra_, demonstrating that DeLillo's sublime is ultimately
an expression of the motive force behind historical process.
Though critics right and left have faulted DeLillo for the
shadowiness of such a view, it might more clearly be seen as
a decision not to representationally underestimate the
multiplicity of desiring subjects acting to constitute the
historical real. --SB
Bill Millard, "The Fable of the Ants: Myopic Interactions in
DeLillo's _Libra_"
ABSTRACT: DeLillo's _Libra_ has attracted both
admiration and vituperation not so much for its willingness
to depict the killing of Kennedy as the result of
conspiratorial actions as for its ability to reconfigure the
idea of conspiracy without recourse to individualist notions
of intentionality. Actors in the political sphere as
imagined by DeLillo need not know what they are doing, as in
the conventional intentionalist image of conspiracy. The
relation of intentions to outcomes is tenuous, because
imperfectly informed actors pursuing disparate, even
conflicting agendas can yield a collective pattern of action
that appears purposeful while conforming to no identifiable
intention. This essay uses mathematician Alfred
Bruckstein's term "myopic interactions" (based on a study of
ant behavior) as the master metaphor for the paradigm
governing DeLillo's characters. The public communicative
act envisioned by the initiator of a plot to *come close* to
killing Kennedy is changed, through the myopic interactions
of all those involved (particularly Oswald, whose inability
to integrate information resembles the socio-informational
pathology of capitalist culture as a whole), into a real
killing; a scholar's effort to bring the texts surrounding
the incident to interpretive closure is equally futile,
never becoming more than the simulacrum of an investigation
into the simulacrum of a consciously directed plot.
Socially pervasive myopia serves the interests of power by
robbing critical historical narratives of credibility, but
an informational paradigm that moves beyond myopic private
interpretation offers the possibility of credible resistance
in the public sphere. --WBM
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