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 1, Number 3 (May, 1991)                    ISSN: 1053-1920
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Editors:                              John Unsworth, Issue Editor
                                      Eyal Amiran
 
Book Review Editor:                   Elaine Orr
 
Editorial Assistants:                 Gloria Maxwell
                                      Mina Javaher
 
Editorial Board:
 
          Kathy Acker                 Phil Novak
          Sharon Bassett              Patrick O'Donnell
          Michael Berube              Susan Ohmer
          Marc Chenetier              John Paine
          Greg Dawes                  Marjorie Perloff
          R. Serge Denisoff           David Porush
          Robert Detweiler            Mark Poster
          Jim English                 Carl Raschke
          Henry Louis Gates, Jr.      Mike Reynolds
          Joe Gomez                   Avital Ronell
          Robert Hodge                Andrew Ross
          bell hooks                  Jorge Ruffinelli
          Susan Howe                  Susan M. Schultz
          E. Ann Kaplan               William Spanos
          Arthur Kroker               Tony Stewart
          Neil Larsen                 Gary Lee Stonum
          Jerome J. McGann            Chris Straayer
          Larysa Mykyta               Paul Trembath
          Chimalum Nwankwo            Greg Ulmer
 
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                            CONTENTS
AUTHOR & TITLE                                             FN FT
 
 
Masthead, Contents, Abstracts,                       CONTENTS 591
     Instructions for retrieving files
 
Eugenio D. Matibag, "Self-Consuming Fictions:         MATIBAG 591
     The Dialectics of Cannibalism in
     Modern Caribbean Narratives"
 
Allison Fraiberg, "Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other       FRAIBERG 591
     Indiscretions: Resurfacing the Body in
     the Postmodern"
 
David Porush's response to Allison Fraiberg's         COMMENT 591
     "Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions"
     and Fraiberg's reply to Porush
 
Steven B. Katz, Three Poems                              KATZ 591
 
Stuart Moulthrop, "You Say You Want                  MOULTHRO 591
     A Revolution: Hypertext and the Laws
     of Media"
 
John R. Maier, "Two Moroccan Storytellers               MAIER 591
     in Paul Bowles's _Five Eyes_: Larbi
     Layachi and Achmed Yacoubi"
 
David Mikics, "Postmodernism, Ethnicity              MIKICS-1 591
     and Underground Revisionism in Ishmael          MIKICS-2 591
     Reed"
 
Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "Bulldozing the Subject"        WHEELER 591
 
 
POPULAR CULTURE COLUMN:
 
     Marcia Ian, "From Abject to Object"             POP-CULT 591
 
 
REVIEWS:
 
     John Anderson, review of _The Many Lives of     REVIEW-1 591
          Batman: Critical Approaches to a
          Superhero and His Media_, ed. Roberta E.
          Pearson and William Uricchio.
 
     Jim English, review of _Postmodernism, Or       REVIEW-2 591
          The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism_,
          by Fredric Jameson.
 
     Greg Dawes, review of _Literature and           REVIEW-3 591
          politics in the Central American
          revolutions_, by John Beverley and
          Marc Zimmerman.
 
     M.E. Sokolik, review of _Forked Tongues:        REVIEW-4 591
          Speech, Writing, and Representation in
          North American Indian Texts_, ed.
          David Murray.
 
The Editors, "Postface"                              POSTFACE 591
 
Announcements and Advertisements               [WWW Version only]
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                            ABSTRACTS
 
Eugenio D. Matibag, "Self-Consuming Fictions: The Dialectics of
     Cannibalism in Modern Caribbean Narratives"
 
          ABSTRACT:  Imputations of cannibalism by colonial
     discourse have identified the Caribbean and its peoples with
     the image of a barbaric other suitable for domination.  In
     the effort to decolonize and construct a post-colonial
     subject, modern Caribbean narratives have variously
     redefined "cannibalism" and its ramifications by an
     affirmation of Caliban as a symbol of identity (Fernandez
     Retamar, Lamming, Glissant); by an ironic remembrance of the
     Caribs as possible ancestors (Carpentier, Rhys, Edgell,
     Harris); and by a reworking of "cannibalism" itself as a
     trope of incorporation and self-individuation (Cesaire,
     Lydia Cabrera, Garcia Ramis).  In the process, the category
     of "the self" is deconstructed but then reconstituted in new
     and empowering articulations.  --EDM
 
 
Allison Fraiberg, "Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions:
     Resurfacing the Body in the Postmodern"
 
          ABSTRACT:  This paper uses cyborg theory to situate on
     the same discursive field, albeit in very different places,
     both popular/mainstream AIDS coverage and some alternative
     AIDS writings/undertakings.  Once resituated on this field,
     commentary by PLWA's and AIDS activists/strategists revises
     cyborg, and other postmodern, theories by articulating a
     certain resurfacing of the body.  This resurfacing, a
     resurfacing that triggers a radically different notion of
     "discretion," opens up a space for contextualized versions
     of materialist agency.  --AF
 
 
Stuart Moulthrop, "You Say You Want A Revolution: Hypertext and
     the Laws of Media"
 
          ABSTRACT:  New technologies of communication, such as
     hypertext and hypermedia, may catalyze radical changes in
     text and its related social structures.  On the other hand,
     they might not: the postmodern moment seems anything but
     revolutionary.  The outlook for electronic discourse
     structures is complex and ambiguous.  This article explores
     some of these ambiguities by examining some of the political
     implications of hypertext through the lens or filter of
     Marshall McLuhan's "laws of media."  --SM
 
 
John R. Maier, "Two Moroccan Storytellers in Paul Bowles's _Five
     Eyes_: Larbi Layachi and Ahmed Yacoubi"
 
          ABSTRACT:  Unusual hybrid texts are produced when
     American author Paul Bowles translates the oral narratives
     of nonliterate Moroccan storytellers.  Two of these
     narratives, Ahmed Yacoubi's "The Night Before Thinking,"
     full of magic, and Larbi Layachi's "The Half-brothers,"
     rather like a Western realistic, autobiographical portrait,
     point up the extremes of Bowles's enterprise.  The stories
     do not fit well into narrative categories familiar to the
     West, though they are available only to an English-reading
     audience.  And they share none of the prestige Arabic
     literature has in the Middle East and North Africa, since
     they were performed in the regional (and unwritten) Maghrebi
     dialect of Arabic.  The storytellers would be unable to read
     them even if the stories had been translated into Standard
     Arabic.  Curiously, in the effacing of a Western and
     modernist construct of the "self," these odd texts, which
     Western observers have partly helped us to approach,
     contribute to a postmodern turn of narrative.  --JRM
 
 
David Mikics, "Postmodernism, Ethnicity and Underground
     Revisionism in Ishmael Reed"
 
          ABSTRACT:  Jurgen Habermas has argued that an artistic
     practice must be based on the autonomous individual self
     desired by modernism in order to maintain a critical stance
     in relation to late capitalism.  By contrast, Ishmael Reed
     attempts a criticism of capitalism's mass-cultural face
     %via% not the individual, but the subculture (African-
     American vodoun, which is enshrined in Reed as his aesthetic
     method of "neohoodooism").  With his emphasis on the
     subcultural, Reed not only invents an idiosyncratic brand of
     critical postmodernism; he also presents a critique of
     versions of black culture that, fixated on authenticity,
     refuse to acknowledge that African-American life is part of
     the postmodern world.  --DM
 
 
Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "Bulldozing the Subject"
 
          ABSTRACT:  "Bulldozing the Subject" scans the practical
     effects of postmodernism on the urban landscape.  When
     Baudrillard declares that "Los Angeles and the America
     surrounding it are no longer real," he masks the reality of
     L.A. police using bulldozers to corner homeless people.
     Postmodern gentrification displaces populations, while
     postmodern theory makes displacement seem unreal.  This
     essay argues for a "messy, vital" postmodernism rooted in
     the art and experience of particular communities.  --EAW

_______________________________________________________________
 
COPYRIGHT: Unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which
comprise this issue of _Postmodern Culture_ are held by their
authors.  The compilation as a whole is Copyright (c) 1991 by
_Postmodern Culture_, all rights reserved.  Items published by
_Postmodern Culture_ may be freely shared among individuals, but
they may not be republished in any medium without express written
consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the
editors.  Issues of _Postmodern Culture_ may be archived for
public use in electronic or other media, as long as each issue is
archived in its entirety and no fee is charged to the user; any
exception to this restriction requires the written consent of the
editors of _Postmodern Culture_.

_______________________________________________________________
 

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