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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