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 5, Number 1 (September, 1994) ISSN: 1053-1920
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Editors: Eyal Amiran
John Unsworth, issue editor
Review Editor: Jim English
Managing Editor: Amy Sexton
Editorial Assistants: Chris Barrett
Jonathan Beasley
List Manager: Chris Barrett
Editorial Board:
Sharon Bassett Phil Novak
Michael Berube Patrick O'Donnell
Marc Chenetier Elaine Orr
Greg Dawes Marjorie Perloff
bell hooks Fred Pfeil
Graham Hammill Mark Poster
Phillip Brian Harper David Porush
David Herman Carl Raschke
E. Ann Kaplan Avital Ronell
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Susan Schultz
Arthur Kroker William Spanos
Neil Larsen Gary Lee Stonum
Tan Lin Tony Stewart
Jerome McGann Chris Straayer
Jim Morrison Rei Terada
Stuart Moulthrop Paul Trembath
Larysa Mykyta Greg Ulmer
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CONTENTS
Deepika Bahri, "Disembodying the Corpus: bahri.994
Postcolonial Pathology in Tsitsi Dangarembga's
_Nervous Conditions_"
Robert Kolker, "The Moving Image Reclaimed" kolker.994
(Hypermedia)
Marie-Laure Ryan, "Immersion vs. Interactivity: ryan.994
Virtual Reality and Literary Theory"
Allan Stoekl, "'Round Dusk: Kojeve at the End" stoekl.994
John Walker, "Seizing Power: Decadence and walker.994
Transgression in Foucault and Paglia"
Charles Bernstein, Three Poems (Hypermedia) bernstei.994
James Boros, "Cheered by Battleship" boros.994
Michael Evans, Two Poems evans.994
Lidia Yuknavitch, "Differentia" yuknavit.994
LETTERS/RESPONSES
Jeff Bell, "Response to Jonathan Beller's bell.994
Essay, 'Cinema: Capital of the Twentieth
Century'"
POPULAR CULTURE COLUMN
Andrew Levy, "Prehistory and Postmodernism" pop-cult.994
REVIEWS:
Russell A. Potter, "Black Modernisms/Black review-1.994
Postmodernisms" Review of: Tricia Rose,
_Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in
Contemporary America_. Wesleyan UP/ UP of New
England; and Paul Gilroy, _The Black Atlantic:
Modernity and Double-Consciousness_. Harvard UP.
Jeffrey Nealon, "Theory That Matters" Review review-2.994
of Butler, Judith. _Bodies That Matter: On the
Discursive Limits of "Sex"_. New York & London:
Routledge, 1993.
Jonathan Markovitz, "Blurring the Lines: Art review-3.994
on the Border." Review of La Frontera/The
Border: Art About the Mexico/United States
Border Experience. Organized by the Centro
Cultural de la Raza and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, San Diego.
Thomas Benson, "Permanence and Change in the review-4.994
Global Village" Review of Garry, Patrick M.
_Scrambling for Protection: The New Media and
the First Amendment_. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1994.
Kevin J.H. Dettmar, "Postmodern Jeremiad: review-5.994
Kruger on Popular Culture" Review of Barbara
Kruger. _Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and
the World of Appearances_. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1993.
Christian L. Pyle, "The Superhero Meets the review-6.994
Culture Critic." Review of Reynolds, Richard.
_Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. Studies in
Popular Culture_. Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 1994.
-- Review Editor: Jim English
NOTICES
Announcements and Adverstizements [WWW Version only]
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ABSTRACTS
Deepika Bahri, "Disembodying the Corpus: Postcolonial Pathology
in Tsitsi Dangarembga's 'Nervous Conditions'"
ABSTRACT: This paper draws attention to the socio-personal
reciprocity between the symptoms of disease and the female
condition in postcolonial and patriarchal settings. The
"subject" under analysis is Nyasha, the anorexic, teenage
deuteragonist of Tsitsi Dangarembga's 1988 novel _Nervous
Conditions_. Nyasha demonstrates through her pathological
condition the violence wrought on the female body in the
successive scenes of pre and post colonial Zimbabwe. In the
struggle to escape her assigned subjectivity as woman,
native, and other, Nyasha targets her body as the site of
resistance, so to destroy the self diseased by both
patriarchy and colonization. The paper argues for an expanded
understanding of the possibilities of female resistance,
while suggesting that female praxis needs to be given a
central place in feminist and postcolonial politics. --DB
Robert Kolker, "The Moving Image Reclaimed"
ABSTRACT: "The Moving Image Reclaimed" is an experiment
in intertextuality. The critical text and its subject,
narrative film, are woven together, offering the reader an
opportunity to see moving-image examples, and the film
scholar the opportunity to quote images with the same
freedom as the literary critic quotes words. The films under
discussion (Scorsese's "Cape Fear" and Hitchcock's "Strangers
on a Train") are themselves works that quote or are quoted
from. Finally, as an essay that exists only on-line, "The
Moving Image Reclaimed" is an experiment in alternative means
of transmitting text and image. --RK
Marie-Laure Ryan, "Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality
and Literary Theory"
ABSTRACT: Virtual Reality has been defined as an "interactive
immersive experience generated by computer." This paper
investigates the possibility of the literary implementation
of these two dimensions. While immersion plays an important
role in theories of fiction based on the concepts of possible
world and of game of make-believe, it presupposes a
transparency of the medium that goes against the grain of
postmodern aesthetics. Postmodern literature emulates the
interactive aspect of VR in a metaphorical way through self-
reflexivity, and in a more literal way through hypertext, but
both of these attempts involve a sacrifice of the pleasure
derived from immersion. In computer-generated VR, by contrast,
immersion and interactivity do not stand in conflict but
support each other. The difference in behavior between VR and
literature is seen to reside in the participation of the body.
While textual worlds are created through a purely mental
semiotic activity which presupposes an external point of view,
the worlds of VR are created from within through an activity
both mental and physical. A mind may conceive a world from the
outside, but a body always experiences it from the inside.
--MLR
Allan Stoekl, "'Round Dusk: Kojeve at the End"
ABSTRACT: This essay attempts to put in perspective the
relation between a Kojevian posthistoricism and current
theories of the postmodern, especially those of Lyotard. While
the governing trope of postmodern theory has been the concept
of the death of the "grand narratives"--exemplified by those
of Hegel and Marx--one must nevertheless note that, in Kojeve's
reading of Hegel at least, the end of history results in a
proliferation of styles and discourses that one could indeed
take as an instance of the postmodern. Is Kojeve, then,
postmodern? Through an examination of a number of passages
from his major work, _Introduction to the Reading of Hegel_,
especially those pertaining to animality, death, and the Book,
I attempt to isolate the fundamental and radical differences
between posthistoricism and the postmodern. But this reading
allows us to put forward as well the hypothesis that
posthistoricism, in and through its very ignorance, may be
more postmodern than the postmoderns. --AS
John Walker, "Seizing Power: Decadence and Transgression in
Foucault and Paglia"
ABSTRACT: This essay attempts to construct a theoretical
rapprochement between these two critics, one the hero of
North American liberal-humanist scholars, and the other an
avowed enemy of that same group. In doing so, what emerges
is a theory of dandyism for the postmodern age and beyond
that I call de-structuralism. Drawing on seldom-analyzed
statements from Foucault, and concordant elements from
Paglia's _Sexual Personae_, de-structuralism attempts to
recognize the inescapable necessity of Nietzsche's
Apollonian (hierarchical, form-giving) drive, which
postmodern criticism has often demonized in favour of an
idealized version of Dionysian formlessness. If the
Apollonian equates to "power," then de-structuralism is
the attempt to theorize how individuals might seize this
power for themselves, re-making their lives into art.
--JW
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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) 1994 by
Postmodern Culture and Oxford University Press, all rights
reserved. Items published by Postmodern Culture may be freely
shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any
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Culture may be archived for public use in electronic or other
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requires the written consent of the editors and of the publisher.
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