Postmodern Culture Table of Contents v1n03 (May 1991) URL = http://infomotions.com/serials/pmc/pmc-v1n03-contents.txt 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 1, Number 3 (May, 1991) ISSN: 1053-1920 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 NOTICES 591 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------ TO RETRIEVE SINGLE ITEMS LISTED ABOVE, send a mail message to listserv@ncsuvm or listserv@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu containing as its one and only line the command get [fn ft] pmc-list f=mail (replace [fn ft] with the filename and filetype, as listed in the table of contents, for the file you want to receive). There should be no blank lines, spaces, or other text preceding this line. TO RETRIEVE THE WHOLE ISSUE as a package, send a mail message to listserv@ncsuvm or listserv@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu with the command get pmcv1n3 package pmc-list f=mail If you request the issue as a package, please make certain you have sufficient virtual disk space on your mainframe account to receive it (at least half a megabyte). 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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_. -----------------END OF CONTENTS 591 FOR PMC 1.3-----------------