Postmodern Culture Table of Contents v4n02 (January 1994) URL = http://infomotions.com/serials/pmc/pmc-v4n02-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 4, Number 2 (January, 1994) ISSN: 1053-1920 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Carl Raschke Robert Hodge Avital Ronell bell hooks Andrew Ross Graham Hammill Jorge Ruffinelli David Herman Susan Schultz E. Ann Kaplan William Spanos Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Gary Lee Stonum Arthur Kroker Tony Stewart Neil Larsen Chris Straayer Tan Lin Rei Terada Jerome McGann Paul Trembath Jim Morrison Greg Ulmer ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 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 NOTICES.194 (22 files) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- POSTMODERN CULTURE is published by Oxford University Press three times a year (September, January, and May). PMC's distribution sites are PMC-LIST@LISTSERV.NCSU.EDU (UNIX Listprocessor), FTP.NCSU.EDU in pub/ncsu/pmc/pmc-list (anonymous ftp), JEFFERSON.VILLAGE.VIRGINIA.EDU:70 (gopher) and JEFFERSON.VILLAGE.VIRGINIA.EDU:80 (World-Wide Web), and Oxford University Press, Journals Division (disk and microfiche). This issue is published with support from North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia. 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