Male Pro-Feminism and the Masculinist Gigantism of Gravity's Rainbow
About: This article is published in Postmodern Culture.The article was published on 1996-01-05. It has received 48 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Gravity (chemistry).
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01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as discussed by the authors are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics
1,125 citations
30 Jun 2019
TL;DR: In this article, a review of the literature is used as a way to frame and focus a research project, which can help to enhance conceptual sensitivity and make claims about the possible significance of a work.
Abstract: Q: Why do a review of the literature? 1. As a way to frame and focus a research project When research questions are formed without sustained reference to the literature, the study is likely to be marred by 1. Naïve research instruments that lack conceptual underpinnings 2. Problems with sense-making because the researcher is not alert to themes that may be identifiable 3. Problems with claims-making because the researcher lacks the knowledge to state its significance for theory, policy or practice. Knowledge of the literature can help: 1. Tighten research questions 2. Enhance conceptual sensitivity 3. Provide a source for making comparisons 4. Provide a cache of descriptive data 5. Provide questions for initial observations and interviews 6. Stimulate questions during the analysis 7. Suggest areas for theoretical sampling 8. Confirm findings, or, findings can be used to show where current literature is incorrect, simplistic, or partial 9. Model ways of making claims about the possible significance of your work
69 citations
65 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Gravity's Rainbow as mentioned in this paper is a classic post-modern novel that explores cultural politics within a multi-layered, discontinuous collection of narratives that are often boisterous, preposterous, and slapstick.
Abstract: You must become your father, but a paler, weaker version of him. (Barthelme 1975, 179) Published in 1973 and steeped in the politics of altered states and alternative consciousness, Gravity's Rainbow foregrounds the political question central to debates in the 60s between the counterculture and the New Left: Does alternative cultural practice lead to change in social history? Can culture transform patriarchy? Capitalism? Western civilization? In the years since its publication, Gravity's Rainbow has become canonized in the academy as a classic postmodern novel because its disrupted narrative conventions, its indeterminate epistemology, and its countercultural politics anticipate, indeed, influence later theories of postmodernism. However, Gravity's Rainbow does not live by cultural politics alone. More ambitiously, it focuses on the emotions of cultural politics. Both a comedy of radicalized consciousness and a tragedy of that radicalized consciousness's inability to change an unjust political and economic system, it engages the joy and the terror of cultural resistance to social injustice. In contrast to prevailing conceptions of postmodernism, Gravity's Rainbow articulates a complex, historically resonant, and surprisingly intense affect. More specifically, Gravity's Rainbow articulates the affect particular to white male postmodernism. The white male characters of the novel occupy a uniquely conflicted position within the cultural politics of resistance. In one way, these white guys are victims like everyone else of the forces of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism. Yet unlike everyone else, of course, the forces of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism grant privilege to white guys. Moreover, the patriarchal ritual of succession happens precisely through (oedipal) resistance. Thus the question of cultural politics for white guys in the novel, especially the naive young Ivy Leaguer Tyrone Slothrop, is how to resist without this resistance itself becoming a form of complicity and perpetuation. Again, Gravity's Rainbow clarifies this by now familiar postmodern conflict, but more remarkably clarifies the emotional experience of this conflict. The white male characters of the counterculture, especially Slothrop, move between the pleasures of a hippie-style resistance to "The Man" and the paranoia that such "resistance" is yet another manifestation of the power of "The Man." In terms of later debates on postmodernism, Gravity's Rainbow's white male characters help clarify the emotional experience of liberation and its limits proper to postmodern critiques of representation. Gravity's Rainbow's innovative narrative form re-creates this emotional experience for its readers. It explores cultural politics within a multi-layered, discontinuous collection of narratives that are often boisterous, preposterous, and slapstick. The novel always retains concrete historical reality as its referent, but it presents history in grotesque characterizations and cartoonish allegorical plots punctuated by disruptive digressions and an often-playful mocking narrative voice. Thus the terrors of history, specifically of the Cold War, get displaced by the pleasures of the narrative. The political implication is that culture can transform history, indeed that pleasure can transform history, which echoes credos from the 60s and from postmodernism. Yet Gravity's Rainbow also signals in Marxist fashion the material limits to this cultural politics. Thematically, it marks the complicity of the cultural resistance of its characters, again specifically its white male characters, with the forces of capitalism and patriarchy. Structurally, it reminds its readers of the concrete historical and political limits to such cultural pleasures as reading. Gravity's Rainbow is in large part organized around the question of countercultural politics.Virtually all the zany plots and subplots involve the issue of how cultural practice shapes material reality. …
31 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as mentioned in this paper are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics
21,123 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary are discussed, as well as the Assumption of Sex, in the context of critical queering, passing and arguing with the real.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements Part 1: 1. Bodies that Matter 2. The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary 3. Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex 4. Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion Part 2: 5. 'Dangerous Crossing': Willa Cather's Masculine Names 6. Queering, Passing: Nella Larsen Rewrites Psychoanalysis 7. Arguing with the Real 8. Critically Queer. Notes. Index
10,391 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1970
259 citations
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TL;DR: Men in Feminism: Odor di Uomo or Compagnons de Route? Alice Jardine and Paul Smith as discussed by the authors discuss the relationship between women and men in the context of women's empowerment.
Abstract: Introduction. Acknowledgements. 1. Male Feminism Stephen Heath 2. Men in Feminism: Men and Feminist Theory Paul Smith 3. Men in Feminism: Men and Feminist Theory Stephen Heath 4. Demonstrating Sexual Difference Andrew Ross 5. Men in Feminism: Odor di Uomo or Compagnons de Route? Alice Jardine 6. Walking the Tightrope of Feminism and Male Desire Judith Mayne 7. A Man's Place Elizabeth Weed 8. Femmeninism Peggy Kamuf 9. No Question of Silence Andrew Ross 10. A Double Life (Femmeninism II) Peggy Kamuf 11. Dreaming Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault and Sexual Difference Naomi Schor 12. French Theory and the Seduction of Feminism Jane Gallop 13. Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and the Woman of the Year Elaine Showalter 14. Response Terry Eagleton 15. Elaine Showalter Replies 16. Man on Feminism: A Criticism of his Own Nancy K. Miller. A Criticism of One's Own Denis Donoghue 17. Men, Feminism: The Materiality of Discourse Cary Nelson 18. in any event... Meaghan Morris 19. In, With Richard Ohmann 20. Women in the Beehive: A Seminar with Jacques Derrida 21. Reading Like a Man Robert Scholes 22. Outlaws: Gay Men in Feminism Craig Owens 23. Envy: or With My Brains and Your Looks Rosi Braidotti 24. A Conversation Alice Jardine and Paul Smith. Notes. Contributors.
140 citations