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The Politics of Postmodernism
01 Jan 1989-
TL;DR: In this article, the postmodernist representation is de-naturalized the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history, Re-presenting the past: 'total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text.
Abstract: General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Representing the postmodern: What is postmodernism? Representation and its politics, Whose postmodernism? Postmodernity, postmodernism, and modernism. 2. Postmodernist representation: De-naturalizing the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history. 3. Re-presenting the past: 'Total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text. 4. The politics of parody: Parodic postmodern representation, Double-coded politics, Postmodern film? 5. Text/image border tensions: The paradoxes of photography, The ideological arena of photo-graphy, The politics of address 6. Postmodernism and feminisms: Politicizing desire, Feminist postmodernist parody, The private and the public. Concluding note: some directed reading. Bibliography. Index.
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01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors argue for a view of Morrison's Beloved as a formal tragedy, a generic translation of fiction and tragedy, thus a novel-tragedy in Kliger's phrasing.
Abstract: This chapter engages the full spectrum of tragedy theory in arguing for a view of Morrison’s Beloved as a formal tragedy, a generic translation of fiction and tragedy thus a “novel-tragedy” in Kliger’s phrasing. Much scholarship on this novel uses analytic frames from gender and women’s studies, the feminist trope of the body, race in its connections with historical slavery, motherhood and maternal matters, as well as history and the status of the novel as against that question. Few take up the specific matter of reparations, still fewer the politics of genre, craft, and form. From the massive response to this significant text, important here are scholarly treatments addressing the form of the novel and the specter of reparations in it, as well as those concerned with legal matters and intertextual valences in Beloved. In this reading, the character Beloved is the core around which the novel orbits. She is positioned as a postmodern, new-American version of the Greek mythological Erinyes; the title character’s true function regards vengeance and the reparation of past injuries. This chapter argues, ultimately, that the novel’s first concern is justice and its chief aim is to serve as clarion call for material—and not merely symbolic—reparations for slavery.
1 citations
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In a previous work as discussed by the authors, we introduced the concept of a novela historica, a novel written by a woman, in the context of the Spanish-English language.
Abstract: vi INTRODUCCION ix CAPITULO I LA NOVELA HISTORICA EN LOS INTERSTICIOS DEL MITO Y LA HISTORIA 1 II EL CARNAVAL AL REVES DE LA HISTORIA EN LOS PERROS DEL PARAISO DE ABELL POSSE 57 III ENTRE LA EROTOPOLITICA Y LAS COARTADAS COLONIALES: EL INDIGENA EXPULSADO DE LA HISTORIA 100 CONCLUSIONES 139 BIBLIOGRAFIA 149
1 citations
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the 1996 novel Eureka Street by the Northern Irish writer Robert McLiam Wilson as an example of historical novel discussed in the context of its evolution influenced by the developments in the theory of historiography.
Abstract: The article analyses the 1996 novel Eureka Street by the Northern Irish writer Robert McLiam Wilson as an example of historical novel discussed in the context of its evolution influenced by the developments in the theory of historiography. Set in the 1990’s Belfast, the novel is both a panorama of the Northern Irish society divided religiously and politically, and a satire on Northern Irish reality and politics. Most importantly, however, it is a romance, which constitutes the generic dominant of the novel and which on the one hand locates it in the venerable tradition of historical romance a la Walter Scott, and on the other introduces essential modifications. The most important of them is the changed concept of history, whose elevated status of an explicatory, unified metanarrative is substituted with several micro-histories; important, too is metafiction which exposes the inevitable constructedness of any historical narrative, both academic and fictional; and the shift of accents from history to romance and love, both presented as a remedy for the traumatic past. Discussing various concepts of the sublime, the essay argues that Wilson’s novel defines it in a different way: the sublime of history perceived as chaos and terror is substituted in the novel with the sublime of love perceived as order and beauty, thus providing hope for the overcoming of the past, its religious and political divisions, and hate.
1 citations
29 Jun 2015
1 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the 1976 novel Lover by Bertha Harris, though receiving little critical attention in the past, can be considered an exemplary novel within discussions of both postmodern fiction and lesbian (or queer) theory.
Abstract: This article argues that the 1976 novel (reprinted in 1993) Lover by Bertha Harris, though receiving little critical attention in the past, can be considered an exemplary novel within discussions of both postmodern fiction and lesbian (or queer) theory. The article analyzes in particular the novel's self-consciousness as manifested by characters who cross-dress and who are artists (including the writer of the novel we are reading). The article calls for Harris to be added to the group of writers such as Wittig, Anzaldua, Lorde, and Winterson, who are discussed within the context of a postmodern lesbian narrative.
1 citations