Book•
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.
Citations
More filters
[...]
TL;DR: Leishman argues that the phenomenon of consumer nationalism is not ahistorical in nature and that iconic national brands rely heavily on a sense of history, with carefully curated backstories and origin myths providing a commercial and national legitimacy as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Leishman argues that the phenomenon of consumer nationalism is not ahistorical in nature and that iconic national brands rely heavily on a sense of historicity, with carefully curated backstories and origin myths providing a sense of commercial and national legitimacy. The chapter underlines the importance of the commercial, legal and logistic forces in the branding process, and studies how the registration of trademarks shaped national narratives in the early soft drinks market. By studying the transnational origins of Iron Brew drinks beyond Scotland, Leishman underlines the processes of reframing, rewriting and forgetting at work as brands such as Barr’s Irn-Bru have gained status as national icons.
1 citations
TL;DR: The difficulties inherent in writing a travel-chronicle of contemporary Mexico City at a time when the city itself has been "done to death" by other writers and the genre of the travelchronicle has fallen from literary grace is highlighted in this article.
Abstract: This article foregrounds the difficulties inherent in writing a travel-chronicle of contemporary Mexico City at a time when the city itself has been ‘done to death’ by other writers and the genre of the travel-chronicle has fallen from literary grace. Taking a good example of what can be done under these circumstances, Hector Perea's, Mexico, cronica en espiral (Mexico City, A Spiral-Shaped Chronicle) (1996), it briefly examines evidence of the writer's difficulties, and then goes on to analyse his strategies for breathing new life into both genre and subject matter. In particular, it explores the more metaphorical interpretation of travel and travel writing inherent in the ‘dimensions’ of Perea's spiral-shaped chronicle, which takes the reader on a journey through the space of dreams and memories, fiction and poetic imagery, academic speculation and virtual reality. It also measures his success in balancing tradition and innovation, and evaluates whether the resultant text might constitute a postmodern f...
1 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: McCarthy's The Road as discussed by the authors is a post-apocalyptic novel that depicts a man and a boy in a bleak, desperate, catastrophic atmosphere, in a land deprived of civilization and culture.
Abstract: American novelist Cormac McCarthy is a contemporary writer with notable works like Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Man and in particular his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road which was published in 2006. The critical reception of The Road has often tended to identify the novel as a post-apocalyptic, namely, it depicts a man and a boy in a bleak, desperate, catastrophic atmosphere, in a land deprived of civilization and culture. In addition to building up effects of post-apocalyptic fiction, the novel also has some features that could be attributed to postmodernism. Postmodernism is a late twentieth century movement characterized by skepticism, paradox, paranoia, irony and a general suspicion of reason as post war period makes it hard to allow any single defining source for truth and reality in an already fallen world. Accordingly McCarthy portrays such a world that values like humanity, morality gain paradoxical dimensions. In a desolate world where it is hard to attribute meaning to life itself, the man and the boy’s strife to hold on to life through a metaphor of fire and belief in God equals to postmodernism’s critical usage of irony in some conventions. Looking through such a perspective, McCarthy’s work could be analyzed within the framework of the postmodern textual and stylistic features employed in the novel, exploring the ways in which the writer puts less reliance on traditional narrative form through narrative strategies such as fragmentation, mingling of the past and present by means of recollected memories and dreams and in doing so, raises questions on the issue of truth and existence in a dead world engulfed by constant state of paranoia and suspicion.
1 citations
1 citations