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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.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In his apparent send-up of Camus' colonial classic L'Etranger, first-time Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud produces a far more ambiguous document as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In his apparent send-up of Camus' colonial classic L'Etranger, first-time Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud produces a far more ambiguous document. Meursault, contre-enquete perhaps the most famous Maghrebi novel of the early 21st century, subverts is own ostensible goal of critiquing Camus while also using the genre of the “postcolonial remake” to make a broad comment on literature itself. Exceptional in many ways, Daoud's novel nonetheless may be read as emblematic: it appears to exceed its cultural origins while all the while gesturing back to them and resincribing the Maghrebi novel's ability to resonate on both local and universal levels.

7 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Meagher as mentioned in this paper argues that analyses of Sherman's work are involved in a debate about whether the images are useful or destructive to feminist politics, and that what has come to be known as Sherman Studies places an emphasis not upon Sherman's art, but rather upon the identify of the artist.
Abstract: Taking her cue from the recent Cindy Sherman exhibition at Metro Pictures, New York, 'New Photographic Work 2000', Meagher considers the ways in which feminist art critics have analysed Sherman's work since it was first 'discovered' by Douglas Crimp in 1979. Her claim is that analyses of Sherman's work are involved in a debate about whether the images are useful or destructive to feminist politics. More importantly, what has come to be known as Sherman Studies places an emphasis not upon Sherman's art, but rather upon the identify of the artist. Instead of enquiring into the political status of the art works (are they feminist?), critics often end up asking after the political status of the artist herself (is she feminist?). Meagher's essay is in four sections: 'Encounters' traces the critical reaction to Sherman's work; 'In or Out of the Picture' considers the critical tendency to impose a narrative upon the work and the simultaneous insistence that this narrative is informed by the artist's feminist int...

7 citations


Cites background from "The Politics of Postmodernism"

  • ...Many critics have noted her obvious and very postmodern contesting of the unitary and autonomous subject, but what needs reviewing again is the gender of that subject (Hutcheon 1989:158)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
19 Oct 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the science fiction novel Cosmonaut Keep (2000) by the Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, and analyze from a transmodern perspective some future warfare aspects related to forthcoming technological development, possible reconfigurations of territoriality in an expanding cluster of civilizations travelling and trading across distant solar systems.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the science fiction (SF) novel Cosmonaut Keep (2000)—first in the trilogy Engines of Light, which also includes Dark Light (2001) and Engines of Light (2002)—by the Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, and analyzes from a transmodern perspective some future warfare aspects related to forthcoming technological development, possible reconfigurations of territoriality in an expanding cluster of civilizations travelling and trading across distant solar systems, expanded cultural awareness, and space ecoconsciousness. It is my argument that MacLeod’s novel brings Transmodernism, which is characterized by a “planetary vision” in which human beings sense that we are interdependent, vulnerable, and responsible, into the future. Hereby, MacLeod’s work expands the original conceptualization of the term “Transmodernism” as defined by Rodriguez Magda, and explores possible future outcomes, showing a unique awareness of the fact that technological processes are always linked to political and power-related uses.

7 citations


Cites background from "The Politics of Postmodernism"

  • ...In 1989, Linda Hutcheon famously proclaimed that postmodernism, which she understood as both a continuation and a break from modernism, was “over” [2] (p....

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  • ...3), “the postmodern moment has passed” [2] (p....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Coen brothers' 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? presents an intriguing and unusual case for the question of whether historical accuracy is important in films that use classical antiquity as a direct setting or indirect reference point as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Coen brothers' 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? presents an intriguing and unusual case for the question of whether historical accuracy is important in films that use classical antiquity as a direct setting or indirect reference point. With key elements of the film based on Homer's Odyssey, O Brother is set in the American south during the Great Depression. Those familiar with the often whimsical style of the Coen brothers probably did not know what, if any, connection this effort would have to either historical period. However, lovers of Homer have noted many clever allusions to the adventures of Odysseus in the O Brother, while those interested in the myth of a charming Old South appeared pleased at how the film nostalgically presented 1930s southern culture. Classical Allusions Homer's Odysseus becomes Ulysses Everett McGiIl (George Clooney) in the Coens' reimagining of the epic Greek story. Though he is also a man who prizes his intellect as a mechanism for making his way back home, Everett soon discloses a shallow obtuseness beneath his clever and fast-talking rhetoric. Still, like Odysseus, Everett longs to get back to his beloved wife Penelope, a.k.a. Penny (Holly Hunter), who is being courted by a suitor. Unlike her ancient counterpart, Penny is not exactly the faithful wife; she divorces Everett in his absence to pursue a more profitable match. And even when the couple is reunited at the end, the last scene depicts Penny nagging her ever-apologizing husband, who is followed by seven daughters rather than one son. Homer's blind prophet Tiresias is central in the Coens' version, too, though now he appears as an old black man (Lee Weaver) who says he works for "no man" and has "no name" (echoing Odysseus' famous lines). In riddles, this blind seer warns Everett and his companions (Pete played by John Turturro and Delmar played by Tim Blake Nelson) of the perils of the journey but predicts a successful homecoming. In O Brother, the Cyclops takes the guise of John Goodman's conniving, one-eyed bible salesman, who examples an on-going religious subtext (again similar but quite different from Homer). The Sirens now appear as seductive songstresses in wet dresses (played by Mia Tate, Musetta Vander, and Christy Taylor), also filling Circe's role as beautiful witch by supposedly turning Pete into a toad (and they even recall the role of Nausicaa and her maids with their clothes-washing). But Ulysses Everett McGiIl, unlike the ancient Odysseus, has no defense against any of their feminine wiles. Along with his companions, Everett gets "liquored up" and intends "to fornicate" because he does not have the good sense to see that the Sirens plan to tum the men over to the law for the reward money. More subtle references to Homer's story include: the hero's journey to the underworld, which has become the fire and brimstone meeting of the KKK; the conversion of the Lotus Eaters into the glassy-eyed crowd waiting to be dunked in the river for baptism; the saving of Odysseus from the watery deep, mirrored in Everett emerging from the floods of the Tennessee Valley Authority; the transformation of Poseidon into Sheriff Cooley (Daniel Von Bargen), who also represents an unrelenting and blind revenge (note the sunglasses). And just as Poseidon ignores Zeus' decree that Odysseus shall return home, the trooper also does not care about anyone else's authority - in this case the indifference concerns the governor's pardon at the end. The modern Ulysses also returns home in disguise, through a fake beard and blackface in the film, making Everett appear to be a down-and-out, old hillbilly like the beggar Odysseus. Once again there is a showdown among opposing forces at a banquet. The ancestral home is threatened but still intact, at least long enough to yield an object that gives legitimacy to Ulysses' relationship with his wife (the tree-bed in Homer vs. the ring in the film). The hero is saved in both cases by a deus ex machina; fate plays a prominent role in both stories -all is "foreordained," as Everett claims. …

7 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Sep 2006
TL;DR: The use of citation, appropriation, and literary resonance in the writing of Angela Carter's oeuvre has been discussed in detail in this paper, with a focus on the use of the scrap-yard metaphor.
Abstract: Angela Carter’s oeuvre is characterized by its extraordinary range of literary and cultural references. Christina Britzolakis, for example, refers to ‘the voracious and often dizzying intertextuality’ of Carter’s writing (50), while Linden Peach argues that intertextuality is a ‘boldly thematised part of her work’ (4). From fairy tale to French decadence, from medieval literature to Victoriana, and from cookery books to high theory, Carter’s narratives are littered with allusions and references drawn from a wide range of cultural spheres.1 As Carter herself puts it in an interview with John Haffenden: I have always used a very wide number of references because of tending to regard all of western Europe as a great scrap-yard from which you can assemble all sorts of new vehicles… bricolage. Basically, all the elements which are available are to do with the margin of the imaginative life, which is in fact what gives reality to our own experience, and in which we measure our own reality. (92) It is owing to the suggestive image of the scrap-yard from which Carter irreverently loots and hoards that her ‘distinctively magpie-like relation to literary history’ (Britzolakis 50) and iconoclastic approach to canonicity have most often been framed in relation to a postmodern aesthetic. Undoubtedly, Carter’s promiscuous use of citation, appropriation and literary resonance dismantles the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural forms and unsettles the workings of power, legitimacy and the sacred. In this respect, it shares postmodernism’s challenge to mimetic assumptions about representation by promoting narrative uncertainty, heterogeneity and dispersal.

7 citations