Morphologies of postmodernism

Professor Djelal Kadir

436N Burrowes

Phone/Fax 863-9629

E-mail: kadir@psu.edu

Office hours: M 11:30–12:30; T 11:00–12:00 and by appointment

The seminar will trace some of the more common versions of the history of postmodernism––its aesthetic, social, and ideological facets––and examine the phenomenon in its relationship to other "posts-" (post-structuralism, post-colonialism, the post-human).

 We shall consider postmodernism as:

••Epochal term (as what might come after modernism)

••Philosophical concept (extensive of thought, interruptive of order, disruptive of reason)

••Post-historical historiographic episteme (making history after the end of history)

••Futurity and ideological regression (if modernism is the avant-garde, is what comes after,

postmodernism, the rearguard?)

••Discursive agency of empire and imperial repertoire

••Political paradox (emancipatory and oppressive)

••Cultural contradiction (popular and elitist, revitalizing and exhausting, progressive and regressive)

••Post-utopian construct (heterotopic instrument of post-industrial teletechnologies in cybernetics,

communications, weaponry, and prosthetics)

••Vehicle for global capital and commodification of culture

••Critique and instrument of globalization and neo-colonialism

••Literary complex and poetic value of cultural transformation

The readings consist of key theoretical/critical essays that trace the relationship between modernism, postmodernism, and their “after-math.” We shall read a number of literary works that dramatize the postmodern in textual demonstrations and hyper-self-reflective narratives. These readings will consist of poetry and prose that dramatize what happens to modernity when it is said to turn postmodern.

The first of the two term papers (see due dates on reading schedule, below) will focus on the particular problematic or topic in the theoretical readings (Part One) that proves especially compelling to each seminarian. The second paper will consist of an application of the issues identified and dealt with in the first paper to a particular text, or constellation of texts. Each seminar member will actively contribute to the weekly discussion through the lens(es) of the particular set of issues, s/he finds compelling enough to serve as the critical instrument and thread, or skein of threads s/he wishes to weave through the weekly readings and discussions in the course of the semester.

REQUIRED TEXT

Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty. NY: Columbia UP, 1993.

Available for purchase at Webster’s Book Store Café. Unless otherwise indicated, reading assignments are from this book. A master copy of all other items will be on file weekly outside my office door for copying. Reading materials available online should be printed out and brought to appropriate seminar session as indicated in the reading schedule below.

PART ONE

WEEK I: PRE-POSTS AND THE PREPOSTEROUS

Thomas Docherty, “Postmodernism: An Introduction”; John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” The Atlantic Monthly, numb. 222 (August 1967) 29-34; “The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodernist Fiction,” The Atlantic Monthly, numb. 245 (January 1980) 65-71; Hans Bertens, “The Postmodern Weltanschauung and Its Relation to Modernism: An Introductory Survey,” in A Postmodern Reader, eds. Joseph Natoli & Linda Hutcheon, Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.

WEEK II: POSTAL PROPOSITIONS

Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity––An Incomplete Project”; Jean François Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?” and “Note on the Meaning of ‘Post-’”; Gianni Vattimo, “The Structure of Artistic Revolutions”; Ihab Hassan, “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism”; David J. Herman, “Modernism versus Postmodernism: Towards an Analytic Distinction,” Poetics Today 12.1 (1991) 55-86. John Frow, “What Was Postmodernism?” in his Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

WEEK III: VANGUARD POSTINGS

Andreas Huyssen, “The Search for Tradition: Avant-garde and Post-modernism in the 1970s”; Octavio Paz, “The Closing of the Circle,” in his Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974. Nicholas Zurbrugg, “Postmodernity, Métaphore Manqué, And The Myth of the Trans-Avant-Garde,” in his Critical Vices: The Myths of Postmodern Theory. Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 2000.

WEEK IV: WHICH MODERNISM IS POSTMODERNISM THE POST OF?

Linda Hutcheon, “Limiting the Postmodern: The Paradoxical Aftermath of Modernism,” in her A Poetics of Modernism: History, Theory, Fiction. NY & London: Routledge, 1988. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”; Jürgen Habermas, “The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point”; Stephen Slemon, “Modernism’s Last Post,” Ariel 20.4 (1989) 3-17 (also in Natoli & Hutcheon, 1993); Reingard Nethersole, “Out of Modernity: ‘Fulfillment without Lament’,” in Other Modernisms in An Age of Globalization, eds. Djelal Kadir & Dorothea Löbbermann. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2002.

WEEK V: POSTMODERNISM AND POLITICS: DUPLICITIES, CONTRADITIONS, AND ANTINOMIES

Docherty, Part Six: “Introduction”; Richard Rorty, “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism”; Ernesto Laclau, “Politics and the Limits of Modernity”; André Gorz, “The Condition of Post-Marxist Man”; Jean Baudrillard, “Toward a Principle of Evil” and Jean Baudrillard, “The Evil Demon of Images and the Procession of Simulacra”; Linda Hutcheon, “Political Double-talk,” in her A Poetics of Modernism: History, Theory, Fiction. NY & London: Routledge, 1988. OPTIONAL supplementary reading: Honi Fern Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault. NY & London: Routledge, 1994.

WEEK VI:  INFLECTED CRITIQUE

Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, “Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism”; Sabina Lovibond, “Feminism and Postmodernism”; E. Ann Kaplan, “Feminsim/Oedipus/Postmodernism: The Case of MTV,” in Postmodernism and Its Discontents, in E. Ann Kaplan, ed. London, NY: Verso, 1988; Donna J. Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” chapt. 8 of Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. NY: Routledge, 1991; Pelagia Goulimari, “‘Myriad Little Connections’: Minoritarian Movements in the Postmodernism Debate,” Postmodern Culture 14.3 (May 2004).

WEEK VII: DEFINING CIRCUMFERENCES

 Nelly Richard, “Postmodernisms and Periphery”; Simon During, “Postmodernism or Post-colonialism Today”; Debra A. Castillo, “Postmodern Indigenism: ‘Quetzalcoatl and All That’,” Modern Fiction Studies 42.1 (Spring 1995); Philippa Berry, “Postmodernism and Post-religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism, Steven Connor, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004, 168-181; Peter Yoonsuk Paik, “Smart Bombs, Serial Killing, and the Rapture: The Vanishing Bodies of Imperial Apocalypticism,” Postmodern Culture, 14.1 (September 2003). OPTIONAL: Anthony Kwame Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” Critical Inquiry 17.2 (1991) 336-57; Michael Berubé, “Introduction: Worldly English,” Modern Fiction Studies 48.1 (Spring 2002) 1-17.

WEEK VIII: IN-CLASS ORAL PRESENTATIONS AND FILING OF MID-TERM PAPER

PART TWO

WEEK IX: NEW WORLD ORDER: ONE WORLD

Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”

WEEK X: SORTING OUT TLÖN: OEDIPAL MASS

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

WEEK XI: PRE-/POST-COUNTERPOINT

Edmond Jabés, “Adam, or the Birth of Anxiety,” @ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pepc/authors/jabes/adam.html  John Ashbery, “What Is Poetry?” @ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/what-is-poetry.html ; John Cage, “Indeterminacy: 131” @ http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/s.cgi?131 ; “Indeterminacy: 109” @ http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/s.cgi?109 , or choose your own poem; Kathleen Fraser, “Notes re-Echo” from Each Next @ http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/fraser/notesre.html; Jennifer Moxley, “Invective Verse,” @ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/moxley.html ; Cyril Wong, “Scraping the Arched Roof”; Camille Martin, “-esque”; Andrew Nightingale, “Like a Smile On Hold”; and Aryan Kaganof, “Aftermass” in eratio 5 (Spring 2005), special issue on poetic language at http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/poeticlanguagefive.html#5 .

WEEK XII: DECALOGUE

Italo Calvino, If on A Winter’s Night A Traveller

WEEK XIII: SENTENCING BIG TIME

Donald Barthelme, “Sentence,” from 40 Stories (1987); Ursula K. Le Guin, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow” from Buffalo Girls and Other Animal Presences (1988); Jeanette Winterson, “Psalms” from The World and Other Places (1998).

WEEK XIV: MEDICINE MEN

Abé Kabo, “Dendrocacalia” and “Intruders” from Beyond the Curve (1944-66;1993); Gerald Vizenor, “Bad Breath” from Landfill Meditation (1991)

WEEK XV: ORAL PRESENTATIONS AND FILING OF TERM PAPERS

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