Constructing Postmodernism

to propose a single, all-inclusive inventory of postmodernist poetics. This book, by contrast, proposes multiple, overlapping and intersecting inventories--not a construction of postmodernism, but a plurality of constructions. "Constructing Postmodernism" will be essential reading for all students of contemporary literature and culture.

Acknowledgments

x

Introducing constructing

1

(1)

Constructivism, or, does postmodernism exist?

1

(3)

Narrative turns

4

(4)

The story so far

8

(6)

Essaying

14

(5)

Part 1 Narrating literary histories

Telling postmodernist stories

19

(23)

The first story: ``Post-Modernism''

19

(7)

Another story: exhaustion, replenishment

26

(6)

A third story: cognitive, postcognitive

32

(3)

The first story again: unlicensed metaphysics

35

(3)

Appendix 1.1: ``Post-Modernism'', Max Apple

38

(4)

Constructing (post)modernism: the case of Ulysses

42

(19)

Modernist Ulysses

44

(3)

Postmodernist Ulysses

47

(8)

Modernism-cut-in-half

55

(6)

Part 2 (Mis)reading Pynchon

Modernist reading, postmodernist text: the case of Gravity's Rainbow (1979)

61

(26)

Modernist (mis)readings

61

(3)

World under erasure

64

(9)

Mediums and mappings

73

(8)

De-conditioning the reader

81

(2)

Appendix 3.1: Writing Pynchon

83

(4)

``You used to know what these words mean'': misreading Gravity's Rainbow (1985)

87

(28)

Being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts

87

(2)

Circuits of narrative communication

89

(6)

The second person of Gravity's Rainbow

95

(10)

Misreading Gravity's Rainbow

105

(7)

Metareading

112

(3)

Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland

115

(30)

Mediated lives

115

(10)

Representing TV

125

(8)

Mediated deaths

133

(12)

Part 3 Reading postmodernists

The (post)modernism of The Name of the Rose

145

(20)

Epistemology (``How can I interpret this world...?'')

147

(4)

Ontology (``Which world is this?'')

151

(6)

Topology and eschatology

157

(6)

Postscript to The Name of the Rose

163

(2)

Ways of world-making: on Foucault's Pendulum

165

(23)

Paranoid reading

165

(7)

``The Plan'' and ways of world-making

172

(4)

The postmodernism of Foucault's Pendulum

176

(9)

Anti-paranoia

185

(3)

Women and men and angels: on Joseph McElroy's fiction

188

(19)

Metonymy; or, realism

188

(6)

Epistemology; or, modernism

194

(4)

Angelology; or, postmodernism?

198

(7)

Women and Men; or, late-modernism

205

(2)

``I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another'': the postmodernism(s) of Christine Brooke-Rose

207

(18)

Telling postmodernist stories otherwise

207

(2)

From Out to Thru: Post modernISM

209

(8)

From Amalgamemnon to Verbivore: as if SF

217

(8)

Part 4 At the interface

Post cyberMODERNpunkISM

225

(18)

Cross the border? Close that gap?

225

(2)

Feedback in the literary system

227

(2)

In the loop (1): postmodernism recycled as cyberpunk

229

(4)

In the loop (2): cyberpunk recycled as postmodernism

233

(3)

Interface fiction

236

(1)

When it changed

237

(2)

Appendix 10.1

239

(1)

Appendix 10.2

240

(3)

Towards a poetics of cyberpunk

243

(25)

``Cyberwhatsis''

243

(4)

Cowboys and sundogs

247

(6)

Simstim

253

(8)

The final frontier

261

(7)

Notes

268

(40)

References

308

(17)

Index

325

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Constructing Postmodernism

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials