technology – American Postmodernism

Baby Nostradamus and the Mechanical Tortoise

I thought I would touch on something that hasn’t been talked about yet–the two characters whose words can’t be read. I am fascinated as to why Plascencia would include big blocks of black texts or binary codes in the novel. While the latter may actually translate into words or images, the black boxes are destined to go untranslated. Certainly this makes the novel look and feel postmodern to the reader. (However, I would argue that it still is postmodern even without these characters.)

I initially wrote off Baby Nostradamus as a (humorous) allusion to the prophetic 16th century seer and nothing more–a gimmick of sorts that Plascencia used to be provocative in style, but maybe not in meaning. Baby N. first appears on the bus with his mother. Little Merced makes an inquiry about him and his mother says, “At first I thought that he was brain dead; the doctors said that he was as dumb as a turnip” (23). On the same page, the solid black box appears under Baby N’s name. As a reader, I zipped passed each of these boxes assuming the baby had no thoughts. However, it wasn’t until chapter 23 that my reading of Baby Nostradamus changed. In this chapter, Baby N’s thoughts are written as he instructs Little Merced in how to conceal her thoughts. Ironically, even as he instructing her ,it is not done through spoken words, but “through telepathic lessons” (159). The reader sees Little Merced trying to use the concealment technique to varying degrees of success throughout the rest of the novel. Her examples are normally partially obscured by a circle, such as on page 209.

Now the black boxes have changed for me. It didn’t mean Baby N. didn’t have any thoughts, but rather it was that he was concealing his thoughts from Saturn/ Plascencia and the reader. I wonder if Plascencia wrote out the passages from Baby N while writing the book and then concealed them later on? It would make for a good creative writing exercise. Yet, the concealment strategy is destroyed on page 218 when there is an image of Saturn superimposed over the top of the black box. Is it a mistake on his part? Does he mean to conceal his thoughts about Saturn? Or is initially making the “mistake” Little Merced did when she is learning how to conceal her thoughts and ends up highlighting them instead. I keep returning to the question: what is his role in the novel? Is he more than just a soothsayer? At times he is humorous, foreseeing the last lines of the novel on page 166. But at other times Baby N. feels like a convenient way for Plascencia to incorporate the non-traditional structure.

I don’t have as much to say about the mechanical tortoises. Since the author never translates their “words” for the reader, they go largely misunderstood. With that said, on page 156, the escaped mechanical tortoise’s purpose is brought to light–when we discover that he is working against the desire of the mechanics and bringing Tijuana and LA closer together by moving the earth. Saturn goes on to say, “This is what machines did–they bridged the distance between cities” (156). A nice summary of the role of technology in the 21st century.

Alana mentioned Plascencia’s choice of Saturn, and I wonder if it has anything to do about the myth of Saturn eating his children so that they wouldn’t overthrow him. Seems to fit with Saturn’s/Plascencia’s fears about the characters taking over the story. I too wonder if there are further connections in Latin American culture.

Cold War and the Net, and 9/11 too.

This is the third of fourth time I’ve read through the Adams article and I’m still really hung up on the open vs. closed system idea. At first, I think I pretty much bought her argument, although cautiously. I was thinking particularly about the flow of information and how in Pynchon’s world it is overwhelming and intrusive – this leads to paranoia and chaos; yet in Yamashita’s world it is “designed less to entrap both character and reader in a postmodern labyrinth than to evoke the dense networking of people and goods in an age of global interconnection.”

The more I considered this idea, the more I began to agree with Adams’ assessment. The concept of, let’s say, the Internet, would have seemed incredibly threatening to someone like Pynchon in the 60s, through the end of the Cold War. Consider the earlier reception of Sputnik – an informational satellite perceived as everything from spy to death-ray – instant and global information-sharing must have been a terrifying prospect to those alive during the Cold War. Flash forward to the 90s, after the Cold War, and in the heyday of the early Internet and society had a completely different attitude towards information-sharing networks. The paranoia was gone and people, for the most part, saw the approaching global interconnectedness as a positive, rather than something to be feared. People sought out information, and instead of information being chaotic and cryptic (Oedipa), it made lives easier (Wikipedia!!!).

My main issue with/question for Adams, originally was concerning the effects of 9/11 on the ‘new’ era of literary postmodernism. I originally figured that it would have been a Cold War redux situation…in that it would have increased paranoia and a fear of global information sharing. However, while paranoia was on the rise immediately following 9/11, I think people actually embraced technology and information sharing EVEN MORE. Sure there was some techno-fear (and considering the amount of fear-mongering…I think we all did pretty well..), mostly of the shoe-bomb/exploding shampoo bottle variety, but consider the boom of the 24hr news networks, the talking heads(not the band), the marketing . And here

We, instead of developing a legitimate fear of spies or technological home-invasion (at least not from the enemy…possibly our wire-tapping govt though), sought out every piece of “news” that we could get our hands and ears on. Information (the open system) was our friend, it was comforting, even when it was scary, to know that we knew as much as we could know. And the Internet was the biggest, most instant-gratificacious (not a word) tool at our disposal. We were not, as Adams says “entrap[ed” in any kind of “labyrinth,” but rather we reveled in our interconnection. So, indeed, it seems that the end of the Cold War WAS a major turning point, not just in literary postmodernism, but in societal understanding/comfort with information-sharing and global networking in general. Not even a trauma like 9/11 could make us turn our back on technology/information.

Sure, even Yamashita illustrates that “California (or the Net for our purposes) is a nodal point where globalization threatens to erupt into environmental and human catastrophe…..But she also hints that, as Adams says “[It can] also [be] where people find themselves creating unlikely coalitions that might work to remedy these problems.”

Horray.

Immigration and the Making of a Transnational Hybrid Identity

Even though Yamashita identifies herself as an “Asian-American” writer, her literary work Tropic of Orange defies any specific cultural and geographical associations implied in that categorization. More than any other novel this semester, Tropic of Orange effectively portrays characters that have a truly transnational cultural identity. In one of the more engaging parts of the novel, Arcangel moves the Tropic of Cancer to the north, over the border between Mexico and the United States. This shifting of national boundaries obviously disturbs our understanding of the various political and cultural borders separating continents and countries, but even more interestingly, it challenges our notions of what constitutes a certain cultural identity. As a result of this “shifting geography”—which in reality just represents the shifting of populations—the identities of the characters have become hybrids of all the different cultures to which they have been exposed.

Yamashita is making the point in Tropic of Orange that the United States, whose inhabitants embody the transnational hybrid identity more than any other country in the world, does not offer its population (especially its immigrant population) justice when it comes to the social services that are available to them and how many political and economic choices they have. In the novel, Yamashita repeatedly brings up the issue of immigration. When Bobby recalls Rafaela’s immigration from Mexico, he considers other immigrants who try to cross the border: “Places ‘long the border everybody knows, every woman don’t get raped, she don’t pass. The price she pays. Next up from the women, it’s the poor Indian types. They don’t know the language, don’t know the ropes. It’s gonna be the border rats robbing them. Cross the river. Make a run for it down Zapata Canyon. Lose their money. Their shoes. The clothing off their bodies. Maybe nobody gonna see these folks again. Bunch come floating up the river. It’s a fourteen mile zone…On the other side the migra arrests 1,000 per night…It’s high technology with a revolving door. If you lucky, Border Patrol chases you down. Puts you in a wagon and dumps you back. But maybe you gonna be one of them gets shot” (201-202). When people successfully cross the physical border, they then have to cross other barriers, including melding into the American culture and learning the English language: “ ‘Do you have a green card? Do you have a social security card? Do you have any money? When you get there, you will be unprotected. If you get sick, no one can give you care. If you have children, no one will teach them’…’Is it a crime to be poor? Can it be illegal to be a human being?’ (211).” In “The Ends of America,” Adams rightfully notes that the issues raised in Tropic of Orange—most notably “the human and environmental consequences of transformations taking place at America’s borders”—are easily recognized by students because they are so pertinent to the current contemporary moment.

In an interview, Karen Yamashita explains that while she used the metaphor of land that shifts in Tropic of Orange, it is really the people who have moved: “The geography has changed because humans have created this transition. I suppose it’s fantastic and more radical to talk about the land moving, in terms of the artistic or visual effects of the book. But the real message is that people are moving. And that has changed the landscape entirely, because they’ve taken their culture and their landscape with them.” (By the way, this interview was very useful for me to understand Yamashita’s motivations for writing this novelà http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v2i2/YAMASHI.HTM). I can personally identify with this topic—maybe that’s why it’s so interesting to me. As an Egyptian-American I consider myself a hybrid of both cultures, belonging to both entirely, but not to either at the same time. It’s a very postmodern thought—that most American immigrants cannot identify themselves as belonging to only one culture. Similarly, even people who have not immigrated have a hybrid identity, shaped by transnational cultural movement of Americanization that has spread all over the globe.

Mao II and Optic Consumption

Mao II and Optic Consumption
Whenever two distinct cultures come into contact with one another, there is always resistance – either resistance to assimilate, resistance to acknowledge the other culture’s traditions, or whatever. Generally such an encounter results in consumption. One culture consumes the other, the other’s traditions/artifacts, or the other’s land. The bigger the gap between cultures, the messier the encounter seems to be, historically speaking – Europe and Africa, Europe/America with Native Americans, Brits and India, Spain and Anything South of Texas,…etc…add technology to the mix and things can get really out of hand.

Imagine, its like 1840something and you and your tribe are living somewhere in present day Idaho – your day consists mainly of getting food, taking care of your family, sleep, etc and a stranger, who looks nothing like you or your friends and has this crazy machine that flashes and makes your face appear on paper. How would you rationalize that? Sure it might seem primitive (though to be honest I still don’t understand the logistics of film and cameras) to conclude that said machine has somehow trapped or stolen your “soul,” but is the idea that a photograph or photographer can connote some kind of ownership, really that crazy?
The motifs of mass vs anonymity in Mao II are fairly evident and the consequences, or the “next step” inferences/reaction from/to such a situation – the inability to be recognized in a crowd, the desire to be isolated, etc – are present in the text. But more interestingly to me, is the focus on photography and its implications. Brit, a major character is a photographer…that’s gotta mean something right? Sure…but first let’s consider the “magic” of photography.

Sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke (2001: A space odyssey/the sentinel) offered the following statement as one of his “laws” of future prediction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So is it insane for the Native Americans to conclude that a photo can steal/imprison one’s soul? If we’re dealing in a world of “magic” that seems plausible. Or consider the practice of the voodoo doll – a likeness of an enemy can act as a sort of psychic remote control, giving complete ownership to the doll’s creator. Or more recently, whether it should be termed postmodern, or pop art, or pastiche, or whatever, consider the re-appropriation of images of Mao/Manson/Hitler, whoever – using his likeness to subvert/pervert/remake their being. It’s said that people don’t just read books or look at art, but rather they consume…with their eyes, rather than mouths. The act of photography (or other visual media) is the first step in a process of optic consumption.

Bill, fears his picture being taken much like he is hesitant to release his newest work – presumably for the same reasons, that once both are no longer solely his own, they can be remade, subverted, perverted, reappropriated as the consumers see fit. He consents to a photograph under his own terms to, effectively, take control (yes a split infinitive!) over the frightening situation. Now I’m not advocating that a camera actually captures some ethereal portion of our being, but if we look at other depictions of people via photograph, still or moving, we can see at least the political and social implications of reappropriation of another’s image. Exp: Karen in the bedroom watching tv (with no sound so that she is able to re-author the scene) when film footage of a crowd appears. She describes a horrible writhing of thousands of people pressed into a fence and when it pauses into a still image, she describes it as a fresco in a tourist church..only as a master of the age could paint it. She redefines the image in her own terms but still the characters in said “fresco” remain anonymous in the crowd –a girl…men…maleness…etc – and she never speculates upon the event itself.

Women, Science, and Technology

First off, I apologize for this post being a bit late. But it’s fitting because this week we’re looking at technology, and the technology services Verizon provides to some neighborhoods is absolutely terrible and only works intermitently, when it works at all. I’ve been trying to connect all morning and resetting the router can’t fix this problem. So if anyone out there is thinking of switching to Verizon Fios: Don’t.

Since I’m a writer for the American Psychological Association, I thought it would be nice to see what psychologists were saying about women and technology at a time closer to the publication of The Female Man. While this post won’t relate directly to the book, I think it will provide some historical perspective about women, technology, and science. The article I will be discussing is called “Women, Science, and Technology” by Sheila M. Pfafflin and was published in the October issue of American Psychologist in 1984. This is about 9 years after The Female Man was published, but still 25 years before the present.

The article first points out that women, even back then with a work force prevalence of 45%, were missing from engineering and physical science fields with participation rates as low as 13%. Pfafflin points to four trends for why this is a problem: The equity issue turned women away because they were less likely to be encouraged to pursue careers and develop their talents in science and engineering. Human resource utilization comes from the failure of the equity issue the country then wastes a substantial portion of technical talent (women) which could lead to serious science and tech consequences. Discrimination against women in these fields, back then, further turned them away. And finally, policy-making in these fields, because of the low rate of woman involvement, was being made with low input from women.

I bring this study up, becuase it made me wonder: “Have women ever been participants in the science and technology fields?” What I mean by this, is this is an issue that we still hear about today. For some reason, I thought it was a recent development (like in the last 10 years), but apparently, for different reasons, it was also an issue in 1984. Pfafflin also makes the point that in the late ’70s the rates of women participating in science and technology were even lower. Prior the the ’60s, very few women were staying in the work place past marriage. Was there ever a time when women were participating in the physical sciences and technology more so than they are today? It doesn’t look like it.
While this is certainly cause for concern for social scientists understanding why this is the case, what I see here is really just the same old media trick of making big news out of old news. It seems like there is a new story a month about how women are avoiding science fields at ever increasing rates. How can this possibly be the case? The four things Pfafflin listed as the causes for concern and problems aren’t as big a deal in academia any more. Women are, with increasing frequency, affecting policy. Academic departments are constantly becoming friendly to both genders not to mention other ethnic and minority groups.

All of this is relavent because, while women may not be participating in science and technology fields at the rates some would like to see nowadays, they never really have. This brings us to Janet: “I’ve worked in the mines, on the radio network, on a milk farm, a vegetable farm, and for six weeks as a librarian” (1). It seems here that Russ is fully aware of the limitations and barriers that were facing women around her time (the ones listed by Pfafflin above) and made a simple point: For women to be included in fields typically dominated by men (the radio network, mines and farms) men cannot exist. Maybe that’s the case, but from what I gather from 20 years of psychological research, women have never participated at rates some folks would like to see. Of course, I don’t think there’s much any of us can do about it, because, after all, we’re English majors.

Assumptions and Cyborgs

What impressed me most about The Female Man was the way Whileaway made me aware of my own habitual assumptions. Every time Janet would describe another aspect of life on Whileaway, describe another work category, I would have to stop short and reassess my automatic subconscious default provisional assignment of male gender. When Janet described riding on a train and mentioned the engineer, I assumed the engineer was male (80). I don’t know why it was so hard for me to remember that everyone was a woman – no really, everyone! But my brain kept trying to revert to the provisional assumption of masculinity for any person whose gender was not explicitly stated. Of course, one other solution to this assumption of maleness is to make the category of man available to women as well, as Russ asserts on page 140: “If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and beady little eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman.” This statement reminds me of the way that Susan B. Anthony by trying to vote herself challenged the implicit male assumptions in the categories of “person” and “citizen” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s granting of the right to vote.

One thing that puzzled me about Jael’s world was how the women still gave male babies to the men. Assuming the women have some kind of semen stockpile and have not advanced to genetic engineering, why would they give their enemy the very means of continuing themselves? The only answer I could see was that the women had an essential view of men as enemies – even baby men were still men and therefore enemies. Therefore nurturing them and indoctrinating them would presumably serve no purpose. Except for Davy (and who knows how common he is) and perhaps commerce, the women are not portrayed as desiring or needing the opposite gender or perpetuating gender roles like the men are. In making the male society so crude and disagreeable, Russ is creating a parody of the normal state of gender roles. Taken to the extreme, it’s easy to see how gender roles are only perpetuated by the males who benefit by them. Yet the women are no saints either, and their hatred leads first to the creation and perpetuation of the awful male society and ultimately, as Jael implies, to genocide.

Whileaway society definitely echoed aspects of Haraway’s cyborg utopia, and certainly the skill with induction helmets and other aspects of technology reflected the “intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceas[ing] to be a sin , but an aspect of embodiment” (180). Although Haraway’s vision of a cyborg worldview seems a utopia, she convinced me pretty well that cyborg imagery is a good place to start to escape the divisive use of dualisms and navigate our discourse more effectively and happily. Perhaps with a cyborg worldview, I wouldn’t make those assumptions of provisional male gender. Although cyborg theory itself is a totalizing theory (which Haraway condemns) in that she implies that everyone can be a cyborg, the extremely adaptive nature of cyborgs mean that cyborg theory in Haraway’s view will never be limiting or exclusionary.

A Misandristic Proposal

What is the opposite of misogyny? Misanthropy? No, that’s the dislike of humankind in general, rather than the specific dislike of males. Try again. Misandry is the word. As I type it into Microsoft Word and hit the spacebar, it becomes underlined in red. Misspelled? Quite possibly. No, a quick trip to the Oxford English dictionary confirms spelling and definition. So misandry simply isn’t recognized by Microsoft technology. It’s unfamiliar. It’s defamiliar. Perhaps, this just represents one of many omitted words and names, or maybe it signifies something greater and more telling about (wo)men and technology. Regardless, it offers point of entry into discussing Joanna Russ’ The Female Man.

Though Russ’ The Female Man can fit into many classifications of literature (e.g. postmodern fiction, science fiction, a feminist work, etc.), I am interested in how it functions as a satire. At the end of the text, Jael proposes the women (Janet, Jeannine, and Joanna) “do business with [Jael’s] Womanland” (211) and to incorporate women soldiers from each of their individual realities to wage war on the men. Jeannine and Joanna quickly acquiesce. Jeannie states, “‘Oh sure, I don’t mind. You can bring in all the soldiers you want. You can take the whole place over; I wish you would’” (Russ 211). The response is pert and off-the-cuff. Oh sure. Why not? Well, why not?

Janet, the woman from the all-female Whileaway, alone, resists. Moreover, she refuses Jael’s retelling of the plague as an act of female aggression. It is unclear whether this resistance comes from inexperience with males, stupidity, or a more simplistic view of conflict resolution (or perhaps, like Microsoft, Janet does not have a word for this construct). Still, we don’t know why she would resist or why anyone should resist? At first glance, it seems perfectly logical.

What’s wrong with a rebalancing of power? In Jeannine and Joann’s worlds, when woman are not being infantilized by the men in the text, they are being raped or arranging their lives so that they won’t be vulnerable to rape. Clearly, a master-slave relationship is at work, dominating the women at every opportunity, denying them “adult independence—namely money” (118). It is only through technology that Whileaway and Womanland the women regain their power. Why not take this to the next level?

Given the endless possibilities of technology, an inter-dimensional war with men may throw the balance of power in favor of the women. Most of the characters find that idea fairly attractive. In fact, Jael’s logic reflects that of an oppressed people made free. Rather than preach the ills of subjection, the free must, in turn, oppress to maintain their freedom. Freedom cannot exist without oppression; oppression cannot exist without freedom. On second glance, it simply replaces one societal ill with another: misandry with misogyny. So what’s the point of this exercise? By promoting misandry, The Female Man would undercut all its previous points about the master-slave power in male-female relations. But it doesn’t just do that. Misandry defamiliarizes misogyny. It gives us a new word, a new point of reference, a new context to highlight an old referential.

Authorship, Cyborgs

“I am the author and I know,” Russ says on page 165. If, as Karin and Jael propose, all four women are the same woman, made different by their external circumstances, it seems to contradict the idea that women only appear to be the same because their circumstances repress them to the level of household objects. Maybe the four women are not the same person representing one-dimensional sides of a conflicted self, but they are just different possibilities of the same person, upon which each woman’s bizarre circumstances have shaped her so that other possibilities of herself are strange and horrifying to her (the murderous one, the lesbian, the repressed wannabe-housewife).

By claiming she is the author, Joanna Russ asserts her control over the text, but also shows the complications and uncertainties underlying that control. The alter egos filter through in interchanging blurbs. Jeannine says, on page 122, “Who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I go, what world is this?” I think the multiple realities and personalities the J’s find themselves faced with represent the feeling of dissociation present in real life. This disjointedness and confusion is represented by the jumbled, fragmented structure, which Alana commented on earlier.

Also, as Anthony brought up, there seems to be an idea of self-criticism and self-deprecation, as well as multiple layers of authorship. There is the recurring question: “I know what I am, but what’s my brand name?” (174), and an unending search for self-identification in the midst of multiple dehumanized worlds. The book as a whole, which acknowledges its author and offers its own harsh criticism, is as self-aware, self-effacing, and confused as its characters are.

Examples of dehumanization are both literal and symbolic. Almost every conversation between a man and woman is infuriating and results in the complete ignorance or mishearing of the woman’s words. This happens, too, between women, as in the conversation on page 113-114, where Jeannine’s words are misheard but unnoticed anyway. Russ seems to grapple with how one can possibly be his/her own person, or even a person at all, in the face of oppression. And of course, the cyborgs are literally dehumanized.

Speaking of cyborgs, what do people think about the half-changed people in Manworld? And does anyone quite know what to make of Davy, the robot/sex toy Jael has? He’s this ultimately dehumanized man in the middle of a book where women are the ones who are constantly objectified. Thinking about it more, I realized that while women are the main characters, men are also dehumanized stereotypes. She kind of takes the humanness out of everyone, and gets away with it because she’s created all these alternate worlds. But men are so oddly one-dimensional, except maybe Cal, who is strangely complicated and conflicted, both generically repressive and oversensitive. And then here comes this beautiful objectified robot-man? What are we supposed to get from all of this?

Also, on the topic of women and technology in the news, here’s an article from the Washington Post yesterday, called “Limbaugh, the Vatican and a Woman’s Place”: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/03/limbaugh_the_vatican_and_a_womans_place.html.

The article is very short, but touches on a lot of nerves (women’s rights, Catholicism, political affiliation). Some passionate user comments follow.

Freud, Sex in the City, The Female Man, and Google

I am struck my the ever-shifting pronoun usage in this book. I can’t keep up–I, me, us, we. Who are these women? Clearly they have separate identities, but often they appear as one. In part three, Joanna takes Janet to a party; this section appears to be laden with one of the first instances of narrator disorientation. Joanna introduces Janet to her friends (whose names unexplainably all end in -issa) at the party as her Swedish cousin. Janet quickly enters into a discussion with the Ginger Mustache. From this point on in the chapter, the pronoun references are muttled. “She showed him all her teeth. He saw a simile. […] and he took us by the wrist.[…] ‘Let me go’ said Janet.[…] All this time he was nuzzling her ear and I was showing my distaste by shrinking terrified into a corner, one eye on the party.[…] enfolding us in his powerful arms (emphasis added 45). How can Joanna be observing Janet talking and then refer to her as part of herself?

After this section, I was left wondering if they in fact are just one woman inhabited by many. Come to think of it, Cal even acknowledges this morphing when he says to Jeannine on page four, “The vanishing woman [referring to Janet]. That’s you.” She doesn’t deny it. Just for the sake of experimentation, I can’t help but try out the theory that they are actually one woman. I have heard it said that the four woman on Sex and the City aren’t really four distinct women, but rather alter egos of Carrie: Miranda, the career-driven one, Charlotte, the uptight prude, and Samantha the over-sexualized woman. While the stereotypes don’t align perfectly with Joanna, the fiercely independent 1970’s feminist, we have Jeannine, the mild-mannered woman waiting to marry; Janet, the futuristic Whilawayean who challenges all gender stereotypes; and Jael the warrior. So instead of Sex and the City, couldn’t these women in The Female Man be parts of Freud’s theory of the id? If I had to label the id, the unconscious pleasure or need of instant gratification, it may be Janet in her sexual desires for other women, or her Jael in her animalist tendencies. The ego, whose job is conscious and ready to mediate between the id and superego, may be Joanna as she tries to explain society to Janet. And the superego, who seeks to act in socially appropriate ways, may be Jeannine confined by her expectations to her family, to herself, to society to marry, to make something of her life. Again, not a perfect fit, but it might prove to be useful in our discussions.

To the question about Women in Technology:

Here is a NYT piece on Marissa Mayer, 33 year-old first female engineer for Google and now VP of search product and user experience. I thought the angle of this piece was fascinating. It didn’t just report on her work, but dabbled into the personal, including what her apartment looks like, the talk shows on which she appears, her hobbies, her Yelp interviews, etc. Mayer herself seems to be spearheading her own publicity, but I find it fascinating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Here is another article about her from a San Francisco paper:

http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/adventures-marissa

After these articles appeared, Gawker ruthlessly tore Mayer and the articles apart.

http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-failure

Technology in the Female Man

In the Harraway article that we read she expresses hope in the possibility that we can be saved if we all learn to live as cyborgs, a blending of the human and the machine. Joanna Russ would appear to agree with this idea as her Utopian society Whileaway in The Female Man is made up almost entirely of cyborgs.

The people on Whileaway are trained to become one with technology from birth, and eventually it becomes a part of them. Although its description seems rustic and pastoral, the society of Whileaway is only possible through their use of and coexistence with technology. I have no idea what an induction helmet is, but it must be pretty awesome if “with their induction helmets on their heads, their toes controlling the green peas, their fingers the vats and controls, their back muscles the carrots, their abdomens the water supply,” (51). Not to mention that at some point they figured out how to not only have babies without any males, but to genetically modify those babies to an almost perfection.

My question is this: Is technology necessary to conquer nature? Not only trees and butterflies nature, but human nature, or more specifically female nature? Russ spends a great deal of time explaining to us that the idea of “female nature” or “maternal instincts” are just social constructs that are meant as a mode of domination by males (and other females as well). Men in the novel constantly assume that it is part of a woman’s DNA that she will be happy with pretty clothes, or that all she wants to do is sit on the couch and eat bon bons while her husband Climbs Everest (what is a bon bon anyway? I’ve always wondered that). So why is it so necessary that technology be so ingrained in her idea of a utopia. Women are only seen as strong enough to exist on their own on Whileaway, and only with the help of all their technology.

Janet would be considered the most advanced J, or most enlightened, in a way. However, her and the rest of the people on Whileaway are completely dependent on advances in technology to survive. Jael would be the strongest J physically, and the one could argue the toughest. However, she relies on her robot boy-toy for pleasure. Also, the women of Womenland are dependant on technlogiocal advances to survive using it as a means of commerce, namely baby farming and time travel. Jeannine seems to be the most connected to nature, with her cat (Mr. Frosty!) and her plant, but she seems to be the weakest of the J’s to me.

If Russ was attempting to get across the point that women can do whatever men could do and that the differences between the sexes is illusory, why this emphasis on technology?

I may have completely misread the novel. I am assuming that Whileaway is meant to be a utopia. It is possible that it was not meant to be and therefore everything I said above would be pretty much worthless.

Photographic Technology’s Twist on Reality and Credibility

I am going to take a break from my reading to post on what I have read so far, and then get right back into it. I just finished one of the sections where there are very few words on each page, and I must say that I was turning those pages so quickly that my dogs got startled. Really, I was reminded of those little flip-books with pictures that if you flip through quickly enough produce a cartoon. That page-turning effect especially kicked in for me when reading pages 182 to 245, when Navidson’s group meets with Jed and Wax. I even found myself getting outright angry at Truant for having the audacity to interrupt the story.

Speaking of Truant, please don’t give anything away but it seems to me he will have “disappeared” by the end of the book, according to Ashley’s letter on p. 151 (in my black-and-white book). She writes, “I’m sorry to hear he disappeared. Do you know what happened to him?” and I, the reader, am thinking, “No, you jerk. I didn’t even know he was missing!” But now she’s got me wondering: will Truant disappear into this empty, ever-changing space? Does the space represent our consciousness and sanity, and will he “disappear” like his mother did? I am determind to find out. (Perhaps I will know by tomorrow.)

On to another point. Many of us, at some point or another, have considered the credibility of this text. (Somehow, the term “text” seems so much more complex when applied to House of Leaves than when applied to any other book.) I was struck by the following 1990 Andy Grundberg quotation, and I began to consider the implications of film being at the heart of this text: “In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news pictures more as illustrations than as reportage, since they will be well aware that they can no longer distinguish between a genuine image and one that has been manipulated” (141). I began wondering whether this was a “real” statement or a Danielewski original, and when I did some research, I found the following 1990 New York Times article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7DC163CF931A2575BC0A966958260

Grundberg’s article is fascinating, and though Danielewski does not include the following excerpt from the article, I think it is particularly relevant in the conversation of credibility and reality which is essential when considering this text. “In the future, it seems almost certain, photographs will appear less like facts and more like factoids – as a kind of unsettled and unsettling hybrid imagery based not so much on observable reality and actual events as on the imagination. This shift, which to a large extent has already occurred within the rarefied precincts of the art world, will fundamentally alter not only conventional ideas about the nature of photography but also many cherished conceptions about reality itself” (Grundberg). Yes, reality must be questioned, and the presentation of reality, thus the credibility, of this text is just so complex.

I think it is very important that in this particular story the focus most basely comes down to a FILM, or photographed images strung together. Grundberg discusses the “video” specifically in the last section of his article:

“If photographs can no longer be perceived as unalloyed facts peeled from the surface of the real world, what will replace them? The temptation is to say video images, since electronic image making increasingly bears the primary responsibility for supplying society with pictures. But the prospect that video will inherit photography’s former truth-bearing function is limited by its even greater susceptibility to computer manipulation.

Some have speculated that an enterprising computer wizard could, for instance, create a visual data bank of all of former President Ronald Reagan’s speeches and then, using a montage of the recorded images and sounds at his disposal, make the President’s video image speak entirely new sentences – literally put words in his mouth. At a time when governments can deny the reality of unmanipulated television pictures, as China has done in the case of last year’s Tiananmen Square uprising, the notion of a fabricated video reality seems especially frightening” (Grundberg).

Nineteen years ago, “fabricated video reality” was a far-off, almost imaginary concept; today it is “our reality.” Essentially, reality adjusts based on what technology produces for us at any given time in our human history, and therein (forgive me for sounding like Ray Bradbury, but I am a big fan) lies the “rub.” Obviously, this novel is not real, nor are the characters, the stories, and especially this “film.” But then again, there can be no definite reality, as Grundberg predicted, rightfully so, in 1990. What he calls “computer manipulation” can “literally put words in [people’s] mouth[s]”, and yet, how is that so different from the various methods used to communicate one hundred or two hundred years ago?

Maybe the difference is that we still, unwittingly, believe in technology’s reality. We believe what we see and read online is real, especially when we have pictures to “prove it.” Even the websites which discriminate between urban legends and reality, like www.snopes.com, could be (and probably do sometimes) distort reality.

If, therefore, one of the messages we can take away from House of Leaves is that nothing is “real” and no one is “credible,” then I would argue that, in one sense, PostModernism is a continuation of Modernism. The Modernists were a disillusioned bunch, and my thoughts here point to that same disillusionment, at least at this point in my reading, in Danielewski’s text.

Book within a book within a book… and an attempt at Baudrillard

When I’m reading, say, Vonnegut or David Foster Wallace, I’m aware that I’m reading their words throughout the book, often stopping to think how they wrote a certain section or how they might’ve decided on structure or how ideas in the book might go along with the author’s personality or life, like how Vonnegut often writes of WWII or secular humanism, and how David Foster Wallace typically incorporates technology, morality, etc. However, when reading House of Leaves, which I finished this past week while at the conference in Chicago (I skipped a bunch of panels and spent much of the week in my hotel room with the book), I didn’t once think of Danielewski. He had managed to hide himself as author of House of Leaves within the layers of authorship in the book. Of course, I know that it is Danielewski writing about Truant who is writing about Zampano who is writing about Navidson, but in all of this, as I was reading it, the source–the original author–was lost. I’m wondering if this is what Baudrillard is referring to when he talks about the simulacrum replacing the original. I might be totally off here, since I didn’t fully understand Baudrillard’s piece, but it seemed that he was suggesting that the original is lost when the copies become reality, or something to that effect. On top of all the layers of authorship in House of Leaves, you also have the editors and the fake critical sources adding up to a sense of reality, since we generally see critical essays as analysis of something real–why, for instance, would someone analyze something not real, unless the entire analysis is a fabrication… does this make sense?

Whenever Prof. Sample asks if we experienced anything postmodern in our lives the previous week, I never had anything to say, not because I didn’t experience anything “postmodern” but because if I did, I didn’t realize it or didn’t understand it as postmodern. However, when I was in Chicago, I felt for the first time aware of many “postmodern” occurrances. For instance, when my fiance, Lucas, and I first got to our hotel room, we noticed that we had two double beds (which looked more like two twin beds), which was weird for us because we didn’t know what to do with this extra bed. At first we joked that one would be the “eating” bed and the other the “sleeping” bed, but eventually, we each sort of nonverbally claimed a bed. That first night, he was on “his” bed and I was on mine, and we were watching television. There was this show on and in the episode, this couple was forced to sleep on separate beds. Lucas, as we were watching this couple in their beds on television, said something about how weird it was that we were sort of in the same predicament. But, what was weirder, was that the couple on television turned on their television and saw an old black-and-white television series with a couple in separate beds (back when couples couldn’t sleep in the same bed on tv). So, essentially, Lucas and I, in our separate beds, watched a couple on television in their separate beds as they in turn watched another television couple in their separate beds. My point to this anecdote is that I immediately thought of this class, but it wasn’t until now, when writing this blog, that I made the connection between that experience and the person writing about person writing about person issue (and book within a book within a book) in House of Leaves.

Going back to the authorial tone insofar as the editors and critical writers in the book, there were times when I became so engrossed in the Navidson Record that I gave serious consideration to the footnoted critics and almost forgot that these critics were made up and that the Navidson Record as source material wasn’t real. Again, I’m not sure if this is what Baudrillard is saying when he talks about simulacrum but it seems to make sense, at least in my understanding of the article. Or maybe this could be the simulation, the difference between “imaginary” and “real,” perhaps? But that would be the book itself, too, correct? I think, like the post before me, I seem to have more questions than answers when relating House of Leaves to the other readings for this week. Foucault and Baudrillard aside, I have questions just on House of Leaves–like, for instance, the aforementioned authorship. It had seemed, in the beginning of the book, to be as I stated before–Danielewski writing about Truant who is writing about Zampano who is writing about Navidson–but toward the end this authorship is questioned in two specific scenes; I won’t mention the details of these scenes for those who haven’t finished the book (but for those who have: the song that the band plays and what Navidson uses the matches for), but these two scenes completely threw me off on what I had presumed to be “real,” to use that term loosely, and I almost, briefly, considered rereading at least the first 100 pages or so of the book again. I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed this much writing in this short of time–I’m interested in what others have to say about it! And hopefully someone can clear up Baudrillard and Foucault for me. Funny how when reading these two articles, knowing that they were assigned with House of Leaves and looking for connections, it felt like I was reading the critical writers writing about the Navidson Record.

The Signifier and Signified in The Lathe of Heaven

Let me start off by saying that I genuinely enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven. I was trying to verbalize to a friend just what it was that attracted me about this particular book, and I found myself describing my fascination with Le Guin’s complex layering of new worlds, especially since these worlds are both purposefully and accidentally created. This calls to mind the following excerpt in Harvey’s article: “Whereas modernists had presupposed that there was a tight and identifiable relation between what was being said (the signified or ‘message’) and how it was being said (the signifier or ‘medium’), poststructuralist thinking sees these as ‘continually breaking apart and re-attaching in new combinations” (49). Just as Haber attempts to control George Orr’s dreams and manipulate the present, he constantly fails (despite his confidence that he has succeeded) in creating a better world. In “reality” (which sounds so out of place when a describing a book like this), Haber is attempting to exert power through his own message (or “signified”) which he mediates through Orr’s dreams (which act as the “signifier”), and yet, the outcome is never what Haber intends. Postmodernism focuses on the continual “breaking apart” of what is intended and what is understood, and so does Le Guin’s story. Haber believes he can make the world a better place, but it is his medium, Orr’s dreams, which no one can control.

Orr himself realizes his own role in this complex re-working of past, present, and future. After killing off billions of people in an attempt to rid the world of “overpopulation” (60) and stopping the war on Earth only to start another between humans and aliens, Orr says, “Out of the frying pan into the fire… Don’t you see, Dr. Haber, that’s all you’ll get from me? Look, it’s not that I want to block you, to frustrate your plans… Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you’re trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it’s easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you’re handling something outside of reason. You’re trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn’t suited to the job” (86).

The disconnect between the signified and the signifier is not the only important factor in this story; the fact is that the “new combinations” of what is meant to change about the world (the “problem”) and what actually changes (the “cure”) just creates another problem in its place. Orr understands that his dreams serve as the medium for Haber’s ideas, and he is able to see that the repercussions are far too vast to continue on this downward slope. In the end, Orr is able to settle happily into a much-adjusted world. Heather Lalache says, “I thought you could change the world. Is this the best that you could do—this mess?” (175), and though she is fairly unaware of how much worse it had been and how much worse it could get, the reader should sense that this is the best he could do. Neither he nor Haber really could control the medium, as it is an irrational unconscious which has created these multiple worlds, and so this end to the nonsense, the aftermath of all the horror Haber has done, is actually a gift. When postmodernism began to recognize a creator’s inability to control the received message, they also invited a whole slew of science fiction that toys with the more metaphorical meaning of a creator, its creation, and its reception in the world. This is especially true in The Lathe of Heaven.

As a sidenote, I wanted to point out that after reading Harvey’s section on technology, in particular the “the proliferation of television use”(61) after having also read about postmodern art, I could not stop thinking about a piece I saw last year at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which combines television and art in a way I have never seen otherwise. Nam June Paik’s “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii” depicts each of the fifty state proportionally with various sized televisions which continuously roll representative footage of each state. For example, “The Wizard of Oz” plays on the televisions that constitute Kansas and “Oklahoma” plays, obviously, on the Oklahoma screens. This piece really forced me to question how television can serve as an art medium in a more abstract and meaningful way than just as the way we watch “Lost” or “American Idol.” Check it out, either with this link or in person if you get the chance!

For a more interactive site & information on the exhibit itself, look here: http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/zoom/paik.cfm

For digital images, look here: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM4438

Whats in a name? Im not really sure.

Coming off reading the Crying of Lot 49, I’m of course, obsessed with names in the Lathe of Heaven, but I’m having some serious trouble cracking the name of the protagonist. George Orr (which I actually heard as JOR-JOR before the alien said it, because I was listening to an e-book the other day and it sounded like a robot) has a complicated situation regarding his name – Orr, or Haber refers to him “Mr. Either Or” is a median.

Haber goes so far as to say something to the effect as “you cancel yourself out to the point that nothing remains” – this would seem that he is completely neutralized. If we are to understand that Orr is in fact, neutralized, then it would seem the plot of the Lathe of Heaven revolves around the fact that technology/science(or pseudoscience)/associations/un-or-subconciousness (or perhaps just the misuse of such) only serves to muddle and complicate our understanding of the reality and the world, yet we, or Orr have/has little effect…being neutral and all. The other possibility is not that Orr is totally neutral, just that he is neutralized by Haber.

Either way, my difficulty in accepting Orr as “both, neither, either, or,” lies in his full name, or as it sounds Jor Jor – a doubling. How can he be neutralized when at the same time he is double? Though, to complicate things further, I suppose to double zero is still zero..? Also, as some people have posted already, there is the idea that the Orr refers to the multiple realities created by his dreams.

Haber is just as interesting. There are two main (and not necessarily intentional, just intriguing) connections I made with Haber. One – Fritz haber, inventor (I think) of synthesized ammonia pre-WWI and “father of chemical warfare.” It is in part due to Fritz Haber’s work (nobel prize winning actually) that the death tolls of WWI were unlike what anyone had ever seen (think population loss). Two haber in Spanish is an auxiliary or helping verb meaning “to have”…ironically it is not used to indicate that one has or owns/possesses something, (that is tener, as in yo tengo) but rather haber is used in conjuction (unable to operate alone) with another verb in the perfect tenses (ie I have gone to the movies). So yes, that’s a huge stretch, but I thought it was at least coincidentally funny, as that kind of fits how Dr Haber is unable to do his work without George, and that his name means “to have” but not in a to possess connotation.

Finally there are some really interesting points made about the sub/unconscious and it’s neutrality by way of its irrationality. Not irrational in an insane way, just literally without rationale. The subconscious or unconscious mind (whichever we are really dealing with here…that might be up for debate) simply flows, like George’s “shortcuts” taking the mind from peace to aliens in one easy step. There is little logic involved in dreams, which makes Haber’s scientific method all the more interesting. Dreams, at their most basic functioning level, are to help us understand reality; REM sleep is a time to recharge and put all the library cards of our day in order, in an easily recallable and logical filing system -yet the dreams themselves, the picture of the process is often as chaotic and disorderly as the imagination can imagine. Reality molds our dreams, and to think that dreams mold our reality, is subversive and wonderful.

Rejection of modernism

One of the possible ways of defining or categorizing postmodernism is by its rejection of modernism ideals. The Lathe of Heaven does this in several ways.

One is by its rejection of Freudian and Jungian ideas. Freud’s ideas of psychoanalysis and Jung’s archetypes figured heavily into modernist ways of thinking. Both obviously were also interested in dreaming and what it said about the human psyche.

Haber’s therapy sessions seem to reject basic Freudian ideas and techniques. At one point he says the only holdover modern psychology still has is the couch, but he uses it for patients to sleep on, which Freud very much opposed. For Haber, modern psychology is all about technology, not about the analysis that Freud and Jung practiced.

Haber also rejects the ideas of Freud and Jung that the unconscious was a dark and scary place:

Your unconscious mind is not a sink of horror and depravity. That’s a Victorian notion, and a terrifically destructive one. It crippled most of the best minds of the nineteenth century, and hamstrung psychology all through the first half of the twentieth. Don’t be afraid of your unconscious mind! It’s not a black pit of nightmares. Nothing of the kind! It is the wellspring of health, imagination, creativity….. there is nothing to fear. -88.

For Freud and Jung and their patients, there was very much something to fear. They told us that our subconscious was full of dirty thoughts and secret motives and monsters that we were not even aware we had. The idea that there was a whole other layer of the brain that we could not tap into, yet was controlling our behavior to some point was a scary notion indeed.

Haber also is rejecting the Jungian ideas of archetypes, which was found throughout modernist literature. When he is trying to make George feel better, he rejects the idea that the aliens are some universal archetype that represent the fear of the unknown, and says that they were probably just influenced by sci-fi movies from the 70’s. George wants to stop before he brings out more monsters from his unconcscious, but Haber tells him he is being silly and that they must proceed.

Another way that this postmodernism rejects modernism is the “incredulity towards meta-narratives” that we discussed in class and that Harvey discusses in his article. The Lathe of Heaven definitely rejects meta-narratives in the fact that there is no consistent reality. How can there be one meta-narrative when reality is fundamentally altered every time that George Orr has an effective dream? A world with 7 billion people can not have the same narrative as a world with 1 billion. A world with racism can not have the same narrative as a world with no race. A world with aliens living among us can not have the same narrative as one that doesn’t. By rejecting the idea that the world has any singular, continuing reality the idea of any narrative to go along with reality is rejected as well.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve always imagined. -Henry David Thoreau

I randomly grabbed a bookmark from my desk for The Lathe of Heaven, and this Thoreau quote was on it, it made me laugh.

Science Fiction/Postmodernism and Harvey

After reading The Lathe of Heaven, I felt more confused about what postmodernism is because I would have easily classified this as science-fiction. Let me point out a few things first: I understand that a lot of different texts from a variety of genres can be postmodern (fiction, nonfiction, etc.) just like you can draw upon different schools of analysis (like postmodernism) in relation to one text. And I also understand, since we’ve been talking about it nearly every class, how technology is a huge part of postmodernism—it interfering with or transforming our lives, it being seen as an extension of our bodies, etc. So, I’m not saying that I don’t understand how this book can be called postmodern.

What I’m confused by is this: A great deal of science-fiction deals with technology in some way, some in very similar ways to The Lathe of Heaven, so where does science fiction stop and postmodernism begin? Like, take The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This book is very similar to The Lathe of Heaven. In The Lathe of Heaven, a man’s mind can change reality, and with the aid of a machine (the Augmenter), this reality can be changed more often. In The Time Machine, a man invents a machine to change reality and subsequently does just that in the world he eventually finds himself in. So, is The Time Machine postmodern? Surely, one can argue that The Time Machine contains the same technological interference and perhaps even technological extensions of the body as does The Lathe of Heaven, not to mention a similar notion of rethinking/retelling history. But this book is widely considered classic science fiction. I mean, science fiction really is, by definition, a genre that has to do with envisioned futures and envisioned sciences and envisioned technology. So, wouldn’t most science fiction be postmodern?

David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity cleared up some of my confusion. He writes: “The postmodern novel… [is] a shift from the kind of perspectivism that allowed the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but nevertheless singular reality, to the foregrounding of questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate. The boundary between fiction and science fiction has, as a consequence, effectively dissolved, while postmodernist characters often seem confused as to which world they are in, and how they should act with respect to it.”

So, it’s been a while since I read The Time Machine, but if I’m remembering it correctly, the main character doesn’t grapple with the same questions and complexity that George Orr struggles with. I don’t remember enough of the exposition in The Time Machine to really comment on the main character’s mindset, but I do remember it being a straight travel through time to a future that he eventually saved. This is, of course, not the same in The Lathe of Heaven, where all of these potential realities, to use Harvey’s words, coexisted, collided, and interpenetrated. Later, Harvey reinforces this thought by saying that postmodernists can’t “aspire to any unified representation of the world” but rather, that the world is, for a postmodernist, full of “perpetually shifting fragments.” This, combined with his earlier notes on science fiction, seems to line up well when distinguishing between modernism and postmodernism and thus The Time Machine and The Lathe of Heaven.

Harvey also cleared up the genre aspect, insofar as modernists seeing works “as examples of genre” and postmodernists seeing “a work as a text.” In other words, then, echoing my thoughts in the first paragraph, lots of texts, despite affiliated “genre,” can be postmodern. Oh! And that list on the schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism was awesome. I think that was exactly what I needed—something visual or straight-up about the differences between the two. By contrasting the differences, I’m able to understand both what postmodernism is and is not much better than I had understood it previously.

Thoughts on Hassan’s “prophecy” and fragmentation characteristic

This week’s reading confirms that the list of attributes of Postmodern work seems varied and, in some cases, contradictory. In reading the works for this week’s class, it seems that the definition of Postmodernism has always been unclear, but Ihab Hassan’s essay “POSTmodernISM”, an attempt at defining Postmodernism, seems to have been somewhat prophetic. Additionally, it seems that along with the “fragmented” definition of Postmodernism, fragmentation is a key characteristic of Postmodern work.
Hassan states his belief that our world is headed for a “utopia indistinguishable from nightmare” (22), and he worries about the disasters of “Pollution, Population, [and] Power” (issues also raised in John Cage’s work). I can’t help but wonder—are we currently in that “utopia indistinguishable from nightmare” that Hassan predicted? Despite all our modern conveniences and advanced technology that seem to make our lives easier, we also live in a world fraught with problems, including those of pollution, population, and power. If Hassan felt that he was in an age of “runaway technology” in 1971 (24), I can only imagine what his thoughts would be now!
While Hassan says that “we dwell happily in the Unimaginable” (22), he also suggests that we need to “open up alternatives to the Unimaginable” (30). Not only do these assertions appear to be contradictory, but Hassan’s concept of the Unimaginable, a place that seems to be defined as a healthy balance between “Complacence” and “Hysteria”, is unclear to me. Is the Unimaginable bad in Postmodernist terms because it is a balance? Is the desire and goal of Post-Modernism to break balance? It would seem that our society is out of balance. It does not seem, however, that Post-Modernist works are attempting to fix this problem, but, rather, are reflecting this lack of balance through content and style, including fragmentation.
In addition to some of the motifs that seem to be present in Postmodern works, John Cage’s piece really highlights this fragmentation characteristic. I was intrigued, but also frustrated, with the style of John Cage’s work. I felt that the piece was like a puzzle and I tried to find a pattern, attempting to match up the various fonts and pieces of stories. The piece seems like it could be classified as stream-of-consciousness, but I’m not sure that the term is appropriate for Postmodern works. The story of the Duchess seemed to be the most consistent, and, not only did it add humor to the piece, it also pulled me into the piece and kept me reading until the end. I’m curious about Cage’s inclusion of the Duchess story. Is the story simply added to provide humor in the midst of the fragmented, but running, commentary on how the world is changing and declining? The story does also seem to show that, as the title states, by attempting to fix a problem you will only make matters worse.
Along the lines of fragmentation, the writing style of the pieces seems to be rather “choppy”, lacking variety of sentence structure and even including some awkward syntax. John Cage’s “Dear Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)” and Kelly Link’s “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” all posses some degree of this “choppy” quality.
My hunch is that the fragmentation of the pieces, in content, style, and structure, mirrors the fragmentation of the world in which we live. However, not all authors demonstrate this fragmentation in their pieces. (For instance, I feel that Lethem’s “Super Goat Man” has a wonderful flow, much in contrast to the Cage and Link’s work.) I’m curious about these choices and how all of these pieces fit into the puzzle of Postmodernism.

I was struck by the part in Hassan’s piece “POSTmodernISM” about “Periods.” I am trying to wrap my head around periods as well. This short post sorted out some of my confusion with Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism, but considering that those three movements came over the span of only 60 years, it stands to reason that individuals were alive and writing over multiple literary periods, and perhaps in multiple literary styles. Hassan asks, “Does modernism stretch merely to stretch out our lives?” (7) I would be interested in knowing the reactions of authors historically to shifts in literary trends. Do they welcome the change, or try to “stretch out” the old period? Hassan says that the avant-garde should “serve as the agent of change, which is recognizable when still newer change is in progress” (10). Can we really not recognize change as its happening enough to name it? Will post-modernism acquire a new name after something else takes its place? It’s strange that although Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism all reacted to each other and were more or less chronologically progressing, we don’t call Naturalism “Post-Realism,” etc. (What did they call Naturalism while it was happening?) So why is postmodernism called postmodernism? The name is almost a negative space – a sign: “Reserved for the name of the period after Modernism.” Does postmodernism have no defining characteristic of its own other than that it defies categorization? And seeing as many authors neither knew nor cared what literary period or style they were writing in, how useful are these literary categorizations – and to whom are they useful?

In a related development chronicled in the article “Modern Book Publishing and Book Culture – TIME, the publishing industry seems to be shifting into a more postmodern form. So not only literary movements are shifting, but literary media are shifting as well. As we discussed in class, postmodernism is a product of new technology. I liked the lip service to fandom, but it was a little vexing that the author implied that fandom’s postmodern activities only started recently with the Internet. The article’s vision of the future of publishing – amateur writers blazing new trails while professional writers lay back and watch – reminded me of Hassan’s view of critics “Taking few risks, the best known among them wait[ing] for men of lesser reputation to clear the way” (9).

The DeLillo piece I found extremely offputting at first, but as the narrative became faster and more ridiculous it caused a sort of Brechtian-alienation shift within me to not only become aware of the component parts of narratives but also to become aware of the component parts of our visual experience of society. By starting in a more conventional, slow-moving narrative style and then moving toward the more extreme style, it also exposed my own assumptions that stories are supposed to “make sense,” characters are supposed to be developed, and actions are supposed to be motivated. At the end, I found myself wondering if the soldiers that they killed would be soldiers if they had been out of uniform, and if the women that they raped would be women if they weren’t wearing skirts and dresses.

Link’s “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” was one that I loved at first – I found Soap’s internal narrative hilarious. That’s why I was so taken off guard by the kidnapping at the end. I felt like I had missed some sign earlier – a clue that this was going to happen. A big clue, of course, is the painting. It is at the center of what caused Soap’s life to change so dramatically by going to prison, and Soap shows a strange attachment to it that even he does not understand. Its shifting identity parallels Soap’s and Carly’s own shifting identities. It changes depending on how the viewer looks at it. So too do Carly and Soap’s identities shift depending on how another person perceives them. Soap’s name was given to him by others, and the reader only realizes Carly’s “friend of the family” identity is false when Soap points it out. Given the extent to which the reader sees the inside of Soap’s head, it’s amazing that I just didn’t see the kidnapping coming. This lack of real internal access, coupled with the emphasis on outer identity implies that there IS no real internal identity, that we are all shifting constantly like the painting, made up of “stuff that isn’t the same every time you look at it.”

“I like stuff that isn’t the same every time you look at it”

“I like stuff that isn’t the same every time you look at it” (spoken by Carly in “Some Zombie Contingency Plans”): It seems that this observation sums up a primary characteristic of postmodern literature and rhetoric, one which is evident in most of the short stories and passages assigned this week.

I enjoyed the short stories, particularly the pieces by Foer, Lethem, and Link. Foer’s piece was especially moving because it recounts experiences and emotions that are common to the human experience, yet are usually unexpressed. I wonder whether these emotions are untold because language as we know it fails to convey them, or because these emotions are not necessarily meant to be expressed, and should simply lurk in a person’s mind until other emotions take their place? Either way, Foer’s use of symbols and characters in place of incommunicable emotions effectively illustrates that language is significantly less sophisticated than we may think. Foer’s piece also displays another recognizable characteristic of postmodern texts: its focus on signifiers and the absence of a constant “signified.” If I understand it correctly, this characteristic resonates with Carly’s statement. Foer shows that though these symbols encapsulate unspoken emotions, these emotions are dependent on specific circumstances. Therefore, their meanings are fluid, changing every time they’re felt in a different context.

Link’s piece, “Some Zombie Contingency Plan,” does not have the easiest plot to follow, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. I’m not usually a fan of fantasy fiction, but I enjoy stories that have enigmatic and thought-provoking metaphors intertwined in the text. In response to Jennifer’s earlier post, I think the zombie metaphor is one that concerns the ambiguity and fluidity of identity. The main characters, Soap and Carly, repeatedly camouflage and change their identity throughout the story. Though Soap constantly presents the hypothetical situation of zombies invading as a fear-inducing scenario, I think Link wants the reader to think of Soap as a potential zombie, in a metaphorical sense. In other words, maybe Link is making the point that metaphorical zombies—individuals who are not necessarily dead on the outside, but are void on the inside—are to be feared more than the actual, fictional zombies. While attempting to escape from an “actual” zombie is certainly frightening, Link hints that individuals who themselves morph into metaphorical zombies can find no escape route (you cannot escape from yourself). Again, the postmodern statement above about things appearing differently in various situations also fits this storyline. The indistinctness of the characters’ backgrounds and personalities as well as the overall elusiveness of the plot collectively point to this postmodern notion of perpetual ambiguity and malleability of meaning within the text.

Finally, I found Cage’s “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)” an engaging piece to read as well. Though I found it initially difficult to immediately identify the theme or purpose of the piece, I was able to deduce a pattern in the text after a second read. Obviously, the structure of the piece is meant to be avant-garde, in order to capture the reader’s attention or unsettle the reader in some way. The title’s ironic humor has significant bearing on the meaning of the piece as a whole (I think): it seems that Cage is implying that human intervention—any attempts by humans to “improve the world”—usually fail and result in the opposite. Aside from technological advances, which are acclaimed in this piece (“Success for humanity lies in technology…), almost all other human attempts to change the world are useless or harmful. Among many other themes that I couldn’t decipher, Cage calls for the removal of government and politics (anarchy), the eradication of environmental pollutants, and the obliteration of “arthritic” language that is structured and lacks fluidity. Though no one can deny that there are meaningful messages within this text, they are still open for interpretation.

With Cage’s text as well as all the others assigned, the meaning of the text is never the same every time you read it. This indeterminacy is what makes postmodern, avant-garde texts unique—if they do nothing else, they will NOT fail to make you think. When the reader is given a chance to think, the result will likely be fruitful change. As Hassan points out in “POSTmodernism,” “What the avant-garde probably still needs to do for a time is serve as the agent of change, which is recognizable when still newer change is in progress.”