Toth, Josh - The Passing of Postmodernism
Toth, Josh - The Passing of Postmodernism
Toth, Josh - The Passing of Postmodernism
A
Spectroanalysis
of the
Contemporary
THE PASSING OF POSTMODERNISM
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The Passing of Postmodernism
The Passing of Postmodernism
A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary
JOSH TOTH
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
2010 State University of New York
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toth, Josh.
The passing of postmodernism : a spectroanalysis of the contemporary / Josh
Toth.
p. cm. (SUNY series in postmodern culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3035-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Postmodernism (Literature). 2. Semiotics and literature. 3. Criticism.
4. Poststructuralism. 5. Derrida, JacquesCriticism and interpretation.
I. Title.
PN98.P67T68 2010
809'.9113dc22 2009021169
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For those who haunt everything I do:
Dad, Mom, and (of course) Danica and Marlow
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. The Phantom Project Returning: The Passing (On) of the
Still Incomplete Project of Modernity 1
Introduction 1
Ruptures and Specters 7
Exorcisms Without End 18
The (Phantom) Project Still Incomplete 23
2. Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter):
Poststructuralism, Derrida, and the Project Renewed 37
Poststructuralism and/as Postmodernism 37
Private Irony All the Way Down? 45
The Force of Derridas Indecision 61
3. Writing of the Ghost (Again): The Failure of Postmodern
Metaction and the Narrative of Renewalism 75
Neither Logocentric nor Logo Centric 75
From an Ethics of Perversity to an Ethics of Indecision 89
Metactions Failure and the Rise of Neo-Realism 106
The Project of Renewalism 124
A Conclusion . . . Perhaps 137
Notes 147
Works Cited 183
Index 193
viii The Passing of Postmodernism
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ix Introduction
Acknowledgments
There are a number of people without whom this project, too, would
be still incomplete. At the top of the list are Thomas Carmichael,
Tilottama Rajan, and my partner (in everything), Danica Rose. All
three provided invaluable and tireless guidance, guidance that dened
my thinking from start to end. Many thanks go, also, to Linda Hutch-
eon, Alison Lee, Martin Kreiswirth, and Daniel Vaillancourt (all of
whom kindly identied errors and offered advice). Finally, I would like
to thank both Neil Brooks and Clay Dion; their support and friendship
helped me to endure any number of frustrations along the way.
Scattered portions of the following text have appeared in pre-
vious publications: A Diffrance of Nothing: Sartre, Derrida and the
Problem of Negative Theology (published in the Berghahn journal
Sartre Studies International) and Introduction: A Wake and Renewed,
which I co-authored with Neil Brooks as the Introduction to The Mourn-
ing After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism. (The Mourning After was
published as part of Rodopis Postmodern Studies series, edited by
Theo Dhaen and Hans Bertens.)
Front cover illustration: Alex Golden. Untitled (Front View),
2006. From Waving and Clapping series. Oil and inkjet on canvas,
44 85 inches. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.
Back cover illustration: Alex Golden. Untitled (Back View),
2006. From Waving and Clapping series. Oil and inkjet on canvas,
44 85 inches. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.
ix
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1 The Phantom Project Returning
CHAPTER ONE
The Phantom Project Returning
The Passing (On) of the
Still Incomplete Project of Modernity
There is no more hope for meaning. And without a doubt this
is a good thing: meaning is mortal. But that on which it has
imposed its ephemeral reign, what it hoped to liquidate in order
to impose the reign of the Enlightenment, that is, appearances,
they, are immortal, invulnerable to the nihilism of meaning or of
non-meaning itself.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
(Marcellus: What, has this thing appeard againe tonight? Then:
Enter the Ghost, Exit the Ghost, Enter the Ghost, as before). A question
of repetition: a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its
comings and goings because it begins by coming back.
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
CONCIERGE: What is it? Will there be more?
RAY: Sir, what you had there is what we refer to as a focused,
non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class-5 full-roaming vapor.
Real nasty one too.
Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters
Introduction
Lets just say it: its over (Politics 166). Postmodernism, that is. Or
so Linda Hutcheon claims. For Hutcheon, the postmodern moment
has passed, even if its discursive strategies and its ideological critique
1
2 The Passing of Postmodernism
continue to live onas do those of modernismin our contempo-
rary twenty-rst century world (Politics 181, my emphasis). Hutcheons
announcement ringsand I imagine this is her intentionlike a death
knell, the nal word. Indeed, the entire epilogue to the second edi-
tion of The Politics of Postmodernism reads like an epistemological obitu-
ary.
1
Hutcheon employs phrasing that is usually reserved for funerals,
or extended periods of mourning: postmodernism has passed. Of
course, Hutcheon really means passed in a temporal sense, that the
postmodern moment is now in the past. Yet it is difcult, if not impos-
sible, to ignore the metaphysical connotations of passing. So, lets
just say it: postmodernism is, according to critics like Hutcheon, dead.
It has passed. It has, in other words, given up the ghost. Such phrasing,
though, resounds with ambiguity, inviting a number of questions: What
ghost? Given? Passed on?where?, to whom? When, or where, did this
passing/giving begin? Is this ghost that postmodernism has given up,
is this thing that has passed on, that which Hutcheon claims contin-
ues to live on? Is it the same thing that lived on after modernism,
and therefore lived on (in) postmodernism? This seems to be, then,
a question of the paranormal, of possession. What is this thing that
lives on, moving from host to host? But I have already generated more
questions than I can, at this point, possibly answer. What is important
to note, for now, is that the death of postmodernism (like all deaths)
can also be viewed as a passing, a giving over of a certain inheritance,
that this death (like all deaths) is also a living on, a passing on.
Perhaps the fall of George W. Bushs cynical administration (with
its reliance on tenuous truth claims and its blind support of neoco-
lonial capitalism) and the massively popular rise of Barack Obamas
overtly sincere administration (with its renewed faith in global ethics
and transparent communication) nally signals the culmination of a
grand epochal transition, but one thing is clear: Hutcheon (in 2002) is
already quite late in arriving at the deathbed of postmodernism.
2
The
deathwatch began, one could argue, as early as the mid-1980s. In 1983,
the British Journal, Granta, published an issue entitled Dirty Realism:
New Writing in America. Introduced by Bill Buford, this new realism
was presented as an initial step beyond the pretensions of postmod-
ernism. This revival of some type of realism was further solidied by
the American writer Tom Wolfe in his 1989 literary manifesto for a
new social novel. In fact, by 1989, the demise of postmodernism was,
for most, an inevitability. With the First Stuttgart Seminar in Cultural
StudiesThe End of Postmodernism: New Directionsthe fate of
postmodernism seemed sealed. By the mid-1990s, the phrase after
(or beyond) postmodern could be found on the cover of any num-
ber of critical works.
3
In other words, since the end of the 1980s an
3 The Phantom Project Returning
increasing number of literary critics and theorists have announced, or
simply assumed, the end of postmodernism. The race is on to dene an
emergent period that seems to have arrived after the end of history.
As I suggested above, the critics who participate in this theoriza-
tion of the end typically highlight a recent shift in contemporary nar-
rative that is marked by the growing dominance of a type of neo-(or,
dirty)-realism, and by an increased theoretical interest in the issues
of community and ethical responsibility. Indeed, the recent shift in
stylistic privilegefrom ostentatious works of postmodern metaction
to more grounded, or responsible, works of neo-realismseems to
echo the recent ethico-political turn in critical theory, a turn that
is perhaps most obvious in Jacques Derridas late work on Marxism,
friendship, hospitality, and forgiveness. In line with this theoretical
turn, and in the wake of postmodernism, a growing body of cultural and
literary criticism has dedicated itself to the recovery of various logo-
centric assumptions. The recent collection of essays edited by Jennifer
Geddes, Evil after Postmodernism: History, Narratives, Ethics, might stand
for the moment as an example of this shift in critical concern.
4
In
terms of narrative production, then (and as I demonstrate in chapter
3), the suggestion we get from those critics and writers who seem to
have arrived after postmodernism is that the stylistic elements that have
been typically read as emanations of (what most writers and critics
now view) as a subversive and nihilistic epistemological trend have
been undermined by a new discourse that is no longer overtly con-
cerned with the impossibility of the subject and/or author and the
need to avoid a grounded, or situated, commitment to the political.
However, as Klaus Stierstorfer points out in his introduction to Beyond
Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture, this return
to seemingly prepostmodern ideologies has been somehow tempered
by the lessons of postmodernism:
Whether it is the more universal interest in the possible
foundations of a general or literary ethics in a world of
globalisation, or the more specic and local issues of iden-
tities, scholars and writers alike nevertheless continue to
nd themselves in the dilemma of facing the deconstructive
gestures inherent in postmodernist thought while at the
same time requiring some common ground on which ethical
agreements can be based. Hence some form of referentiality,
even some kind of essentialism is called for. (910)
In terms of the apparent shift to a type of neo-realism, we might say
that some form of mimesis is called forthat is, some type of renewed
4 The Passing of Postmodernism
faith in the possibility of what postmodernism narrative has repeatedly
identied as impossible: meaning, truth, representational accuracy. But
as Stierstorfer notes, this shift to some type of (what I call in later
chapters) renewalism is not simply a backlash in response to post-
modern narrative production; it is neither a reactionary return to the
ethical imperatives of modernism nor a revival of the traditional forms
of realism that proliferated in the nineteenth century. Postmodernism,
to a certain degree, persists. Consequently, this seemingly progressive
movement out of postmodernism is confronted at the outset by two
pressing questions: has postmodernism, as Linda Hutcheon claims,
nally passed?; and, if so, what is or can be after postmodernism?
With these increasingly focal questions as a point of departure, I will
consider the possibility that, while heralding the close of a moment in
cultural and epistemological history, the current discussion ironically
highlights the inevitable persistence of postmodernism. That said, I am
not interested in arguing simply that what comes after postmodernism
remains informed by postmodernism; this is, obviously, and as I dem-
onstrate throughout, the case. I am interested in demonstrating that
the current epistemological, or cultural, recongurationa recongu-
ration that maintains many postmodern traitsbetrays the inevitable
persistence of what Jacques Derrida might refer to as the inheritance,
or specter, that animated postmodernism in the rst place.
Functioning primarily as a cultural critique (or, rather, as a cri-
tique of contemporary cultural critique), the following chapters will
thus approach the issue of postmodernisms passing in a manner that
recalls Jacques Derridas analysis of Marxism in Specters of Marx. In line
with the theoretical mode Derrida assumes in order to locate in both
Marxism and deconstruction a past revenant, or ghost, of emancipa-
tory and messianic afrmation, a certain experience of the promise
(Specters 89), my study of the death of postmodernism will function as
a type of two-pronged spectro-analysis, or spectrology. What I would
like to suggest is that postmodernism (as a privileged epistemological
conguration, or cultural dominant, encompassing both narrative
and theoretical discourse) was haunted by a certain teleological aporia,
a promise of the end represented by a type of humanism, a certain faith
in historical progress, a sense of justice and/or meaning. The recent
critical identication, or attempt to theorize, the end of postmodern-
ism seems to speak to the fact that this aporia, or specter, necessarily
continues to persist, even in the wake of the recent abandonment of
postmodernisms formal characteristics. A certain necessarily persistent
specterwhat Fredric Jameson seems to identify as both the return
of the repressed and the utopian impulse in Postmodernism, Or, the
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and which is ostensibly at work in
5 The Phantom Project Returning
all epistemological recongurationscompels movement, even if that
movement is a narrative or theoretical attempt to exorcise what haunts
and compels. Still, I do not intend to deny the reality of what we might
tentatively refer to as a type of epistemic break with the postmodern;
rather, I am interested in the way in which this current break recalls,
or reenacts, the postmodern break with modernismthat is, the way in
which any such break, or epistemic rupture, can be viewed ironically
as both complete and partial.
To a certain extent, and in the same way that a work like James-
ons Postmodernism is interested in postmodernism as a unique stage
in what is, ultimately, a much larger historical progression, the follow-
ing discussion is interested in postmodernism and its apparent passing
insofar as it is indicative of a certain spectrologically induced pattern
of epochal shifts, or breaks. Postmodernism is viewed here as a
unique epistemological conguration that is dened by the way in
which it attempts to deal with a certain ineffaceable and transhis-
torical specter. Via a focus on the passing of postmodernism, then,
I want to suggest that it is possible to understand cultural shifts in
aesthetic and theoretical discourse/production as epistemological
recongurations. Rather than employing a rhetoric of complete epis-
temic rupturesthat is, a rhetoric of epochal breaks that, la Foucault,
conceives of seismic epistemological upheavals that leave no residual
traces of a previous archive of knowledgeit is, I would argue, more
useful to view each identiable epochal, or epistemic, shift as another
conguration, as another epistemological attempt to deal with a cer-
tain persistent and ineffaceable specter, a certain persistent and inef-
faceable teleological aporia. From this perspective, an epoch remains
understandably denable (or, perhaps, to a certain degree, synchron-
ically exclusive) while also remaining quite understandably partial, an
inevitable continuation of the past. Each epistemic break is always, or
only, a reconguration because its formation is necessarily contingent
upon the fact that something (a specter) always and necessarily passes
on. Of course, before we can attempt to relocate this specter in the cur-
rent, or emergent, period after postmodernism, it is necessary to rst
locate it within the postmodern itself. For this reason, each of the fol-
lowing chapters begins by rst establishing the specters (non)presence
in canonical works of postmodern theory and narrative. Only by rst
observing the specter at work in postmodernism can we begin to map
its trajectory across the great epistemological divide that denes this
epoch that has arrived after postmodernism.
However, in order to establish the exact theoretical framework
that will inform the subsequent discussion, it is necessary to inspect,
or spectro-analyze, the original theorization of what we have come
6 The Passing of Postmodernism
to accept as postmodern. In what ways was the theorization of the
term postmodern inuenced by the very specter I propose to locate
and relocate? In what ways does the logic of the original postmodern
debate inevitably realize, or announce, this specter? This chapter func-
tions as a spectrological recuperation of that debate. By re-approaching
a number of the signicant accounts of postmodernism, my goal is
to track the specter in question through as well as in a number of dif-
ferent perspectives, or theoretical positions. So, while it may at times
look the part, what follows is not simply or only a review of what has
come before concerning the problem of postmodernism and historical
shifts. My purpose in the following sections is to provide, rather, a type
of spectral genealogy of the various attempts to theorize postmod-
ernism. By locating the ostensible specter of postmodernism within
the various and seemingly conicting theories articulated about and
during the postmodern period, this genealogy should go a long way
in terms of establishing the fact that a specic spectral impulse effects
certain recurring discursive formulations in a given episteme. What
follows is thus both a cursive survey of the postmodern debate (as
it occurred within, and as an effect of, the postmodern episteme) as
well as an articulation, and initial employment of, the spectrological
framework that will inform the following chapters.
Before I begin, though, a nal word on method. While I am inter-
ested in the discussion surrounding, and the reality of, a postmodern
break, this is not an attempt to nalize the debate concerning that
break, or shift; I am not concerned here with denitive dates mark-
ing the beginning or the end of postmodernism. Obviously, dates will
be important to any discussion of historical periodizationsand I will
certainly make suggestions concerning the moments of reconguration
here discussedbut this is an attempt to theorize the way in which the
general concept of such ruptures is undermined by a specic spectral
persistence. Ultimately, I am not interested in the exact moments of
epistemological change. As I explain below, these epistemological con-
gurations seem to recede gradually as new and emergent congura-
tions become dominant. In other words, the spectral recongurations
identied in the following pages are better understood via Raymond
Williams concept of residual, emergent, and dominant periods than
they are via the Foucaultian sense of spatially conceived epistemes that
exist entirely independent of one another.
5
The specter I propose to
examine can be said to persist simultaneously in several distinct episte-
mological congurations (although, at any given time, a specic epis-
temic conguration might be in a position of dominance). This will
make more sense as we move, nally, into a discussion of the postmod-
ern debate as it occurred up to postmodernisms apparent end.
7 The Phantom Project Returning
Ruptures and Specters
Employed loosely in Arnold Toynbees multivolume Study of History
(eight volumes of which were published between 1934 and 1954),
the term postmodern, written post-Modern, was used to describe
a late-nineteenth-century epochal shift: the end of a modern bour-
geois ruling class and the growing dominance of an industrial work-
ing class. I do not wish to get lost in the early history of the term,
but Toynbees initial theorizing of a post-Modern period of Western
civilization is a useful point of departure; it inaugurates a long tradi-
tion of viewing the postmodern as an ultimately unsuccessful break
with the motivating assumptions of (a) modernity. According to Perry
Anderson in The Origins of Postmodernity (perhaps the most recent and
most comprehensive history of the term), Toynbee was scathing of
the hubristic illusions of the late imperial West (6), which saw the
culmination of the Victorian period as the end of history itself. For
Toynbee, the Modern Age of Western history had been wound up only
to inaugurate a post-Modern Age pregnant with imminent experiences
that were to be at least as tragic as any tragedies yet on record (Vol.
9, 421). The Western worldwhich, for Toynbee, primarily included
France, Britain, Germany, and Americahad come to believe that a
sane, safe, satisfactory Modern life had miraculously come to stay as a
timeless present. History is now at an end was the inaudible slogan
of the celebrations of Queen Victorias Diamond Jubilee in A.D. 1887
(421). What is interesting about Toynbees discussion of a post-Modern
period is his willingness to chastise the assumptions of such a period.
Toynbee ultimately demonstrates that the very conception of an end
of history is ironically animated by a desire for an as yet unrealized
end of history. The end of history is only possible, Toynbee seems
to suggest (in a manner that will echo in the following discussion of
Derridean spectrality), because it is never fully actualized in any real
sense. As Toynbee points out, the desire for an end of history necessar-
ily persisted even as the Western ruling class announced, or assumed,
the arrival of a nally posthistoric epoch:
German, British, and North American bourgeoisie were
nursing national grievances and national aspirations which
did not permit them to acquiesce in a comfortable belief
that History was at an end; indeed they could not have
continued, as they did continue, to keep alight the icker-
ing ame of a forlorn hope if they had succumbed to a
Weltanschauung which, for them, would have spelled, not
security, but despair. (423)
8 The Passing of Postmodernism
A far cry from the current, now virtually institutionalized, param-
eters of the term, Toynbees concept of a post-Modern introduces an
issue that has never ceased to inform the modern/postmodern debate:
the issue of historical breaks and the culmination of history itself. Toyn-
bee seems to anticipate the recent claim that postmodernism has been
as unsuccessful as modernism in terms of heralding, or representing,
a nal break with the past. Of course, Toynbees modern/postmodern
periodizations are essentially equivalent to what literary critics conven-
tionally identify as Victorian/modern (or what, in economic terms,
someone like Jameson, following Ernest Mandel, might associate with
market/monopoly stages of capitalism). After all, Toynbee marks the
postmodern epoch as beginning with the Franco-Prussian war. Nev-
ertheless, his discussion of a post-Modern is of considerable interest.
The attempt to theorize a postcontemporary moment that is, in some
regard, an unsuccessful or incomplete break with the ideology of a past
modernity or historical trajectory is a useful segue to a discussion of
the specter that informed modernism long before it was inherited by
postmodernism. In fact, Toynbees discussion of a post-Modern period
can be neatly tied to the current understanding of modernism. In a
manner that recalls the typically accepted date for a postmodern break
with modernism, Toynbee seems to mark the 1950s as the end of a
distinctly post-Modern period. Not only does Toynbee seemingly view
the Modern and postmodern chapters of Western history as now
past, he suggests that, by A.D. 1950, the expansion of the Western
Society and the radiation of the Western culture had brought all other
extant civilizations and all extant primitive societies within a world-
encompassing Western Civilizations ambit (41314). Pointing to the
reality of an apparently emergent multinational period of cultural and
economic growththat is, a period of unprecedented globalization
Toynbee argues that perhaps for the rst time in the history of the
Human race, all Mankinds eggs are gathered into one precious yet
precarious basket as a consequence of the Western Civilizations world-
wide expansion (415). Simply put, Toynbees understanding of a post-
Modern period can be usefully employed as way of understanding the
modern episteme, in our contemporary sense of the period, and its
subsequent passing. Moreover, Toynbees use of the terms Modern
and post-Modern to describe the shift from a period still marked by
its explicit faith in the assumptions of the Enlightenment to a period
that dened itself as the end of progress itself, highlights the inher-
ent connection between (what we consider today as) modernism and
postmodernism, while also giving us an interesting framework within
which to view the current epochal shift.
9 The Phantom Project Returning
About the time Toynbee was working out his epochal parameters,
the term post-modern was more favorably applied to contemporary
aesthetic developments by the American poet Charles Olson. In a text
that Anderson seems to view as a lapidary manifesto of the post-
modern, Olson begins by stating that My shift is that I take it the
present is the prologue, not the past (250). What is ultimately a brief
biographical introduction, this apparent manifesto concludes with
Olson identifying a small group of modern writers who he believes
pregured the arrival of a distinctly postmodern period of aesthetic
production (within which he locates himself):
I am an archeologist of morning. And the writing acts
which I nd bear on the present job are (I) from Homer
back, not forward; and (II) from Melville on, particularly
himself, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, and Lawrence. These were
the modern men who projected what we are and what we
are in, who broke the spell. They put men forward into the
post-modern, the post-humanist, the posthistoric, the going
live present, the Beautiful Thing. (207)
6
As Anderson explains, Olsons becomes the rst afrmative concep-
tion of the postmodern (Anderson 12).
7
Obviously distinct from
Toynbees earlier usage, Olsons post-modern nevertheless echoes
Toynbees in the sense that, as Hans Bertens somewhat begrudgingly
notes (while discussing Michael Khlers take on Toynbee and Olson),
it indicates a new epistemeto use Foucaults termin the history of
Western culture
8
(Bertens 11), while also implicitly calling our atten-
tion to a certain modernist revenant, a persistent drive (what Anderson
calls a Stimmung, or mood) whose presence, at least from a certain post-
modern perspective, is indicative of a failure to be wholly and nally
POSTmodern. These initial occurrences of the termoccurrences that
hardly affected later theorizing of a postmodern periodsuggest that,
whatever the nal denition of the postmodern became, it, like mod-
ernism before it, was unable to escape a certain aporia that seemingly
animated previous epochs. I am referring here to the contradictory
impulse toward, or aporia surrounding, the possibility of a type of
nal answer. As I explain more fully below, this particular aporia
that animates any given epoch is often, if not always, identied by,
and seemingly confronted or resolved in, a succeeding epoch. This
particular aporia is, we might posit tentatively at this point, what passes
on, what is given upthe one essential ghost of an epistemological
period, or what I will call here the specter of postmodernism.
9
10 The Passing of Postmodernism
While most agree, Anderson included, that Toynbee and Olson
are the rst Anglophone critics to employ the term post-modernand
that, after them, The referent of the postmodern lapses (Anderson
12) and does not resurface until the late-1950sBertens, in The Post-
modern Weltanschauung and its Relation to Modernism, discusses John
Berrymans reemployment of Randall Jarrells 1946 use of the term to
describe the poetry of Robert Lowell. In an attempt to give Olsons vari-
ous and often unclear uses of the term more contemporary relevance,
Bertens quotes Jerome Mazzoros Postmodern American Poetry, highlight-
ing Mazzoros argument that Olsons, like Jarrells, understanding of
the postmodern can be easily identied with the terms contemporary
usage, even if such usage refers more typically to ction than poetry.
10
According to Mazzoro, both Jarrell and Olson ultimately conceive of
the postmodern as a radical break from, what we might call today,
modernisms logocentric assumptions; while modernism attempts to
bypass, or improve upon, language acts as the unstable mediator of
reality, postmodernism refuses to differentiate between language and
the reality it represents.
11
Whether or not this is an accurate denition
of Olsons, or even Jarrells, conception of the postmodern, Bertens is
correct in one regard: Mazzaros interpretation of Olsons denition(s)
is remarkably similar to what will become the dominant understanding
of postmodernism.
12
More importantly, Mazzoros ability to read Olson
in such a way suggests that Olsons struggle to employ the term is also
a struggle with the very contradictions that will become the primary
concern of the postmodern debate. On the one hand, Olsons post-
modern is unable to distance itself entirely from modernism and (I
will propose tentatively here) the specter of an Enlightenment project
that continued to haunt, and thus animate, the modern aesthetic sen-
sibility. On the other, Olsons post-modern is a complete and utter
break with the motivating assumptions of what many would dene
today as modernism. It is this apparent contradiction that I want to
continue highlighting, as it isor, at least, this is what I want to sug-
gestthe key to understanding postmodernisms passing.
In the early 1960s, the postmodern became associated with a fall
from modernism. Critics like Irving Howe and Harry Levin employed
the term post-modern to describe what they saw as distinctly negative
developments in contemporary literature. For this rst real wave of
postmodern critics, the postmodern is viewed as an aesthetic setback.
Levin, for instance, describes the postmodern epoch as a distinctly reac-
tionary and anti-intellectual trend, a lamentable return to ideologies
that modernism had only recently demystied. Anticipating theorists
like Habermas, Levins postmodern is a neo-conservative interruption
of a distinctly modernor, rather, radicalperiod of cultural produc-
11 The Phantom Project Returning
tion: This realignment corresponds with the usual transition from
enfant terrible, who is naturally radical, to the elder statesman, who is
normally conservative (309). In a similar manner, Howes postmodern
is marked by the absence of strong belief systems, the loss of a moral
center, or ground.
13
This loss of traditional authorities is, for Howe,
symptomatic of a mass society:
By mass society we mean a relatively comfortable, half welfare
and half garrison society in which population grows passive,
indifferent and atomized; in which traditional loyalties, ties
and associations become lax or dissolve entirely; in which
coherent publics based on denitive interests and opinions
gradually fall apart; and in which man becomes a consumer,
himself mass-produced like the products, diversions and
values he absorbs. (426)
As a result of this mass societal state, vast numbers of people now
oat through life with a burden of freedom they can neither sustain
nor legitimately abandon to social or religious groups (427). While
it is, perhaps, more closely related to phenomenological or existential
theories of subjectivity and freedom,
14
Howes understanding of mass
society clearly anticipates the more recent discussions of late-capitalism
and the death of the subject.
Levin, for his own part, makes similar observations about the
postmodern state of economic and societal growth. In fact, Levins
postmodern epoch is initially associated with what we might under-
stand today as a Baudrillardian sense of mass production, simulation,
and hyperreality:
this is reproduction, not production; we are mainly consumers
rather than producers of art. We are readers of reprints and
connoisseurs of High Fidelity, even as we are the gourmets by
virtue of the expense account and the credit card. For our
wide diffusion of culture is geared to the standardizations
of our economy, and is peculiarly susceptible to inationary
trends. The independence of our practitioners, when they
are not domesticated by institutions of learning, is compro-
mised more insidiously by the circumstances that make art
a business. (313)
Of course, Levin (and, I imagine, to a lesser degree, Howe) is seem-
ingly still enamored by the illusion that modernism was an unprec-
edented period of artistic autonomy, a period in which the market
12 The Passing of Postmodernism
failed to penetrate the elite arena of high cultural production. Still,
both Levin and Howe seem to anticipate the ways in which the effects
of rapid societal modernization would be read by future postmodern
writers and theorists. And the fact that Howe explicitly identies a
certain threat to the subject is, particularly, worth noting. Howes
conception of a postmodern period, while associated with a canon of
writers we would hardly recognize today as postmodern
15
is, as Bertens
points out, important in its early recognition of the role that epis-
temological and ontological doubt would play in postwar American
literature (14). More signicantly, though, it is important (as is, to a
lesser degree, Levins understanding) in terms of its initial recognition
and articulation of what later critics would come to identify clearly as
a cultural and epistemological break or rupture, a denitive shift
from modernism to something explicitly not modernistwhether that
something is an improvement or not.
16
By the mid-1960s, and into the 1970s, critics like Leslie Fiedler,
Susan Sontag, and Ihab Hassan were outwardly celebrating just such a
rupture, or epistemic upheaval (if we can return to the Foucaultian
terminology discussed above). This turn to a distinctly positive view
of postmodernism is perhaps best exemplied in Fiedlers virtually
ecstatic pronouncement, in Cross the BorderClose that Gap: Post-
Modernism, of the passing of modernism:
We are living, have been living for two decadesand have
become acutely conscious of the fact since 1955through
the death throes of Modernism and the birth pangs of Post-
Modernism. The kind of literature which arrogated to itself
the name Modern (with the presumption that it represented
the ultimate advance in sensibility and form, that beyond
it newness was impossible), and whose moment of triumph
lasted from a point just before the First World War until
one just after the Second World War, is dead, i.e., belongs
to history not actuality. (344)
Like Sontagwho, in Against Interpretation, celebrates the postmodern
aversion, or outward resistance, to nal meaning(s), authorial inten-
tion, and thus interpretationFiedler conceives of the postmodern as
apocalyptic, anti-rational, blatantly romantic and sentimental; an age
dedicated to joyous misology and prophetic irresponsibility; one, at any
rate, distrustful of self-protective irony and too great self-awareness
(Fiedler 345). If such apocalyptic pronouncements give us a some-
what uneasy sense of dj vu, its not surprising.
17
The claim, here,
13 The Phantom Project Returning
that modernism is nally dead (and not just dead, butwith empathic
italicsdead) is remarkably similar to the postmodern death notices
mentioned above. It is at this pointthat is, the point at which the
postmodern debate begins to include outward celebrationthat I can
begin to tie together the initial portion of this survey, while further
articulating the spectrological argument proposed above.
That the death of modernism was read as the end of history
18
and
the teleological assumptions of history, that its death marks the birth of
a nally postmodern, posthistoric aesthetic sensibility devoid of positiv-
ist assumptions and humanist imperatives, has several crucial implica-
tions. These implicationsimplications that I have already touched on
in the above discussion of Toynbees post-Modern epoch
19
are all
the more germane to our discussion if we consider the fact that the
theorizing of modernisms passing has been neatly echoed in the
more recent pronouncements of another epochal death: the death
of postmodernism. On the surface, there are two ways to look at this.
From either perspective, though, the majority of postmodern analysis
since the rst considerations of Toynbee and Olson must be viewed as
inherently awed. Either, as critics like Gerald Graff
20
have suggested
from the beginning, late modernism has been mis-recognized as POST-
modernthat is, the true end of modernism; or, postmodernism was
indeed a break with modernism, but it was ultimately unable to be what
the majority of critics claimed it was: post-ideological.
21
But which is
it? Or, is there another possibility?
Andreas Huyssen, to a certain degree, had much of this worked
out back in the mid-1980s: Either it is said that postmodernism is con-
tinuous with modernism, in which case the whole debate opposing the
two is specious; or, it is claimed that there is a radical rupture, a break
with modernism, which is then evaluated in either positive or negative
terms (Huyssen 182). Given the recent development of an epoch/
episteme that has emerged after postmodernism, it would seem that
the rupture argument, as I suggested above, can only be maintained
if the effect of the rupture is considered a failure, an unsuccessful and
ultimately temporary postmodernan almost-(truly)POSTmodern. But
Huyssen seems to anticipate a way out of this dilemma. Viewing the
either/or sensibility animating much of the postmodern debate as a
failure to understand the most useful insights of Derridean deconstruc-
tion, Huyssen suggests that the postmodernrather than being either
continuous or wholly discontinuous with modernismis both continuous
and discontinuous. This is apparent, Huyssen points out, in the term
itself; postmodern inscribes within itself the very term (i.e., modern)
that it denes itself against. Ultimately, though, Huyssens argument
14 The Passing of Postmodernism
and apparent answer to the dilemma with which we are now confronted
reafrms the very binary he wishes to avoid. Huyssen eventually goes on
to describe a series of movements out of modernism, a series beginning
in the 1960s with a type of anti-modernism and seemingly culminating
in the 1970s and 1980s with an almost complete epochal transformation
into what we might think of as postmodernism proper. Huyssen essen-
tially categorizes the postmodernism of the 1960s as a rebellion against
certain strains of high modernism: its institutionalization, via the New
Critics, within academia and its consequent failure as a subversive and
critical avant-garde. By the late-1970s and early 1980s, though, postmod-
ernism ceases to be simply anti-modernist, abandoning the concept of
the avant-garde altogether and splitting into two separate strains: one
that manifests itself as an afrmative culture of eclecticism with little
interest in critique or subversion and another that manages to resist and
critique the status quo while abandoning avant-gardism and/or basic
modernist assumptions. Huyssen is particularly interested in the latter
form of postmodernism and the possibility of its eventual transforma-
tion into a cultural dominant. What is important about his argument
is that he sees the postmodernism/anti-modernism of the 1960s as a
type of postmodern pre-history (195), as if the postmodernism that
begins to emerge in the 1980s is almost nally and truly POSTmodern.
The sense we get is that, even by the mid-1980s, postmodernism has
not yet nally emergedthat, while it has been both continuous and
discontinuous with modernism, it will eventually be something wholly
different, something truly POSTmodern: what appears on one level
as the latest fad, advertising pitch, and hollow spectacle is part of a
slowly emerging cultural transformation in Western societies, a change
in sensibility for which the term postmodernism is actually, at least for
now, wholly adequate (Huyssen 181).
In a way, then, Huyssen can be read as the rst critic to theorize
a period after postmodernism. That the term postmodern is wholly
adequate in terms of temporarily describing a nal shift to some-
thing wholly other than modernism is tantamount to saying that true
POSTmodernism will not actually be identied as postmoderna
term that, according to Huyssen, cannot help but intimate a latent
connection to modernism. From this perspective, Huyssen does indeed
theorize a (for lack of a better term) POSTmodern rupture; but the
rupture he theorizes is delayed, or prepared for, by a period of anti-(or,
post)MODERNISM. Huyssens still forthcoming postmodern episteme
is thus equivalent to what is currently described as the period after
postmodernism. Hutcheon, in fact, does a similar thing. Hutcheon
doesnt really announce the death of postmodernism; rather, she seems
15 The Phantom Project Returning
to suggest that what has been mistakenly thought of as postmodern-
ism is dead and that POSTmodernism has nally become a realityso
much so that it requires a new label of its own (181), one (we might
assume) that no longer implies a connection to the past.
Unfortunately, all this leads us back to the initial problem: either
we jumped the gun when we rst started identifying aesthetic pro-
duction and social dynamics as postmodern, or the postmodern we
correctly identied was unable to live up to our expectations. Both
options, of course, ultimately become conated; whether the past fty
or so years was just a continuation of modernism or an unsuccessful
version of postmodernism, the fact remains that a truly POSTmodern
epoch, with a name of its own, remains to be seen. And, besides,
wouldnt an unsuccessful postmodernism, by denition, be a continua-
tion of modernism anyway? As a possible way out of the problem, and
as a way of salvaging the majority of postmodern criticism, I want to
focus on Huyssens suggestion that the postmodern is both continu-
ous and discontinuous with modernismbut I would like to dismiss
as somewhat facile the importance of the term itself; it seems to me
that modernism is as continuous/discontinuous with the epochs that
preceded it as is postmodernism, and the term modernism does not
include references to the Enlightenment, romanticism or Victorian-
ism. In this sense, I would like to employ a theory, or rhetoric, of
ironic continuity/discontinuity as a means of understanding the death
of postmodernism (as well as postmodernism itself). Nevertheless, the
various versions of this particular position are not entirely in line with
the direction Id like to take such a theory. Some, like Huyssen, fail to
sustain a wholly ironic viewpoint; others, like Hassan, employ a sense
of continuous discontinuity in order to reafrm a sense of histori-
cal trajectory, or progress. Still, Hassans suggestion that a period, or
epoch, is both a diachronic and synchronic construct (Hassan 88) is
a useful one. But instead of viewing the seemingly discontinuous, or
synchronic, as the effect of an almost arbitrary system of categorization
that gives denition to an otherwise smooth historical trajectory (as
Hassan seems, in the end, to be interested in doing), I want to suggest
that it is as incorrect to say that modernism and postmodernism are
not separated by an Iron Curtain or Chinese Wall (Hassan 88) as it is
to say that postmodernism, like all periodizations, is simply an illusory
construct that obscures the reality of what is actually a much larger
and unied historical movement. Im not willingnor do I think it is
usefulto wholly abandon the rhetoric of the rupture.
Importantly, this critical sense, or theorizing, of a rupture is itself
an identiable symptom of the postmodern. As Jameson notes, The
16 The Passing of Postmodernism
postmodern looks for breaks, for events rather than new worlds, for the
tell-tale instant after which its no longer the same; for the when-it-all-
changed . . . or, better still, for shifts and irrevocable changes in the
representation of things and of the way they change (Postmodernism
ix). There is no better example of such thinking than that of Michel
Foucault. The seismic upheavals identied in The Order of Things and
The Archeology of Knowledge can be read, I would argue, as a poststruc-
turalist counterpart to the postmodern, or markedly Anglo-American,
appeal to ruptures discussed above. Similarly, and while remaining
wary of any simple conation of poststructuralism and postmodern-
ism,
22
we might usefully (if tentatively) approach the apocalyptic ends
repeatedly articulated in the poststructuralist discourse of the 1960s
and 1970sincluding Barthes death of the author and Derridas ends
of manas distinctly postmodern realities, born of a certain episte-
mological conguration that aimed to severe all ties with history, to
be (as Lyotard might have it) radically new. This is not to deny that
certain shifts have occurredor, even, that certain ruptures have
occurred. On a certain level, Foucaults posthistoric conception of
synchronically dened epistemes remains a useful one; his announce-
ment in the concluding portions of The Order of Things, like Derridas
at the end of Ends of Man,
23
functions as an accurate foretelling of
what the postmodern would become: the end of a distinctly modern
mode of representation and the absence of a certain, relatively short-
lived, concept of the individual as the subject and object of knowledge.
What I want to suggest is that the postmodern debateand, now, the
discussion of postmodernisms deathcan be read as symptomatic of
some type of ineffaceable inheritance that carries across these seem-
ingly self-contained, or exclusive, epistemes (or, better, epistemological
congurations). Primarily, though, I want to avoid falling into the trap
of simple historical analysis. In looking at the postmodern debate, or
the phenomenon that is the subject of that debate, Im not interested
in demonstrating that the proclamation of an end of history (or the
end of anything elsepostmodernism included) was nothing more
than a miscalculation, that, as Anderson attempts to demonstrate in
the Origins of Postmodernity, the claims attributed to a postmodern way
of thinking can be traced backward as progressive developments of
temporally and geographically contingent modes of thought, develop-
ments that ultimately reafrm the persistence of what we might think
of as a type of Hegelian and/or Marxist historical advancement.
Yet, and at the same time, Im interested in demonstrating that
the various complete and utterly unbridgeable ruptures identied by
the postmodernists share a certain history, a certain genealogy, that
17 The Phantom Project Returning
the postmodern theory of ruptures was indeed (at least on one lev-
el) effected by a certain shared experience, a certain experience of
the past.
24
Let me put this differently. Certainly, it is entirely possible
to identify certain breaks, or shiftseven if it is, perhaps, going too
far to say, along with Foucault, that in terms of other epistemes, like
modernism, There is nothing now, either in our knowledge or in our
reection, that still recalls even the memory of that being (OT 43, my
emphasis). What I would like to suggest, instead, is that it is possible
and more useful to conceive of such breaks as moments of epistemologi-
cal reconguration. By conceiving of historical periodizations in such a
way we can avoid the rather simplistic alternatives: either such periods
are (1) articially categorized moments in a much larger and inevitable
historical trajectory, or (2) synchronic and utterly exclusive epistemes.
Viewed as a series of nonprogressive recongurationsas recongu-
rations of, as I explain more fully below, a certain essential spectral
relationshipperiodizations as such can be more easily understood
as both continuous and discontinuous with their predecessors. At the
same time, any given epistemic reconguration can be understood, in
line with a more Jamesonian view, as a type of cultural dominant, even
as other residual and emergent congurations continue to persist and
inuence each anotherlike wheels within wheels. The conception
of epochal or epistemic shifts (i.e., recongurations) here proposed
allows us to account for seemingly evident ruptures while simultane-
ously making room for a certain underlying spectral persistence, a
certain shared history.
After all, if the horror lms of the last century have taught us
anything, its that even after the break is complete, after the dead
are nally separated from the living, something always manages to
come across from the other sideor rather (and Im not just speak-
ing of essential horror plot devices) something must come across; its
absolutely essential. What Im suggesting is that postmodernismlike
all such epistemesis, if we employ Derridas phrasing, a double
and unique experience (Specters 15). The experience of any given
episteme is always, then, to a certain degree, an experience of dj vu.
It is this sense of dj vu, I would like to suggest, that has animated
the postmodern discussion, a discussion that has, and which contin-
ues to, struggle with postmodernisms relation and/or lack thereof to
modernism, its seemingly contradictory impulses and its more recent
passing. What we havein modernism, in postmodernism, and now
after postmodernismis a series of repetitions, or returns. A persistent
revenant. Yet each of these revenantsas that which comes back, a
ghostis always also original, unique. Here, then, we can begin to
18 The Passing of Postmodernism
employ the metaphor of the specter: that which is and (yet) is not,
that which returns for the rst time, that which begins by coming back
(Specters 11).
25
It is with this ironic, or paradoxical, metaphor in mind that I
want to continue my inspection of the postmodern debate. By view-
ing the postmodern as an episteme dened on both sides by certain
discernable ruptures, while understanding it as a periodization or
epistemological reconguration animated by a certain persistent spec-
ter or inheritance (passed on to, and in turn, by, modernism), we can
begin to see a way out of our current dilemma. Modernism and post-
modernism and, now, this newly emergent epoch can indeed be viewed
as singular events, or epistemes; they are also, though, epistemological
recongurations, recongurations of an unavoidable relationship with
a certain repeatingwe might say passing, or passed onaporia: a
certain inheritance, a certain specter.
Exorcisms Without End
In Specters of Marx, Derrida argues that Marxism was haunted by various
spirits. According to Derrida, one of these spirits cannot be ignored;
it cannot be ignored because it compels movementthat is, critical,
aesthetic and/or revolutionary movement. But a spirit, Derrida insists,
arrives, or manifests, as a ghost, a specter. It is both seen and unseen,
present and absent; or, if we employ Derridas earlier terminology, the
spirits of Marxism exist only as trace and differance. What is inter-
esting about Derridas essential specterand the use of the pos-
sessive has double signicance, for Derrida (like Marx before him)
possesses, or is possessed by, the very specter he is discussingis that
it is associated with emancipatory and messianic afrmation, a certain
experience of the promise (89). The specter of Marxthe one that
Derrida is concerned with, the one that continues to haunt and thus
compel deconstructionis the one motivating spirit haunting all past
idealism(s): faith in god, humanism, meaning, telos, truth, and so on.
26
Ironically, these spectral effects, these ideological tendencies, are the
very opiates of which Marx (at least according to Derrida) would
like to rid the world. Yet the very specter, or teleological aporia, that
compels the ideological tendencies to which Marx is opposed animates
the discourse of Marxism, the discourse that is intent on exorcising
all specters once and for all. Simply, if more crudely, the specter of a
true and nal state of communism haunts, and thus compels, the
subversive implications of historical materialism; the very ideal of com-
19 The Phantom Project Returning
munism is, Derrida seems to suggest, wholly contrary to the anti-ideal-
ist discourse that is ultimately animated by the possibility of communism.
And it is, as Ive already intimated, this specter of the messianic, of
the promise to come, that effected the very shape of postmodernism
as a cultural dominant.
That being said, Id like to move slowly at this point. To fully
understand Derridas argumentand, in turn, to make it fully appli-
cable to a discussion of the passing of postmodernism as an episteme
we need to keep in mind that a specter is always a revenant (i.e., of the
past) and a promise, or sign, of the future, a future to come. It returns
from the past to herald the future. The ghost of Hamlets father is,
as Derridas analysis of Hamlet demonstrates, a useful point of refer-
ence. The dead King returns, but his return as a revenant speaks to the
possibility of a future, a time when justice is fullled, time is back in
joint and the revenant is allowed to rest, dissipate, dissolve nallyat
which point the future would be present; the possibility of the future, of the
promise, would cease to be a possibility (for the condition of a promise,
of its possible fulllment, as Derrida asserts on numerous occasions, is
its impossibility). The specter of Marx can be understood, then, as the
animating factor in all past ideological revenants that beckon toward
the horizon of the future. The specter represents the promise of a future
that is forever to come, or what Derrida refers to as a messianic
without messianism (Specters 59). Now, I have repeatedly associated the
specter in question with a certain inherited aporia, namely, a certain
teleological aporia.
27
This is because this aporia can be dened as a
desire for, or latent belief in, nality, a faith that will never be nally
worked out of our (epistemological) systems/congurations. This is
because it animates those very systems. However, and here is where the
issue of postmodernism begins to converge with Derridas discussion
of Marxism, these discursive systems (or, in the specic context of this
paper, epistemic congurations)at least since the beginning of what
Foucault marks as the modern epistemehave been opposed to, if
not entirely frightened by, ghosts. The irony, as Derrida argues, is that
the hostility toward ghosts, a terried hostility that sometimes fends
off terror with a burst of laughter, is perhaps what Marx will always
have had in common with his adversaries (Specters 47). According to
Derrida, then, the specter that is haunting Europe
28
(i.e., commu-
nism) is as troubling to Marxs opponents as the specter motivating
our blind faith in bourgeois ideology, exchange value, and religion
is to Marx(ism). So, Derrida asks: But how to distinguish between
the analysis that denounces magic and the counter-magic that it still
risks being? (Specters 47). The war against Marxism, just like the war
20 The Passing of Postmodernism
Marxism wages against the presumption that ideology, or the immate-
rial, is realthat it is the ultimate source of historical developmentis
a war against a camp that is itself organized by the terror of the ghost,
the one in front of it and the one it carries within itself (Specters 105).
What is always desired in these wars against ghosts is to exorc-analyze
the spectrality of the specter (Specters 47)that is, to conjure the spec-
ter, to make it be nally and thus to exorcise it nally. But, to conjure
(as an act of calling into being or as an act of exorcising, for the one
is ultimately the same as the other)
29
is an act compelled by the specter
of an end
30
or, put differently, a certain teleological impulse.
Lets put this as simply as possible: the primary injunction of the
specter, its promise of emancipation, is to be rid of all specters. The
promise promised is a world without ghosts, a world that is post-ideo-
logical: the future as present, the end of history. However, and this is
Derridas main (ethical) point: the promise of such a world is a specter.
It is only possible because it is impossible. Yet, its possibility compels
movement. Ideally, for Derrida, we need to respect the specters of
emancipation, not as the promise of a denite telos (which promises
the end of the specter, of the promise, of the future, etc.), but as a
certain non-teleological eschatology, a repeating promise of the end
represented by a type of radical democracy, a sense of justice and/or
meaning, deconstruction completed nally and at last. But I am not,
at this point, interested in our ideal, or ethical, relationship to the
specter of the messianic; rather, Im interested in looking at the way
in which this specter, or teleological aporia (for, I would argue, this
specter continues to compel teleologies rather than non-teleological
eschatologies) is seemingly conjured by a given epoch. Moreover,
Id like to suggest the possibility that what we might identify as an
epistemic rupture occurs at the point when it is impossible to avoid
the fact that a given epistemological reconguration is animated by the
very revenant that was apparently conjured/exorcised by that episteme
in the rst place. This will make more sense if we look at Derridas
discussion of Marxism as communism:
There is nothing revisionist about interpreting the gen-
esis of totalitarianisms as reciprocal reactions to the fear
of the ghost that communism inspired beginning in the
last century, to the terror that it inspired in its adversaries
but that it turned inside out and felt sufciently within
itself to precipitate the monstrous realization, the magical
effectuation, the animist incorporation of an emancipatory
eschatology which ought to have respected the promise, the
being-promise of a promise. (Specters 105)
21 The Phantom Project Returning
Communism, Derrida suggests, should never have proclaimed itself
as the promise nally realized; it shouldnt have attempted and/or
claimed to conjure the specter once and for all, to make it real and
thus exorcise it as a specter, as a promise. For the promise, as spec-
ter, ceases to be effectual if we believe that it has been actualized. The
promise of emancipation (of meaning, of truth, etc.) no longer ani-
mates; it dominates as an apparent reality, an imperative.
31
At the point
when ghost busting outdoes itself, when a given epistemic congura-
tionsuch as modernism or postmodernismbecomes institutional-
ized and thus an imperative (because it has forgotten about ghosts,
for it believes it has nally conjured/exorcised all ghosts), the specter
returns with new ferocity and a new reconguration is necessary to
deal with it. In the case of Marxism, a discursive rupture
32
seems to
have been the effect of an ontological treatment of the spectrality of
the ghost (91). Something similar, it would seem, can be said for all
cultural production affected by the modern episteme, of which Marx-
ism is arguably only a discursive effect.
With its faith in genius, its heroic literature and architecture,
high modernism sought with prophetic elitism and authoritarianism
(Jameson, Postmodernism 2) to challenge and dismantle the false ideolo-
gies of the pastideologies of representation, religion, reason, and so
onby producing cultural artifacts capable of emancipating the mass-
esor, at the very least, capable of pointing toward that emancipation.
We might argue, while risking the accusation of oversimplication, that
modernisms ontological treatment of the spectrality of the ghost
is most obvious, in terms of aesthetic production, in its assumptions
surrounding, and its privileging of, the autonomous subject, the man
of genius, and the elite ability and/or appreciation for aesthetic inno-
vation.
33
Postmodernism, on the other hand, as innumerable critics
have pointed out, seems to dismantle or deconstruct these modern-
ist assumptions. As even a quick glance at Hassans now famous chart
of modernist/postmodernist distinctions will reveal,
34
postmodernism
exposed the elitism and exclusivity (or, what Derrida would call, the
onto-theology) that haunted the modernist project. For instance,
where modernist architects like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright
built structures that stood as monuments of inspiration, stressing the
difference between high and low culture, the postmodernistsin an
attempt to renounce the high-modernist claim to radical difference
and innovation (Jameson, Postmodernism 63)built structures that
(according to a someone like Jameson, at least) blended into, or mir-
rored, the contexts in which they were erected.
35
This distinction, of course, applies to literary production as well.
While, for the most part, the work of modernists such as Eliot, Pound,
22 The Passing of Postmodernism
Hemingway, and Faulkner stands aloof from the otherwise indistin-
guishable masses of pulp, the work of the postmodernistssuch as
Vonnegut, Barth, Pynchon, Coover, and Ackerattempts to dismantle
the distinction between pulp and literature, low and high culture.
36
The now canonical postmodernists tend to employ corrosive self-reex-
ivity in an attempt to forego any pretence to originality or genius. The
typical postmodern subject, like Pynchons Slothrop, disintegrates into
a scattered collection of discursive fragments, nothing more than a
type of Foucaultian author-function.
37
Yet, and as I demonstrate in
chapter 3, postmodernisms nal days are marked by a heightened
awareness that postmodernism failed to escape the binaries it sought to
subvert, that the books and buildings of high postmodernism are just as
monumental, just as elite, as the masterworks of high modernism.
Put differently, postmodernisms passing is marked by the pronounced
realization that the insistence on groundless self-reexivity (in archi-
tecture, literature, or whatever) ironically became another ethical and
elitist imperative, an imposing suggestion that responsible narra-
tives do not allow a ground to persist. Given the above discussion, this
realization could be said to signal the fact that modernism did indeed
give up the ghost. If modernism attempted to deal with its specters
by ontologizing the spectrality of ghost (i.e., by determining as false,
or illusory, all things immaterial), then we might say, if somewhat hast-
ily, that postmodernism conjured its spectral inheritance by rejecting
all things material or real, by determining as false all seemingly stable
distinctions.
38
In both cases, though, the animating motivationthat
which passes onwas the specter, or the promise, of a certain telos,
the end of the aporia of spectrality. In modernism, the spectrality of
the ghost was challenged by the promise of absolute materiality (as
we see in a work like Joyces Portrait of the Artist, which insists upon
the absolute autonomy of the author/subject); in postmodernism, the
exorcism was animated by an absolute denial of the possible materiality
of the ghost (as we see in, say, Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,
which refuses to privilege the author as anything more than another
ctional construct). Either way, the ghosts ironic spectralityits pres-
ence and its absence, its possibility and its impossibilitywas challenged
and eventually denied altogether.
39
And, as I have suggested numerous
times already, this specter continuesas it is what passes onafter
postmodernism. In fact, it is possible to refer to this epistemological
reconguration after postmodernismjust as it is possible to refer to
the episteme after modernism, as a period of mourning, a period in
which we struggle to get over (i.e., conjure/exorcise) that which has
passed, or that which is past. Still, before moving on to a discussion of
23 The Phantom Project Returning
the ways in which the specter of postmodernism returns after postmod-
ernismthat is, before considering the fact that the passing of post-
modernism refers both to its death and its inevitable persistenceit is
necessary to return to and thus conclude the above spectroanalysis
of the postmodern debate. By way of a return, though, Id like to look
at the concept of the specter from another perspective.
Kenneth Burke argues that all dominant discourseswhat he calls
terministic screens
40
should be understood as mystications. While,
according to Burke (and, here, we must return again to the issue of
Marxism), historical materialism is a demystication of Hegelianism, it
is also a type of remystication. Any given discursive answer to another
discourse is always a (de/re)mystication.
41
This mystifying process
seems to persist ad absurdum, apparently without beginning or end. Yet,
Burke seems more than willing to accept the apparent necessity of this
inescapable process of mystication, referring to it, at times, as a type of
spiritualized (Rhetoric 114) rhetorical compulsion. With this in mind,
Burkes conception of discursive dynamics can be understood as pre-
(or, proto)spectrological. As such, it gives us another perspective from
which to approach the issue of postmodernisms passing. Employed
on a larger scalethat is, in terms of epistemesBurkes argument
highlights the way in which one epistemological conguration seems to
answer the problems of another while simultaneously persisting in the
same problematic act: mystication, or spiritualization. Each episteme is
compelled by the promise of an end (telos) to the spiral of mystica-
tionspiral in the sense that each mystication is both a return and
a unique eventthat animates the spiral in the rst place. We could
probably trace this spiral back before Platoand Derrida, or Burke,
might have such a history in mindbut, for my purposes, I want to
focus on the fact that what we see spectrally persisting or living on
in modernism and postmodernism, and now after, is most easily recog-
nized as a revenant of an Enlightenment project. Put differently, Id
like to locate the origin (albeit, a contingent origin, an origin unique
to the context of this particular book) of postmodernisms essential
specteror, rather, its spirit of an emancipatory teleologyin the basic
assumptions of the Enlightenment.
The (Phantom) Project Still Incomplete
With the theory of the specter and of mystication in mind, I would
like to return now to the above survey of the postmodern debate via a
discussion of one of postmodernisms staunchest, and most inuential,
24 The Passing of Postmodernism
critics: Jrgen Habermas. For Habermas, postmodernism is a type of
interruption, an interruption of what he refers to as the still incom-
plete project of modernism. Since the late 1960s, Habermas argues,
the spirit of aesthetic modernity has . . . begun to age (Incomplete
4, my emphasis).
42
For Habermas, the project of modernityas distinct
from a modern period or epochis marked by a connection to the
past, a desire for the new and a certain longing for an undeled, an
immaculate and stable present (Incomplete 3). On the one hand,
Modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition
while, on the other, The modern avante garde spirit . . . opposes at
the same time a neutralized history, which is locked up in the museum
of historicism (4). This subversion of history, a subversion that is ironi-
cally animated by a sense of a dynamic history moving toward an as yet
unoccupied future (3), is at the heart of what Habermas sees as the
project of modernity: The project aims at a differentiated relinking of
modern culture with an everyday praxis that still depends on vital heri-
tages, but would be impoverished through mere traditionalism (13).
Ultimately, Habermas project of modernity embraces the aims of the
Enlightenment, aims Habermas sees as the responsibility of modernity
to realize. In the article Ive been citing, ModernityAn Incomplete
Project (also known as the Frankfurt Address), Habermas associates
this project, specically, with a desire to recover a certain unity of
the disciplines, disciplines separated into three distinct and specialized
spheres: science, morality, and artor, cognitive instrumental, moral
practical, and . . . aesthetic expressive rationality (8): The project of
modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the
Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science,
universal morality and law, and autonomous art, according to their
inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the
cognitive potentials of each of these domains to set them free from
their esoteric forms (8). The separation of these elds, and the sub-
sequent specialization of knowledgethat is, the separation of forms
of knowledge from the average citizenleads to the increased threat
that (what Habermas refers to as) the life world, whose traditional
substance has already been devaluated, will become more and more
impoverished (8). The sense we get is that the project of modernity
aims to seal the rift between these specialized forms of knowledge and
the life world that they are ultimately meant to serve.
What is important to note, though, and what I want to stress
here, is that, according to Habermas, this project repeatedly and per-
haps necessarily encounters various obstacles. For the most part, these
obstacles come in two distinct varieties. Either the project stumbles
25 The Phantom Project Returning
upon the belief that the aesthetic and the social world are absolutely
irreconcilableat which point the utopia of reconciliation fails to
be an animating goalor, in reaction to such absolutism, the project
attempts to actualize itself by dissolving all distinctions. Habermas views
the surrealist movement as an example of the latter.
After describing the surrealist movement as an attempt to level
art and life, ction and praxis, appearance and reality to one plane
(10), Habermas points out that A rationalized everyday life . . . could
hardly be saved from cultural impoverishment through breaking open
a single cultural sphereartand so providing access to just one of
the specialized knowledge complexes (1011). It is useless, if not
dangerous, to insist that everything is art. Put differentlyand in such
a way as to begin drawing some connections between the project of
modernity and the concepts of the specter and mystication discussed
aboveHabermas, like Burke (and, to a certain degree, Derrida), sees
the attempts to actualize a project of Enlightenment, a project aimed
at an utopia of reconciliation, as necessarily resulting in various
incomplete solutions. These incomplete solutions could be called,
if we were to use Burkes words, high abstractions [that, necessar-
ily] omit important ingredients of motivation (114). Habermas puts
it this way:
Reication cannot be overcome by forcing just one of these
highly stylized cultural spheres to open up and become more
accessible. Instead, we see under certain circumstances a
relationship emerge between terrorist activities and the over
extension of any one of these spheres into other domains:
examples would be tendencies to aestheticize politics, or
to replace politics by moral rigorism or to submit it to the
dogmatism of a doctrine. (11)
This claim is, as we have already seen, echoed in Derridas discussion
of the Marxist failure to respect the spectrality of the specter. The
suggestion that a certain dogmatism results from the very attempt to
manifest the project (or, if I can begin to reemploy the terminology
delineated above, the specter) of emancipation recallsor, rather,
anticipatesDerridas suggestion that such a project is only useful if
its actualization remains deferred. The fact that Habermas understands
just this point is all the more apparent when he seemingly turns on his
own advocacy of the Enlightenment project: artistic production would
dry up, if it were not carried out in the form of a specialized treatment
of autonomous problems, and if it were to cease to be the concern of
26 The Passing of Postmodernism
experts who do not pay so much attention to exoteric questions (12).
At this point, it would appear that Habermas is employing paradoxical,
if not spectrological, logic. This aspect of Habermas thinking cannot
be overstressed.
Consider Andersons account of Habermas understanding of
modernity: the project of modernity as [Habermas] sketched it is a
contradictory amalgam of two opposite principles: specialization and
popularization (39). Anderson, of course, reads this contradiction as
a type of failure: How was a synthesis of the two at any stage to be
realized? So dened, could the project ever be completed? (39). Cer-
tainly, Habermas argument has its problems; but those problems are,
I would argue, a result of his claims that the major poststructuralists
(from Bataille
43
to Derrida) are young conservatives and that postmod-
ernism is a neoconservative trend complicit with societal moderniza-
tion. What Anderson seems to forget is that Habermas denition of
modernity refers less to an epoch than it does to a certain spirit of
emancipation passed on since the Enlightenment. Its very impossibil-
ity or contradictory natureits spectrality, if you willis an essential
characteristic, a characteristic that, Im suggesting, Habermas is intent
on demonstrating. When Anderson refers to the pathos of Habermass
later theory, which simultaneously reafrms the ideals of the Enlighten-
ment and denies them any chance of realization (44, my emphasis),
he has, to a certain extent, missed the point. If Habermas voices any
pathos, it is in his claim that postmodernismas well as the anti-mod-
ernism of the poststructuralistshas given up on the possibility of the
project, the specter, the promise. Arguably, for Habermas, postmod-
ernism, anti-modernism, and premodernism (Habermas locates three
separate strains opposed to the project of modernity) have ignored
the specter, denied the specter, or looked to the wrong specter respec-
tively. Such a claim is, of course, pure conjecture, but thats beside
the point. What Habermas identies as the still incomplete project
of modernity can be identied as a certain specter of the Enlighten-
ment, the manifestation of a spirit of emancipation (as I dened it
above). While, in ModernityAn Incomplete Project, he focuses on
the impulse toward unication, the project of modernity can be under-
stood more broadly, as later work by Habermas intimates,
44
as the spirit
of utopianism/emancipation. What Habermas fails to see is that what
he calls postmodernism and anti-modernism are symptoms of an
emergent epoch, or epistemological reconguration, that continue to
be animated by the specter of a still (and, perhaps, always) incomplete
project of modernity. This argument can be further claried if we
look at the way in which Habermas argument ultimately and spectro-
27 The Phantom Project Returning
logically conates with that of Jean-Franois Lyotard, the advocate of
postmodernism par excellence.
Jameson argues that Lyotards rst major work on postmodern-
ism, The Postmodern Condition, is a thinly yeiled [sic] polemic against
Jrgen Habermass concept of a legitimation crisis and vision of a
noisefree, transparent, fully communicational society (Foreword
vii).
45
This crisis can be aligned with what Habermas describes later
in the Frankfurt Address as the interruption, or abandonment, of a
still incomplete project of modernity. From this perspective, Lyotards
report can be read as advocating the very crisis that Habermas
laments, a crisis that has been fostered in the eld of science (sci-
ence being Lyotards primary concern in The Postmodern Condition) by
theorists like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. That is, as Jameson
suggests, Lyotards post is roughly analogous to Habermas crisis;
what Habermas views as a legitimation crisis Lyotard celebrates as a
radical break from the imperative of legitimation.
46
Lyotard associates this collapse of legitimation with a correspond-
ing collapse of metanarratives, the grand narratives that previously
functioned as the grounds upon which knowledge was legitimated in
the rst place. Lyotard identies these metanarratives, or narratives of
legitimation, as those assumptions that, up to the postmodern period,
or moment of crisis, have tended to validate the claims of dominant
groups. These grand narratives offer totalizing, or teleological, concep-
tions of social dynamics. They are, in short, both idealist and ontologi-
cal narratives of emancipation.
47
The crisis that Habermas speaks of is,
then, associated with the de-legitimation of these unifying grand
narratives. Lyotard puts it this way: We no longer have recourse to the
grand narrativeswe can resort neither to the dialectic of spirit nor
even to the emancipation of humanity as a validation for postmodern
scientic discourse (60). For Lyotard (and, we might say, for Haber-
mas too), the term postmodern is thus dened as incredulity toward
metanarratives (Postmodern xxiv). In place of these grand narratives,
Lyotard identies an innitesimal number of little narratives. The
rules of any little narrativewhat Lyotard also describes as the rules
of a language game that is in constant play with an unlimited num-
ber of other language gamesare, and must be, susceptible to change
and cancellation. Because consensus is always interrupted, or made
impossible, by the continuously shifting or temporary contracts of
any given interpretative community, legitimation no longer has any
claim to permanence; it is spatially and temporally specic.
Through his discussion of little narratives Lyotard works to dem-
onstrate that any latent desire for stable consensusor, in other words,
28 The Passing of Postmodernism
any desire for a still viable and unifying metanarrativeis fundamen-
tally at odds with the current liberating acceptance of, what he terms,
the paralogical nature of radically heterogeneous language games:
as I have shown in the analysis of the pragmatics of science,
consensus is only a particular state of discussion, not its end.
Its end, on the contrary, is paralogy. This double observation
(the heterogeneity of the rules and the search for dissent)
destroys a belief that still underlies Habermass research,
namely, that humanity as a collective (universal) subject
seeks its common emancipation through the regularization
of the moves permitted in all language games and that
the legitimacy of any statement resides in its contributing
to that emancipation. (66)
Legitimation for Lyotard is no longer rooted in any stable consensus,
or unifying goal (i.e., telos); rather, language games are now legiti-
mated, as Jameson puts it, by a search, not for consensus, but very
precisely for instabilities, as a practice of paralogism, in which the
point is not to reach agreement but to undermine from within the
very framework in which the previous normal science had been con-
ducted (Foreword xix). In this way, Lyotards postmodern is ulti-
mately aligned with the radically new, or wholly heterogeneous. This
is particularly clear in Lyotards later essay (published three years after
The Postmodern Condition): Answering the Question: What Is Postmod-
ernism? Here Lyotard almost entirely blurs the distinction between
postmodernism and the high-modernist imperative of experimenta-
tion. Postmodernism is now the ultimate form of avant-garde cultural
production: A work can become modern only if it is rst postmodern.
Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in
the nascent state and this state is constant (79). Modernism is, in
this sense, postmodernism after its radical heterogeneity, or newness,
has been (at least partially) absorbed, or assimilatedthat is, after it
becomes understood and, for that very reason, ceases to be wholly
other/new.
Almost immediately, then, Lyotards conception of the postmod-
ernwhich is seemingly inseparable from his critique of the apparent
utopianism of Habermasseems to turn on itself, becoming the very
thing to which Lyotard would like the postmodern to be wholly anti-
thetical.
48
Lyotards vision of postmodernism becomes, itself, a meta-
narrative.
49
Consider, for example, Lyotards claim, cited above, that
the end of the pragmatics of science is not consensus but paralogy.
29 The Phantom Project Returning
Lyotard can certainly claim that the postmodern realization, or accurate
representation, of the un-totalizable heterogeneity, and instability, of lan-
guage games destroys the possibility of Habermas implicit belief in
a legitimating, or unifying, narrative of collective emancipation. How-
ever, the very fact that Habermas move, or participation in a certain
language game, is denied, or de-legitimated, as implicitly determined
by false rules (if only because all rules are false, or illusory) allows us
to locate in Lyotard the very impulse toward consensus he ostensibly
rejects. Lyotards paralogy becomes a type of ironic revival of the belief
that humanitywhich is now viewed as a heterogonous mass of discur-
sively determined nodals
50
seeks its common emancipation through
the regularization of the moves permitted in all language games and
that the legitimacy of any statement resides in its contributing to that
emancipation (Postmodern 66). The only difference between Lyotards
version of Habermas latent faith and Lyotards own revival of that
faith is the fact that now, in paralogy, legitimacy is determined by a
statements implicit or explicit denial of the possibility of legitimation.
As Habermas fails to make (at least, obviously) such a statement, his
move in the language games of postmodernism is necessarily illegiti-
mate. This apparent conation of Lyotard and Habermas supercially
opposed positions is, perhaps, most obvious if we consider the way in
which both theorists ultimately desire a return to the imperatives of
high modernism, the avant-garde, the possibility of critical change, and
a more enlightened understanding of reality.
This brings me to the crux of my argument. Lyotards discussion
of the postmodern ultimately highlights the way in which Habermas
project remains an animating feature within the postmodern even
though an absolute denial of that project is the dening characteris-
tic of the postmodern. The projector, we might say at this point,
the specterreturns through, or because of, its denial. Both Haber-
mas and Lyotard fail to see this; it is, in fact, this joint failure that
ultimately effects, at least in my reading, an ironic theoretical con-
vergence. Habermas (the modernist) is too focused on the possible
materialization of the specter, while Lyotard (the postmodernist) is
deceived by its apparent lack of materiality. The most obvious counter
to this claim is, of course, the fact that Lyotard hardly seems, at least
in What Is Postmodernism?, to be talking about what we have come
to consider postmodernism. It seems quite likely that Lyotard is simply
mistaking postmodernism for some strain of late, or latent, modern-
ism. If this is the case, then its not surprising that Lyotards argument
ultimately converges with Habermas: they are both opposed to that
which is considered to be truly postmodern. Still, Id like to suggest
30 The Passing of Postmodernism
that Lyotards return to a type of high-modernist imperative is simply
an ostentatious effect of the postmodern specter Ive been attempting
to locate. As I have stressed throughout this survey of the postmod-
ern debate, postmodern theorists have repeatedly notedor, at the
very least, demonstrated in the very logic of their argumentsthat the
postmodern is, in some way, both continuous and wholly discontinuous
with modernism. Moreover, Lyotards understanding of disparate and
eternally shifting language games, or little narratives, can be aligned
with the most canonical representations of a postmodern epistemologi-
cal shift: Foucaults discursive networks, Barthes texts, Kristevas
intertextuality, Derridas linguistic bricolage, and so on.
51
All of which,
I will add, if only tentatively at this point, are animated by this specter
I have been discussing, the specter that is (albeit, in a more obvious
fashion) lurking about in Lyotards pages.
We can now turn to the work of Jameson directly. From a cer-
tain perspective, I would argue, Jamesons take on the postmodern is
in fundamental agreement with the spectrological argument I have
been sketching throughout this chapter. While I do not wholly agree
with Jamesons claim that Lyotard is in reality quite unwilling to pos-
it a postmodernist stage radically different from the period of high
modernism (xvi)for this argument cannot account for Lyotards
discussion of language games in The Postmodern ConditionJamesons
identication, within Lyotards work, of the persistence of buried mas-
ter-narratives (xxii) suggests an implicit awareness of a certain spec-
ter necessarily at work in postmodernism. In an attempt to reconcile
Lyotards claim that all master narratives are illusory with his paradoxi-
cal faith in the emancipatory nature of small narrative units at work
everywhere locally in the present social system (xi), Jameson suggests
the possibility that This seeming contradiction can be resolved . . . by
taking a further step that Lyotard seems unwilling to do . . . , namely
to posit, not the disappearance of the great master-narratives, but their
passage underground as it were, their continuing but now unconscious
effectivity as a way of thinking about and acting in our present situ-
ation (xii). As Jameson himself points out, the persistence of these
seemingly effaced legitimating narrativesnarratives that motivate all
forms of action, or deliberationcan be connected to what Jameson
calls, elsewhere, the political unconscious. Moreover, this conception
of a persistent yet repressed political unconscious can be read as an
early description of what Jameson will later come to refer to as the
utopianism of the postmodern, or the return of the repressed.
It is important to note that a certain shift in tone can be iden-
tied in Jamesons later work on the postmodern. Take, for example,
31 The Phantom Project Returning
the development of his most well-known essay: Postmodernism: Or,
the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In its rst published manifes-
tation, Postmodernism and Consumer Society, the cultural produc-
tion of late capitalism is described in a distinctly pejorative manner, a
manner (no doubt) that allowed someone like Hutcheon to denounce
Jamesons position as blind to the critical nature of postmodernism.
According to Hutcheon, Jameson fails to distinguish between the socio-
economic period of late-capitalism and the cultural production that
occurs within that period. Jameson does not, according to Hutcheon,
distinguish between postmodernity and postmodernism. As a mode of
cultural production, postmodernism, in Jamesons work, is wholly com-
plicit with the inherent assumptions of late-capitalism, or what David
Harvey identies as a period of exible accumulation. If we look
exclusively at Postmodernism and Consumer Society, Hutcheons
position is certainly feasible. However, if we move into an analysis of
the nal manifestation of Jamesons paper (never mind his foreword
to Lyotards Postmodern Condition, which actually predates Hutcheons
Politics)that is, if we look at the introductory chapter of Jamesons
Postmodernismthen Hutcheons argument becomes somewhat dated,
if not irrelevant.
52
Here Jameson begins to acknowledge a certain uto-
pianism at work in the postmodern, the recognition of which allows
him to soften his earlier analysis of postmodern cultural production.
This is not to say that Jameson eventually makes the clear distinction
that Hutcheon demands; he never posits the possibility of a postmod-
ern mode of cultural production capable of critically separating itself
from its own conditions of production. Jameson continues to insist that
the cultural production of postmodernism is indistinguishable from
the socioeconomic event of late-capitalism, while simultaneously sug-
gesting that a certain utopianism
53
necessarily continues to haunt that
production. What Jameson, as a Marxist critic, ultimately decides to
stressand relocate within postmodernismis the political value of
the Utopian imagination as a form of praxis (107). The suggestion is
clear: without the persistence of this utopian spirit, the possibility of,
or reason for, change atrophies: if postmodernism is the substitute for
the sixties and the compensation for their political failure, the question
of utopia would seem to be a crucial test of what is left of our capac-
ity to imagine change at all (xvi). We need to ask, in other words,
why postmodernism is at all. If it were as ecstatically nihilistic as many
have claimed/lamented, would it not be marked by absolute silence?
What compels it to be, to move, to produce at all?
54
For Jameson, it
would seem, the answer is the inevitable return of a certain repressed
utopianism, a type of political, or historical, faith.
32 The Passing of Postmodernism
Toward the end of this survey of the postmodern debate, then
or, rather, toward the end of the postmodern debate proper and, thus,
of postmodernism proper
55
the discussion, once again hinges on the
necessary persistence of a certain spirit of Marxism. And with this (we
might say, unavoidable) return, I can begin to tie things together. This
latent, or spectral, utopianism can be understood, more simply, as the
return of a repressed teleological conception of historical progres-
sion. The effects of this inevitable return of the repressedwhat I
have referred to variously as the specter of utopia, the incomplete
project of modernity, or a certain teleological aporiaare various.
Hutcheons own take on postmodernism, including her critique of
Jameson, is, in fact, an interesting example of the way in which James-
ons repressed returns.
Like the majority of postmodern critics (working as postmodern-
ists, or from within postmodernism), Hutcheon denes the postmodern
as a distinct break with modernism that somehow maintains a certain
modernist impulse. For this reason, Hutcheons critique of Jameson
ultimately hinges on the fact that he seems unwilling, or unable, to
identify this impulsean impulse that, for Hutcheon, results in the
most important feature of the postmodern: the activity of de-doxi-
cation (or, more simply, de-naturalization). That we can identify
this activityloosely dened as the process of demonstrating that we
can only know the world through a network of socially established
meaning systems, the discourses of our culture (Politics 7)speaks
to the reality of a paradoxical postmodernism of complicity and cri-
tique, of reexivity and historicity, that at once inscribes and subverts
the conventions and ideologies of the dominant cultural and social
forces of the twentieth-century western world (Politics 11). Hutcheon
is critical of Jamesons early work on the postmodern because it fails
to announce the possibility of this paradox, a paradox that allows post-
modernism to be both the cultural logic of late-capitalism and the cri-
tique of that logic. Echoing the ironic tone we identied in Habermas
(above), Hutcheon celebrates postmodern cultural artifacts, stressing
the way in which they both install and subvert the teleology, closure,
and causality of narrative, both historical and ctive (60). Hutcheons
postmodern is animated by the critical impulse of modernism, the
need to subvert established assumptions, but it manages simultaneously
to [call] into question the messianic faith of modernism, the faith
that technical innovation and purity of form can assure social order
(11). What is interesting about Hutcheons discussion, though, is that
it ultimately conrms the persistence of the messianic, the specter.
By insisting on the progressive nature of postmodernisms paradoxi-
33 The Phantom Project Returning
cal relationship to totalizing assumptions, Hutcheon cannot help but
present postmodernism as a nal and true mode of representation,
the end of a linear aesthetic history. Of course, we might say that
Derrida (in his discussion of specters and ethico-political responsibil-
ity) does a similar thing, but such a suggestion must remain unex-
plored until the following chapter. What is important here and now
is that Hutcheons denition of postmodernismand, by implication,
her critique of Jamesonultimately conrms Jamesons identication
of a utopianism that necessarily motivates the cultural production of
postmodernism. A large portion of Jamesons Postmodernism is, in fact,
dedicated to uncovering the residual traces of this utopian spirit.
For Jameson, the conventional view of postmodernism as the
end of all ideologies, as the post-ideological, implicitly associates
postmodernism with the end of Marxism; and, as Jameson notes, the
end of Marxism went hand in hand with the end of Utopia (159).
What Jameson ultimately suggests, though, is that even the end of
utopia requires, necessarily (and paradoxically), the persistence of the
possibility of utopia:
this unforeseeable return of narrative as the narrative of the
end of narratives, this return of history in the midst of the
prognosis of the demise of historical telos, suggests a second
feature of postmodernism theory which requires attention,
namely, the way in which virtually any observation about the
present can be mobilized in the very search for the present
itself and pressed into service as a symptom and an index of
the deeper logic of the postmodern. (Postmodernism xii)
The sense of a certain spectral logic is hard to miss. That is, Jameson
seems to offer us another way of understanding the spectrological
conditions of postmodernism. And with the above survey in mind,
a survey that has repeatedly encountered the problematic nature of
postmodernisms relation to modernism, it seems only reasonable to
agree (to a certain extent) with Jamesons claim that the residual
traces of modernism must be seen in another light, less as anachro-
nisms than as necessary failures that inscribe the particular project
back into its context, while at the same time reopening the question of
the modern itself for reexamination (Postmodernism xvi). Still, it would
be misleading to say that Jamesons take on the postmodern is entirely
sympathetic to the spectrological position I have been sketchingor,
rather, uncovering. The fact that Jameson feels it is possible to inscribe
the particular [postmodern] project back into its context suggests as
34 The Passing of Postmodernism
much. This is to say, quite simply, that Jamesons is a Marxist argument;
mine is not. I am not interested in locating or recovering some sense of
a historical trajectory, a progression of the dialectic (Marxist or Hege-
lian). What Jameson identies as utopianand with that identication
I agreeI do not associate with a repressed persistence of history.
In short, I am not interested in Jamesons argument as it functions in
its original context. What Jameson sees as repressed, I see as spectral.
The spectrology here proposed does not aim to prove the reality of a
teleological historical progress that postmodernism can never nally
disprove or escape; I am, rather, attempting to highlight the necessity
of an implicit (or, at times, explicit) promise of, or faith in, such a
teleology. This promise has been described as spectral for the various
reasons I have explicated above: it compels movement, action, work,
if only because we can never tolerate its spectrality: its possibility and
its impossibility, its presence and its absence.
By way of a brief summation, I will try to clarify this distinc-
tion. Jamesons discussion of the postmodern distinguishes itself from
other such discussions in that it views the postmodern as a cultural
dominant. By discussing the postmodern in this way, Jameson avoids
the restrictive nature of a theory of historic ruptures, while still con-
sidering the postmodern as a discrete epistemological unit. Jamesons
sense of a dominant allows for the presence, within that dominant, of
residual and emergent forms of cultural production. And, certainly, I
do not wish to lose Jamesons distinctive take on Raymond Williams
dominant, residual, emergent schema. Without such a schema we can-
not account for the persistence of obviously modernist modes (e.g.,
Hemingways persistence into the 1960s) and/or the emergence of
new cultural modes or styles (e.g., the work of Nicholson Baker, which
begins with The Mezzanine in 1986) during a distinctly postmodern
period. Still, and at the same time, I have attempted to maintain, to a
certain extent, the postmodern rhetoric of epochal breaksor even, of
epistemic ruptures. I have, however, tempered this rhetoric (via Burke
and Derrida) with a certain concept of repetition. By identifying such
breaks as epistemological recongurations, my intent has been to high-
light a type of spiral movement, a movement that can be dened as a
series of shifting spectrological relationships, or ways of dealing with
a certain necessarily ineffaceable spectral inheritance. While there is
reason to view epistemes such as modernism and postmodernism as
being, in Jamesons somewhat disapproving terms, bounded on either
side by inexplicable chronological metamorphoses and punctuation
marks (4), such congurations are inevitably effected, or made possible,
by a certain persistent specter, a specter that always, that necessarily
35 The Phantom Project Returning
must, pass on. This specter has been recognized, if not inadvertently
encountered, throughout the postmodern debate. In Jameson, as we
have seen, this specter is recognizedor, perhaps, mis-recognizedas
the persistence of a certain seemingly repressed teleological progress,
the emanations of which result in the various teleological afrmations
of postmodernist assumptions. While Jameson might argue that these
emanations are symptomatic of postmodernisms historical trajectory
out of a still residual modernism, I am suggesting that the possibility
of identifying the impulses and assumptions of modernism within the
postmodern episteme is an effect of a certain necessarily persistent
specter. In other words, what motivates the one carries across to the
other; they are, as Derrida would say, double and unique. And, what
carries across, what passes on, neither is nor is not; as a specter, it
refuses, as Hamlet might say through the mouth of Derrida, to be
or not to be. It is this impossibly possible nature that, in the end,
makes the specter essential and ineffaceable. And if postmodernism
has passed then it has most certainly passed on this specter. The task,
thenthe task that will be taken up in the following chaptersis to
trace this passing, to locate and then relocate the specter as it moves
on heedless of boundaries, epistemic ruptures included. For, as Der-
rida assures us, After the end of history, the spirit comes by coming
back [revenant] . . . (Specters 10).
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37 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
CHAPTER TWO
Spectral Circumventions
(of the Specter)
Poststructuralism, Derrida, and the Project Renewed
WALTER: Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the
tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least its an ethos.
Joel and Ethan Coen, The Big Lebowski
Without this non-contemporaneity with itself of the living present, without
that which secretly unhinges it, without this responsibility and this
respect for justice concerning those who are not here, of those who
are no longer or who are not yet present and living, what sense
would there be to ask the question where? where tomorrow?
whither?
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
So Rorty has, as I said, a delicate operation on his hands.
John D. Caputo, On Not Circumventing
the Quasi-Transcendental
Poststructuralism and/as Postmodernism
Although many critics view poststructuralism and thus deconstruc-
tion as a distinctly postmodern and/or nihilistic form of theoretical
discourse, commentators who wish to situate it in a much broader
philosophical tradition typically reafrm poststructuralism as a dis-
tinctly French discourse, a discourse that is not entirely sympathetic
to the pragmatism of (American) postmodernism. Pointing to the
(albeit, latent) remainders of phenomenology and structuralism within
poststructuralism, commentators like Tilottama Rajan and Rodolphe
37
38 The Passing of Postmodernism
Gasch
1
tend to disrupt the possibility of sustaining a sense of easy
parallelism: modernism/structuralism, postmodernism/poststructur-
alism. Moreover, what North American critics tend to understand as
poststructuralisma term, we should note, that is rarely employed
in the discourse it describes (i.e., the texts of Barthes, Kristeva, Lacan,
Foucault, Derrida, etc.)typically focuses on a distinctly French con-
temporary scene that is more aligned with the avant-gardist tenden-
cies of high-modernism than with the postmodern confusion of mass
and high culture. And when poststructuralists do address (or rather,
celebrate) English cultural production, they almost always focus on
modernist texts. Rarely does poststructuralism bother with postmodern
works; its difcultif not impossibleto say what, exactly, poststruc-
turalists know about (American) postmodern cultural production. Did
Derrida know his Pynchon? Had Barthes read Philip K. Dick? What
does Kristeva think of Pulp Fiction? Did Foucault manage to get in a
screening of Stuntman? Of course, this lack of engagement shouldnt
surprise us. During what we might retrospectively view as the height
of postmodernism (i.e., the mid-1980s), Andreas Huyssen argued that
poststructuralism should be viewed as a modern discourseor rather,
as a theory of modernism (Huyssen 207). Almost completely forgot-
ten in current discussions of poststructuralism and postmodernism,
Huyssens line of reasoning opens up the possibility that, rather than
offering a theory of postmodernism and developing an analysis of contem-
porary culture, French theory provides us primarily with an archeology of
modernity, a theory of modernism at the stage of its exhaustion (209).
Poststructuralism is a modernist discourse because it tends to privilege
modernist texts as objects of study: Flaubert, Proust and Bataille in
Barthes; Nietzsche and Heidegger, Mallarm in Derrida; Nietzsche,
Magritte and Bataille in Foucault; Mallarm and Lautramont, Joyce
and Artaud in Kristeva; Freud in Lacan; Brecht in Althusser and Mach-
erey, and so on ad innitum (2089). By privileging such texts, or so
the argument goes, poststructuralism works to reinscribe the rather
politically hegemonic art for arts sake formalism of high modernism:
the list of no longer possibles (realism, representation, subjectivity,
history, etc., etc.) is as long in poststructuralism as it used to be in
modernism, and it is very similar indeed (Huyssen 136).
Admittedly, it is rather hard to contest the claim that, in post-
structuralism, The enemies still are realism and representation, mass
culture and standardization, grammar, communication, and the pre-
sumably all-powerful homogenizing pressures of the modernist state
(Huyssen 208). Nevertheless, because it highlights the way in which
poststructuralism can be read at the height of postmodern cultural pro-
39 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
duction as implicitly sympathetic to modernism, Huyssens discussion
inadvertently locates the spectral remainder of modernity that is the
motivating feature of both poststructuralism and postmodernism. For
this reason, a careful look at Huyssens perhaps dated position will
be of some interest. Huyssen wants to argue that poststructuralism con-
tinues to resist modernizationand is, for that reason, a remnant (or,
better, a revenant) of modernism. For Huyssen, though, this resistance
paradoxically speaks to a certain complicity with the ongoing processes
of modernization. In direct contrast to the various and often leftist
postmodern detractors (Jrgen Habermas, David Harvey, Christopher
Norris, etc.),
2
Huyssen attempts to trace a direct line between the
negative effects of modernization and modernisms apparent resistance
of modernization. This collusion of modernism and capital development
is, Huyssen argues, most pronounced in poststructuralisms various
attempts to reject the traditional notion of the autonomous subject:
Isnt the death of the subject/author position tied by mere reversal
to the very ideology that invariably glories the artist as genius, whether
for marketing purposes or out of conviction and habit? (213). While
this simple reversal links poststructuralism to the modernist exaltation
of the author/subject, the fact that the process of modernization has
(on its own) dissolved the possibility of the subject makes poststructur-
alisms radical position a simple reafrmation of the status quo:
It merely duplicates on the level of aesthetics and theory
what capitalism as a system of exchange relations produces
tendentially in everyday life: the denial of subjectivity in the
process of its construction. Poststructuralism thus attacks
the appearance of the capitalist cultureindividualism writ
largebut misses its essence; like modernism, it is always
also in sync with rather than opposed to the real processes
of modernization. (213)
While poststructuralism is thus a futile continuation of the good ght
(the still incomplete project of modernity, as it were), Huyssens
postmodernism (much like, as we will see, Richard Rortys) seems
effectively to resist, or to critique, modernization because it views the
possibility of a privileged position of interpretation, truth claim, or
critical response as having passed. In this view, poststructuralism seems
to perpetuate a type of post-Kantian idealism, while postmodernism
(we might say, pragmatically) abandons teleological assumptions alto-
gether. This apparent divergence of postmodernism and poststruc-
turalism is, perhaps, most obvious in the work of Kristeva. Kristevas
40 The Passing of Postmodernism
theorizing of the authorless poetic text seems to privilege one form
of textual practice over another. The fact that the privileged text is
almost always modern only serves to exemplify Huyssens point. A
brief look at Kristevas understanding of poetic language will help
to clarify Huyssens attempts to articulate what we might think of as
poststructural dogmatism.
In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva famously articulates the
two main features of any language act: the genotext and the pheno-
text. According to Kristeva, the genotext, which is closely tied to the
linguistically anterior chora, is the part of the text that is nonlinguistic,
but which includes semiotic processes [as well as] the advent of the
symbolic (86). While it is apprehendedor rather, sensedwithin lin-
guistic structures, the genotext is . . . a process, which tends to articulate
structures that are ephemeral (unstable, threatened by drive charges,
quanta rather than marks) (86). Detectable via a texts phonematic
and melodic devices, its repetitions, rhymes, and rhythms, the genotext
expresses the multiplicity of factors involved in a subjects formation.
Distinct from the genotext, though, is the phenotext. If the genotext
is the underlying foundation, the portion of the text that is only
ever sensed as an ongoing process of subject formation, the phenotext
is the portion of the text that obeys the rules of syntactical arrange-
ment, that conveys the plot and characterizations, that presupposes
a subject of enunciation and an addressee (87). What is of interest
here is the fact that, while every signifying process . . . includes both
the genotext and the phenotext . . . , every signifying practice does not
encompass the innite totality of that process (88). The innity of
the signifying process is often halted, or obliterated, by various socio-
political factors. By suggesting that these obliterations are conveyed
by the phenotext, Kristeva suggests that the phenotext can come to
restrict the genotext and, thus, the possibility of expressing the in-
nite process through which the subject is generated. Because such a
restrictionor sociopolitical contaminationis possible, some texts can
be read as innitely open while certain other works must be rejected
as hegemonic, or closed. For Kristeva, then, textual success becomes
a matter of subverting sociopolitical or ideological restraints. And, not
surprisingly, such subversions are most apparent and most effective in
the literary works of the modernist avant-garde: Among the capitalist
mode of productions numerous signifying practices only certain liter-
ary texts of the avant-garde (Mallarm, Joyce) manage to cover the
innity of the process, that is, reach the semiotic chora, which modi-
es linguistic structures (88). The point is that only a textwhat
we can dene as the product of poetic languagepermits the innite
41 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
interaction of the semiotic (chora) and the symbolic and, thus, the
detectable eruption of the semiotic within the symbolic. With the effect
of denying the illusion of stasis as regards subject formation, a texts
rhythmic, lexical, even syntactic changes disturb the transparency of
the signifying chain and open it up to the crucible of its production.
We can read a Mallarm or Joyce only by starting from the signier
and moving toward the instinctual, material and social process the
text covers (101). In other words, a text announces meaning only to
defer it endlessly; because it allows for the detection of the innite
and nonlinguistic process that animates it in the rst place, the text
refuses, while simultaneously and eternally promising, closure.
Of course, this apparent perpetuation of modernist idealism
is not limited to Kristeva. Barthes, for instance, privileges Text over
work, writerly over readerly, and in doing so, repeatedly nds
himself privileging the work of one author over another while simul-
taneously and paradoxically denying the very concept of author.
3
As Huyssen puts it, poststructuralists like Barthes (and, I would add,
Kristeva) ultimately reintroduce, through the back door, the same
high culture/low culture divide and the same type of evaluations that
were constitutive of classical modernism (212).
4
And, given the above
(albeit, cursive) look at Kristeva, we would be hard pressed to simply
reject the claim that French, or even American, poststructuralism offers
a theory of modernism not a theory of postmodernism (214).
Still, can we simply assume that a discourse is wholly complicit
with the cultural objects upon which it deploys its theoretical strate-
gies? If so, what does this mean for poststructuralists like Baudril-
lard?
5
In Simulacra and Simulation, for example, Baudrillard discusses
everything from Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now and J.G. Bal-
lards Crash to the postmodern effect of Disneyland. Is, we might ask
Huyssen, Baudrillard postmodern? The answer, I imagine, would have
to be yes
6
even though Baudrillard often seems to be lamenting,
in a very modernist fashion, the loss of the real.
7
However, I would
like to suggest that it is as misleading to wholly dissociate poststruc-
turalism and postmodernism as it is to blindly confuse them. On one
level, anyway, it seems perfectly logical that poststructuralism rarely
addresses postmodern artifacts. As a discourse that is primarily intent
on deconstructing
8
the basic metaphysical assumptions that have
always determined our understanding of language and the world it
encodes, poststructuralism and/or deconstruction does not seem quite
so radical or effective when applied to a Gravitys Rainbow or a Pulp
Fiction. Indeed, it is hardly surprising that a poststructuralist like Der-
rida was indifferent to texts that were already engaged overtly in the
42 The Passing of Postmodernism
deconstruction of various metaphysical, or logocentric, assumptions; it
seems safe to assume that Derrida was far more concerned with decon-
structions possible responses to the dangerous assumptions governing
Hegels dialectic than he was with the possibility that a text like Gravitys
Rainbow might be engaged in its own form of deconstruction. This is
not to say that the various poststructuralist readings of a text like Grav-
itys Rainbow are pointless, or of little value. Such readings are, in fact,
extremely importantif only because they demonstrate what I would
argue is hardly a coincidental co-development of anti-foundationalist
and language-focused sentiments. What I am suggesting, instead, is that
there are perfectly good reasons why the principal poststructuralists
(i.e., Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, etc.) avoid speaking about postmodern
cultural production: (1) they felt it necessary to apply their theoretical
strategies to more overtly logocentric, metaphysical and/or onto-theo-
logical texts; and (2) discussions of postmodern cultural production
do little, if anything, to distinguish poststructural discourse as distinct,
or radically new. If anything, the fact that it evades (or, perhaps, has
anxiety about) discussing postmodern cultural production speaks to
poststructuralisms inherent connection to postmodernism. And, I
think, on a certain level at least, Huyssen realizes this.
At one point (and this is, perhaps, what makes him particularly
worthy of careful consideration), Huyssen interrupts his discussion of
poststructuralisms modernist tendencies to make a rather provocative
statement, a statement that he quickly and, for the sake of his argu-
ment, necessarily dismisses:
But, if poststructuralism can be seen as the revenant of mod-
ernism in the guise of theory, then that would be precisely
what makes it postmodern. It is a postmodernism that works
itself out not as a rejection of modernism, but rather as a
retrospective reading which, in some cases, is fully aware
of modernisms limitations and failed political ambitions.
(209, my emphasis)
There are several things worth noting here. To begin with, postmod-
ernism is indirectly dened as a type of modern return, an episteme
that is ultimately animated by the revenant of that which it succeeds.
Moreover, Huyssen entertains the possibility that, even if it is a critique
of modernism, poststructuralism must necessarily continue to function
in, or through, the spirit of modernism. Poststructuralisms rejection
of modernism (or, for that matter, structuralism) is implicitly con-
nected to a certain return, or remainder, of modernism. Unfortu-
nately, Huyssen quickly drops this more interesting and subtle line of
43 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
discussion. In the end, Huyssen decides that poststructuralism is to be
judged on its ability to avoid hegemonic and elitist politics, politics
that he views as complicit with societal modernization and the effect
of modernisms insistence on the transformative powers of certain
sociopolitically anterior types of artistic production. Poststructural-
ism should free art and literature from that overload of responsi-
bilities . . . on which the historical avantgarde shipwrecked, and which
lived on in France through the 1950s and 1960s embodied in the
gure of Jean Paul Sartre (20910). Because poststructuralismespe-
cially as it is represented in the work of theorists like Barthesseems
to fall back into such politics, slipping (perhaps, uncomfortably) into
the role of contemporary avant-garde, Huyssen concludes that it is
simply erroneous to identify it as postmodern. Poststructuralism should
thus be viewed as a failed postmodern discourse; it generates new
(non)conditions for criteriaor, as Richard Rorty would have it, new
conditions of possibility. Even if these conditions, or grounds, are
the paradoxical effect of an absolute denial of all foundationalist, or
transcendental, discourses (as with Barthes deceased author, Kristevas
eternally inaccessible chora, or Derridas differance), they function as
a way to recognize advanced, or progressive, textual practice. Joyces
Finnegans Wake is obviously more worthy of praise than, say, Raymond
Chandlers The Big Sleep because the former, from a poststructuralist
perspective, refuses absolute apprehension, pointing to the absence of
authorial control and freeing its readers from the constraining illusion
of subject-hood and the possibility of stable truth claims. What people
like Huyssen fail to see, though, is that postmodern cultural produc-
tion, from Vonnegut to The Simpsons, strives to do the very things that
modernists like Joyce are, from a poststructuralist and thus retrospec-
tive point of view, celebrated as accomplishing: dismantling the tra-
ditional subject and representing the illusory nature of both closure
and foundationalist truth claims. The difference is that, while post-
structuralism tends to view the praiseworthy aspects of modernism as
discursively accidentalfor even Joyce, I would argue (and I imagine,
most poststructuralists would agree), embraced the modernist faith
in presence and the individual artists ability to expose, via language
experiments, certain fundamental structures of reality and human con-
sciousnesspostmodernism expresses a self-conscious awareness of its
own postmodern/poststructural position. In other words, postmodern-
ism cannot be so easily separated from poststructuralism: both engage
in a type of positivist critiqueindeed, both function, if they function
at all, as critiqueregardless of their respective objects of study; both
necessarily continue to struggle with a certain modern remainder, a
certain specter of modernism.
44 The Passing of Postmodernism
Rather than successfully identifying a radical disjunction between
poststructuralism and postmodernism, then, an argument like Huys-
sens seems to announce (through the back door, as it were) the
spectral contamination that animates both. The fact that Huyssens
critique of poststructuralism inadvertently implicates postmodernism as
well is most obvious in those moments when Huyssen nds it necessary
to praise postmodernism for its successful evasion of modernist assump-
tions. At the very moment he praises postmodernism for managing
to counter what he views as the modernist litany of the death of
the subject by working toward new theories and practices of speaking,
writing and acting subjects (142), Huyssen indirectly implicates post-
modernism, along with poststructuralism, in the kind of teleological
posturing which poststructuralism itself has done so much to criticize
(210).
9
In these moments Huyssen opens up the possibility that even
postmodern pragmatism is mobilized by the return of certain post-
Kantian, or Enlightenment, assumptions, suggesting that postmodern-
ism is itself necessarily predicated upon the possibility of, and belief
in, critique, political intervention, and/or teleological progress. Thus,
by positioning postmodernism as progressively distinct from a post-
structuralism that is still contaminated by a certain specter of moder-
nityor, rather, a certain specter of the still incomplete project of
modernityHuyssen inadvertently and ironically refutes the various
critics who, while viewing poststructuralism and postmodernism as vir-
tually synonymous, deride postmodernism for its wholehearted denial
of an Enlightenment project.
There are two ways to look at this. If, following Huyssen, the
spectral assumptions that dene modernism (and poststructuralism)
make it complicit with the hegemony of societal modernization, then
we must view postmodernism as another complicit or failed epis-
teme. Or, from the other perspectivethat is, from the perspective of
people like Habermas, Harvey, and Norrisif the assumptions that
dene modernity make it a viable mode of resisting the processes of
modernization, then we need to view postmodernism (and poststruc-
turalism) as another reconguration of an always unnished, or spec-
tral, project of societal critique. On whatever side we fallwhether
we see the remainder of an Enlightenment project as inherently dan-
gerous or as a necessary element of positive critiquethe fact remains
that both postmodernism and poststructuralism can be read as paral-
lel recongurations of an ongoing spectral problem/project, depend-
ing on ones position. Moreover, the reality of these two supercially
irreconcilable positions suggests the possibility that, in terms of evad-
ing the hegemonic tendencies associated with stringent teleological,
45 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
or Enlightenment, assumptionsthat is, in terms of evading the very
tendencies that such a position typically aims to critiquea discourses
success is always contingent (at least partiallyor rather, we might say,
spectrally) on its failure. In fact, this confusion surrounding the ques-
tion of poststructuralism, postmodernism, and the project of moder-
nity speaks to the aporia of all anti-foundational discourses. All critical
attempts to liberate/disassociate postmodernism from the dangerous/
positive tendencies of foundationalist or transcendental discourse can
be effectively undermined via a relocation within postmodernism of the
same spectral remainder that animates any such critical attempt in
the rst place.
This necessary element of failure can be best explicated if we
turn, at this point, to a consideration of the Rorty/Norris debate.
Concerned with the postmodern/pragmatic sympathies of Derridean
deconstruction, this ongoing debate allows us to focus on deconstruc-
tion as postmodern while simultaneously highlighting the latent specter
of modernity, or post-Kantian idealism, which animates postmodern
pragmatism in the rst place. Before moving on, though, a brief note
on terminology. I specify Derridean deconstruction because I would
like to entertain the possibility that we can view poststructuralismin a
manner that plays on Rajans recent workas a postmodern permuta-
tion of deconstruction, a permutation or reconguration,
10
which is
dened by its linguistic and stringently anti-foundationalist focus. The
implications of such a redenition are twofold. On the one hand, it
encourages us to view the initial phase of Derridas overtly decon-
structive project as the most representative of poststructuralism gener-
ally and, on the other, it allows us to conceive of a deconstruction after
postmodernism (which is to say, also, after poststructuralism).
Private Irony All the Way Down?
For most detractors of postmodernism, particularly Christopher Norris,
Richard Rorty (along with Stanley Fish and Jean Baudrillard) is the
epitome of all that is wrong with the past fty or so years of theoretical
discourse. A self-styled postmodern bourgeois liberal, Rorty cham-
pions hard-line American neo-pragmatism, insisting that the possibil-
ity of truth claims and/or meaningful political intervention has long
since passed. Following the Lyotardian logic I discussed in the previous
chapter, Rortys postmodern pragmatism is motivated by the assump-
tion that, as Norris puts it, textual meaning (like the truth claims
of science) can only be a product of the codes and conventions that
46 The Passing of Postmodernism
happen to prevail within this or that historically-contingent interpreta-
tive community (Whats Wrong 6). For the pragmatist, nothing can be
located that is anterior to the language games that are continuously
played out by a multiplicity of eternally shifting interpretative commu-
nities. As Rorty would have it, any attempt at argumentation or public
intervention is simply futile, a pointless echo of a now exhausted philo-
sophical tradition that championed logical rigor and the possibility of
transcendental revelation(s). In short, we can dene postmodernism
at this point, via Rorty and while recalling Lyotard, as the denial of
any nal vocabulary, or metavocabulary. According to Rortyor, bet-
ter, from the perspective of what I will henceforth dene postmod-
ern
11
the only thing we can do is explore and/or invent new, and
private, vocabularies:
the realm of possibility expands whenever a new vocabulary
is invented, so that to nd conditions of possibility would
require us to envisage all such inventions before their occur-
rence. The idea that we do have such a metavocabulary at
our disposal, one which gives us a logical space in which
to place any-thing which anybody will ever say, seems just
one more version of the dream of presence from which
ironists since Hegel have been trying to wake us. (Contin-
gency 125)
While this repudiation of all discourses that assume certain condi-
tions of possibility strikes a nerve in any critic who feels ill when
reading Kathy Acker, what makes Rorty a real thorn in the side (of
people like Norris, Rodolphe Gasch, and Jonathan Culler, people who
detest postmodernism but admire Derrida) is his insistence that later
deconstruction wholeheartedly validates American pragmatism. For
Rorty, Derrida has become one of the most successful and innovative
liberal (and private) ironists around. Put differently, and following
Rortys denition of a liberal ironist, Derrida pragmatically accepts
the absolute contingency of his personal belief systems while accept-
ing the irreconcilable division of the public and the private. As Simon
Critchley succinctly explains, Rortys liberal ironist is someone who is
committed to social justice and appalled by cruelty, but who recognizes
that there is no metaphysical foundation to her concern for justice
(85). The liberal ironist realizes that any attempt to synthesize individu-
alist quests for autonomy and self-creation with a concern for public
justice is a categorical and often dangerous mistake. Those who make
this mistakeor rather, those who are unable to rid their thinking of
47 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
the residual, or spectral, traces of Enlightenment thoughtare, from
Rortys perspective, metaphysicians; they cling to the belief that there
is some nal vocabulary that is applicable to questions both public
and private. That being said, it is important to note that, in Rortys
eyes, Derrida is a private ironist; in fact, Rorty clearly suggests that
an ironist cannot be a public intellectual. Unlike private theorists,
those who engage in an effort to make our institutions and prac-
tices more just and less cruel (Contingency xiv) cannot be considered
ironists, or what Rorty sometimes refers to as exemplars;
12
they are,
instead, fellow citizens, writers who can be nominalists or historicists
but who fail to escape wholly the connes of social or public categories.
The latter category would include people like Orwell, Dewey, Haber-
mas, and Marx, leaving theorists like Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault
13
to be classied as distinctly and strategically private, or unconcerned
with public discourse. As Critchley puts it, Rortys Derrida can only be
understood as a private thinker whose work has no public utility and
therefore no interesting ethical or political consequences (84).
Critchley argues that Rortys Utopian plan is to make meta-
physicians ironists, and private ironists public ironists. Critchley
is wise to focus on Rortys Utopian plan (which ultimately implicates
pragmatism in the very idealist discourse it aims to debunk), but he is
only partly correct in his description of that plan. Primarily, Critchley is
mistaken in his assumption that the ironist is only liberal when she
14
is engaged in public discourse. By claiming that Rorty identies a non-
liberal ironist as a person who is concerned with their self-realization,
and perhaps the realization of a small group, but have no concern for
traditional liberal questions of social justice (87), Critchley mistakenly
suggests that the private ironist is not included amongst Rortys elite
or, if I can begin to stress the positivist slippages in Rortys postmodern
argument, enlightenedliberal ironists. While it is certainly true that
The critical, Utopian function of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity is to
persuade liberal metaphysicians to be ironists . . . and non-liberalists to
be become liberals (Critchley 87), Rorty is not interested in making
private ironists public. After all, Rortys liberal ironist is, by deni-
tion, private. Irony is neither possible nor desirable within public
discourse: I cannot go on to claim that there could or ought to be
a culture whose public rhetoric is ironist. I cannot imagine a culture
which socialized its youth in such a way as to make them continually
dubious about there own process of socialization. Irony seems inher-
ently a private matter (87). What makes a liberal ironist liberal is
her belief that cruelty is the worst thing we do; what makes her
an ironist is her refusal to offer, or believe in, a public (i.e., a nal,
48 The Passing of Postmodernism
or universal) solution to the problem of cruelty.
15
The liberal ironist
demonstrates the possibility of engaging in a process of self-creation
that does not cause suffering in others. To miss this is to miss Rortys
rationale for celebrating Derrida.
What makes Derrida important is his usually successful attempts
to create himself by creating his own language game (Contingency
133). For Rorty, Derrida should be celebrated because he is entirely
private; by being neither playful nor philosophical, he resists catego-
rization. His work attempts to perform no other function than self-
(re)creation; we can either take what we can from it, and apply it to our
own private attempts at self-construction, or we can ignore it altogether
as personal and contingent. Although he recognizes and laments a
tendency in Derrida to sound transcendental, to continue engaging
in the project of nding conditions of possibility (Remarks 13)to
continue taking, in short, the metaphysical tradition seriouslyRorty
insists that Derrida is a liberal ironist because he consistently avoids
making public claims; especially in works like Glas and La carte postale,
he is impenetrably personal. In the end, Rortys Derrida is a senti-
mental, hopeful, romantically idealistic writer (Remarks 13) who
does indeed embrace certain utopian or liberal hopes. However, because
he repeatedly positions, or expresses, this idealism within the connes
of an utterly private discourse, Derrida successfully and pragmatically
refuses the possibility of ever identifying some hegemonic nal vocabu-
lary, or condition of possibility. Rortys identication of Derrida as
a liberal ironist is thus based upon Derridas apparent refusal to
address the public realmthat is, his refusal to claim that his particu-
lar utopian ideals are applicable to anyone but himself and the small
group that tends to read and understand him. Derrida does not make
arguments; he simply explores propositional statements,
16
the validity
of which is entirely contingent upon the personal context in which
they are uttered and/or received.
This brings me back to Critchley. Although his confusion of pub-
lic and liberal mars his critique of Rortys Utopian plan, the question
that drives Critchleys discussion is worth repeating: if I admit at the
outset that deconstruction is allied to pragmatism, then the question
is whether deconstruction is pragmatist all the way down? That is to say, is
deconstruction consistently anti-foundationalist? Or is there a founda-
tionalist claim in deconstruction which cannot be pragmatized: Justice,
for example, or responsibility for anothers suffering? (84). Critchley
seems to think that this question can be answered in the afrmative
if we simply nd a way to view Derrida as a public liberal. As I have
already suggested, though, this particular argument ignores the param-
49 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
eters of Rortys terminology. If we are to engage critically with Rortys
argument, we need to understand that the liberal ironist is always
private. For Rorty, Critchleys public liberal would be, at best, a
nominalist and/or a historicist; at worst, he would be a metaphysician.
Consequently, if we are, as Critchley claims to be, working in Rortys
vocabulary (84), then labeling Derrida a public liberal is tantamount
to saying that he is more of a metaphysician than a pragmatist; and,
I imagine, neither Rorty nor Critchley is interested in suggesting this.
While I do not disagree with Critchleys afrmative response to the
above question, I want to rephrase the reasons for such a response. I
agree that there is indeed a foundationalist claim in deconstruction
which cannot be pragmatized, but this foundationalist claim speaks to
a similar claim in postmodernism. What I want to suggest (in line with
the above discussion of Huyssen) is that deconstruction isnt pragma-
tist all the way down, but only insofar as postmodern pragmatism isnt
pragmatist all the way down. Calling Derrida a public liberal simply
confuses the vocabulary that is under investigation and, ultimately, dis-
solves the possibility that deconstruction is in any way allied with
pragmatism. The question we should be asking is whether or not it
is possible to be entirely privatethat is, whether or not it is possible
to be a private ironist all the way down. The answer, I am arguing, is
quite clearly no.
However, before we can begin to link the transcendental tenden-
cies of Derridean deconstruction (and, by implication, poststructur-
alism generally) to those of postmodern pragmatism, we rst need
to identify those tendencies. We need to return, at least partially, to
the line of reasoning I initially associated with Huyssen. Rather than
reprising the argument that poststructuralism is a failed critical project,
though, I want to consider the position (often taken by critics like
Norris, Gasch, and Culler in response to Rorty) that deconstruction
perpetuates certain elements of Enlightenment idealism and thus suc-
cessfully evades the seemingly complicit nihilism of postmodernism.
In terms of insisting upon deconstructions Enlightenment ide-
alsor, more generally, in terms of insisting upon deconstructions
participation within a decidedly philosophical, or argumentative, tra-
ditionNorris is, perhaps, the most adamant. According to Norris,
deconstruction is a Kantian enterprise in ways that few of its com-
mentators have so far been inclined to acknowledge (Derrida 94). In
absolute opposition to Rorty, Norris is interested in highlighting the
arguments of deconstruction, its active participation in discussions of
transcendental conditions of possibility. Norris Derrida is consciously
engaged in a post-Kantian examination of the inbuilt presuppositions
50 The Passing of Postmodernism
of . . . all cognitive enquiry, the intellectual ground-rules in the absence
of which our thinking would have no sense, no logic or purpose (Der-
rida 95). Norris puts it like this:
Derridas version of this Kantian argument makes writing (or
arche-writing) the precondition of all possible knowledge.
And this is not merely by virtue of the factthe self evident
factthat writing is the form in which ideas are passed down,
preserved in a constantly expanding archive, and thus made
available to subsequent debate. His claim is a priori in the
radically Kantian sense: that we cannot think the possibility
of culture, history or knowledge without also thinking the
prior necessity of writing. (Derrida 95)
Norris argumentespecially when put in these termstends to make
your typical postmodern pragmatist despair. But, especially in his later
work, Norris tempers his claim that Derrida is ultimately engaged in
a revival of the a priori categories he claims, at least outwardly, to be
deconstructing. While he does indeed disassociate Derrida from the
assumptionan assumption Norris locates in the work of Rorty, as
well as Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Foucaultthat the Enlightenment
is now a thing of the past, a closed chapter in the history of Euro-
pean thought (Whats Wrong 30), Norris does not think that Derridas
engagement with transcendentals is ever logocentrically nave. Even
though his Derrida does not believe that the only way forward is . . . to
revel in the prospect of a postmodern epoch devoid of all-truth claims,
all standards of valid argumentation or efforts to separate a notional
real from the various forms of superinduced fantasy or mass-media
simulation (30), Norris refuses to label Derrida a transcendentalist,
a metaphysician, or (even) a negative theologian.
17
Following Irene Harveys discussion of deconstructions active
participation in a philosophical tradition,
18
Norris argues that, for Der-
rida, the quest for rst principles must always lead on to a moment of
aporia, or insurmountable paradox, where thought comes up against
the non-availability of any such legitimising grounds (Whats Wrong
198). While engaging in transcendental arguments, Derrida thus
demonstrates that It is in the nature of transcendental arguments to
push back the process of enquiry from stage to stage and ask at every
point what grounds exist for our claim to know truly what we think
we know (Whats Wrong 199).
It is this willingness to aim at the transcendental, to posit the pos-
sibility of a (nal) foundational claim that, for Norris, separates decon-
51 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
struction from postmodernism and saves it from its detractorsin
particular Habermas. Of course, Norris agrees with Habermas basic
take on postmodernism; he simply refuses to accept the claim that
Derrida is postmodern. In fact, Norris ultimately feels that it is neces-
sary to save Derrida and deconstruction from Habermas attacks.
19
To this end, and in a manner that is quite similar to my own discus-
sion of Lyotard and Habermas, Norris attempts to demonstrate the
way in which Derridean deconstruction and Habermasian critique are
motivated by very similar assumptions:
20
It seems to me that Habermas goes wrong about Derrida
mainly because he takes it for granted that deconstruction
is one offshoota philosophical offshootof this wider
postmodernist or counter-enlightenment drift. In what fol-
lows I shall point to some of the crucial respects in which
Derridas work not only fails to t this description but also
mounts a resistance to it on terms that Habermas ought to
acknowledge, given his intellectual commitments. (Whats
Wrong 52)
From Norris perspective, Derrida, like Habermas (as we saw in the
previous chapter), is motivated by the necessarily impossible ideal of
a nal and unifying vocabularymotivated, that is, to draw our atten-
tion to the fact that such an ideal is paradoxically threatened by the
dissolution of difference that the reality of a nal vocabulary would
effect. More simply, Norris would like to demonstrate that there is
no warrantprejudice asidefor counting [Derrida] among the
postmodern enemies of reason or those who (as Habermas charges)
wish to revoke the unnished project of critical-emancipatory thought
(Unnished Project 51).
Ultimately, then, Norris conrms Rodolphe Gaschs notion that
Derridean conditions of possibility need to be understood as infra-
structures. For Gasch, infrastructuresthat is, Derridas terms for
articulating the (we might say, essential) characteristics of arche-writing:
differance, supplement, trace, and so onare quasi-transcendentals;
they are both conditions of possibility and conditions of impossibility. In
opposition to Rortys various laments that Derridas early workwith
its reliance on a priori-esque terms, like trace and differanceneeds to
be dismissed as still complicit with metaphysical assumptions and a now
ineffectual philosophical tradition,
21
Gasch works to expose the man-
ner in which The law articulated by an infrastructure applies to itself
as well (67). An infrastructure thus signies an essential condition of
52 The Passing of Postmodernism
possibility, an essential condition of writing/thought, but it also always
signies (however paradoxically) the impossibility of its stability as a sig-
nier of that essential condition: It has an identity, that is, a minimal ideal-
ity that can be repeated only at the price of a relentless deferral of itself
(Gasch 7). What Gasch (and, to a lesser degree, Norris) repeatedly
draws our attention to is Derridas repeated attempts to undermine,
while working within, a transcendentalor better, logocentrictradi-
tion. Unlike Rorty, Norris and Gasch want to stress Derridas continual
acknowledgment of the necessarily inescapable nature of the tradition
that he aims to deconstruct. And, certainly, they are not misguided in
their apprehension of this acknowledgment. A cursory glance at a text
like Of Grammatology conrms the fact that Derrida continually attempts
to reinscribe differance (or trace, or supplementarity, or whatever)
within the very logic of differance (or trace, or supplementarity, etc.).
At one point in Grammatology, and as he does on numerous occasions,
Derrida suggests that a term like trace means that meaning (or the
possibility of bringing meaning into presence) is necessarily impossible:
The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general.
Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute
origin for sense in general. The trace is differance which
opens appearance [lapparatre] and signication. Articulat-
ing the living upon of the non-living in general, origin of
all repetition, origin of ideality, the trace is not more ideal
than real, not more intelligible than sensible, not more a
transparent signication than an opaque energy and no
concept of metaphysics can describe it. (65)
[N]o concept of metaphysics can describe it, as both Norris and Gas-
ch would remind us, because the very expression of trace is caught
up in the logic of the trace, the impossibility of presence and of mean-
ing as such. Trace (like differance, or supplementarity, or any other
quasi-transcendental infrastructure) is implicated in the conditions of
possibility that it permits, which is to say, along with Gasch, that its
condition of possibility is its condition of impossibility.
As the articulation of the differences and deferrals (i.e., the dif-
ferance) that contaminates and destabilizes all attempts at expression,
representation, and so on, trace is never wholly articulated; it is never
present even though it promises presence. Like any other infrastruc-
ture, trace denies the possibility of apprehension, of meaning, of pres-
ence, so as to make the possibility of apprehension, of meaning, of
presence, possible. Similarly, and functioning within the same logic as
53 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
the trace, differance makes the opposition of presence and absence
possible. Without the possibility of differance the desire of presence
as such would not nd its breathing-space. . . . Differance produces
what it forbids, makes possible the very thing it makes impossible
(Grammatology 143). By forbidding presenceor, for that matter,
pure absencedifferance sustains the possibility of difference, as well
as differance, of opposition and, thus, of articulation, meaning, pres-
ence, truth. The point Gasch and Norris want to make is that these
infrastructureslike arche-writing itselfcan only be understood
via the conditions of possibility they represent; they are always and
necessarily caught up in the logic of supplement that they determine.
As origins, or a priori conditions of possibility, they are, like any of
the other a priori or transcendental concepts that Derrida deconstructs,
dependent on a supplementarity that gives them a type of eeting sta-
bility. For this reason, The graphic of supplementarity is irreducible
to logic, primarily because it comprehends logic as one of its cases
and may alone produce its origin (Grammatology 259). Nothing can be
thought outside the economy of (arche)writing and supplementarity,
including (arche)writing, supplementarity, the trace, and differance.
We know this, Derrida would say, a priori, but only now and with a
knowledge that is not a knowledge at all (Grammatology 164).
What this amounts tofor people like Norris and Gaschis the
simple fact that Derrida neither abandons the project of modernity
(as it is worked out, particularly, in phenomenology and structural-
ism) nor accidentally slips into the onto-theological, humanistic, logo-
centric, and/or metaphysical traps that he aims to expose. Moreover,
Derridas early work should not be read as the failed experiment of a
youthful professor, for the infrastructures we see so obviously in his
early work continue to inform his later work. Even in his most personal,
or private, textsfor example, Glas and EnvoisDerrida continues to
engage in a type of post-Kantian argumentation. In this later work,
though, Derrida performs his arguments; as Gasch puts it, the texts
themselves become the articulations of [the] infrastructures (12). In
the end, the point is this: given his consistent engagement with(in)
the philosophical tradition he critiquesor rather, given his repeated
acknowledgment of the necessity of, and his frequent recourse to,
some type of metaphysical or logocentric lure
22
Derrida cannot be
read as a postmodern pragmatist. Derrida very well may be a private
ironist, but his work is always predicated upon the possibility of a
public or universal truth. Derrida, in short, makes nonpropositional,
or noncontingent, statements (if only to argue that such statements
are logocentric illusions).
54 The Passing of Postmodernism
Is Rorty simply wrong, then? Perhaps. Certainly, and as we saw in
our brief consideration of Grammatology, a close reading of Derridas
work seems to conrm the Norris/Gasch position: Derrida never
wholly abandons the transcendental tradition that he problematizes,
if not simply refutes. There does indeed seem to be, as Critchley would
have it, a transcendental claim implicitly lodged within the very logic
of deconstruction. Furthermore, this claim doesnt simply disappear
because, as Rorty argues, Derridas texts become, at least for a time,
23
more performative. In fact, Rortys analysis of what a text like Envois
meansor rather, the fact that he can make a coherent analysis at
allseems to contradict his claim that Derridas later work demon-
strates that we cannot touch upon the nature of language without
doing it injury, that all we can do is create a style so different as to
make ones books incommensurable with those of ones precursors
(Contingency 126). In other words, Rorty nds himself in the paradoxi-
cal position of having to explain the argument, or public relevance,
of a text that has no argument, or public relevance.
24
The awkward-
ness of this position is most glaring when Rorty makes claims regard-
ing the absolutely private, or unique, nature of the text. For instance,
while offering us a veritable exegesis of the work, Rorty tells us (in a
footnote
25
) that Envois is too private to have explanatory notes. What
Rorty seems to overlook is the way in which his own ability to access
the text, to offer an interpretation (of its uninterpretability), speaks
quite simply to its accessibility, to its argumentative and public role.
After all, as its title suggests, Envois is an envoi/envoy, a conclusive
send-off into the world. And, I would argue, it is the necessity of a
desire to send offor rather, to make known, to explainthat Rorty
seems unwilling to recognize in Derridas work and, as his public argu-
ments about Derrida suggest, in his own. Rorty tells us, at one point,
that Derrida announces his separation from the metaphysical tradition
most clearly when he conates the metaphysical urge for a privileged
nal vocabulary, for general ideas, with the urge to have children
(Contingency 128)that is, the urge to reproduce, to continue a past
tradition, to put forth. However, what Rorty fails to addressand,
I think, this speaks most clearly to Norris and Gaschs critique of
Rortyis that Derrida had children (whether we view children as real
or as metaphorical).
Still, and however contradictory it may sound, I do not think that
Rorty is wrong to call Derrida a pragmatist. Instead of simply opposing
postmodern pragmatism and deconstruction (or even poststructural-
ism in general), I would like to suggest that what Norris and Gasch
expose in deconstruction is just as evident (albeit, less acknowledged)
55 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
in postmodern pragmatism. As Jonathan Culler argues, the pragmatist
position necessarily gives rise to a deconstructive moment in which
the logic of the argument used to defend a position contradicts the
position afrmed (155). For Culler, and as I have suggested above,
the pragmatic truth that there is no truth, that truth is relative, is
symptomatic of a paradoxical situation in which, on the one hand,
logocentric positions contain their own undoing and, on the other, the
denial of logocentrism is carried out in logocentric terms (155). While
the description of this paradoxical situation seems to simply recapitu-
late Norris and Gaschs take on deconstruction, Culler assures us that
deconstruction successfully avoids slipping into this logocentric trap:
Insofar as deconstruction maintains these positions, it might seem to
be a dialectical synthesis, a superior and complete theory; but these
two movements do not, when combined, yield a coherent position or
a higher theory. Deconstruction [unlike pragmatism] has no theory
of truth (155). What I want to suggest, though, is the possibility that
what links deconstruction to pragmatismand, thus, poststructuralism
to postmodernismis the critical necessity of logocentric (or meta-
physical, or transcendental, or public) assumptions in any attempt to
deconstruct those assumptions. On the one hand, then, I completely
agree with Culler. Pragmatism, as we have seen, repeatedly and neces-
sarily nds itself essentializing its anti-essentialist claims. Not only does
Rorty inevitably end up relying on universal truthslike the truth
that all humans are bound by their aversion to sufferinghis identi-
cation, and advocacy, of the liberal ironist becomes a very public
and thus, following Rortys own terms of discussion, hardly ironic
afrmation of the power and necessity of private ironism. To promote
his position, Rorty must necessarily fail to sustain it: he cannot be, in
short, a private ironist all the way down. On the other hand, though,
I want to suggest that it is nave to assume that deconstruction some-
how manages to accomplish, what amounts to, the impossible. The
necessary failure of deconstruction is, in fact, most obvious in those
moments when it is identied as a successful critique and evasion of the
logocentric trap. When someone like Culler excuses deconstruction
from the trap of positivist logocentrism because it paradoxically denies,
while ironically employing, a logocentric attitude, deconstructions nec-
essary (and, we might say, blind) reafrmation of certain logocentric
(or onto-theological, or metaphysical, or transcendental) assumptions
becomes most apparent.
As Rorty suggests, any discourse that assumes it can rigorously
critique something as big as logocentrism needs to be understood as
one more logocentric hallucination (Is Derrida 139). This is, after
56 The Passing of Postmodernism
all, why Rorty dismisses Derridas early work. No matter how ironically
charged and self-implicating they may be, Derridas conditions of pos-
sibility cannot avoid becoming hypostatized. But, as we have seen,
Rorty makes the same mistake as Culler when he assumes that Derri-
das lateror, from a more contemporary perspective, middlework
simply discards these conditions, or that, moreover, it suddenly man-
ages to completely extricate itself from a type of logocentric complicity,
a complicity that Rorty associates with negative theology.
26
Derridas
entire project is, in fact, inected with moments of anxiety about this
complicity, about the threat of becoming what it seeks to expose as
both illusory and dangerous: another onto-theological truth claim.
And, I would argue, it is the manner in which this anxiety plays out
(or, even, seems to dissipate) that denes an early Derrida from a late
Derridaor rather, a poststructural deconstruction during postmodern-
ism and a (I will say, if only tentatively at this point, onto-theologically
relaxed) deconstruction after postmodernism.
More specically, the anxiety we see surrounding Derridas early
discussions and performances of the conditions of possibilityinfra-
structures that Rorty disregards as symptomatic of a negative theol-
ogyspeaks to the fact that deconstruction was haunted by the spectral
threat that I dened in the previous chapter as the motivating charac-
teristic of postmodernism. Derridas repeated, and often ostentatious,
attempts to distance deconstructionand, in particular, terms like
differance, trace, or supplementarityfrom any onto-theological
discourse is indicative of a certain hostility toward ghosts, a terried
hostility that sometimes fends off terror with a burst of laughter (Spec-
ters 47). In fact, this early phase of Derridean deconstruction can be
denedin the same manner that Derrida, in his later work, denes
Marxismas a postmodern discourse that fears ghosts (like the ghost
of logocentrism) while, all the while, being unwittingly dependant
upon, or haunted by, the very ghost it seeks to exorcise. We must, in
other words, ask the same question of deconstruction, whether early
or late, that Derrida asks of Marxism: But how to distinguish between
the analysis that denounces magic and the counter-magic that it still
risks being? (Specters 47).
The slippage between an early deconstruction and the logocen-
tric discourse, or magic, it seems to escape via ironic self-reexivity
is most evident in Derridas utter rejection of a thinker like Sartre. In
The Ends of Man, for instance, Derrida explicitly and, perhaps, once
and for all distances his own deconstructive project from the positivist,
or onto-theological, humanism of Sartrean existentialism. Refusing to
disassociate Sartre from his metaphysical predecessors, Derrida accuses
57 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
Sartre of unifying man by announcing the common goal of the ens
causa sui. While Sartre adamantly refuses the actual possibility of the
ens causa sui,
27
its privileged position as lack is, according to Derrida,
a reication of that which ultimately signals the essential project of
human-reality (116): This synthetic unity is determined as lack: lack
of totality in beings, lack of God that is soon transformed into a lack in
God. Human-reality is a failed God (116n5). From this view, Sartrean
existentialism is nothing more than a negative theology, a back-door
reinscription of onto-theological claims. However, as critics like Chris-
tian Howells and Bruce Baugh have pointed out, the critique of Sartre
in The Ends of Man needs to be read as symptomatic of Derridas
desire to deny the theological aspects of his own work. As Howells notes,
The vehemence of his rejection of Sartre is perhaps explicable in terms
of a similarly close but resisted parallel between his own attempt to
undermine Being and that of existential nihilism (Hegels Death
Knell 177).
28
Indeed, in Differance, Derrida is well aware of, and
careful to deny, the apparent similarities between his description of
differance and the sophistical tactics of negative theology:
Thus, the detours, phrases, and syntax that I shall often
have to resort to will resemblewill sometimes be practically
indiscernible fromthose of negative theology. . . . And yet
what is thus denoted as differance is not theological, not
even in the most negative order of negative theology. . . . Not
only is differance irreducible to every ontological or theologi-
calonto-theologicalreappropriation, but it opens up the
very space in which onto-theologyphilosophyproduces
its system and its history. (134)
Derrida is, of course, walking a ne line. While clearly admitting that
differance somehow encompasses and irrevocably surpasses onto-theol-
ogy or philosophy (135, my emphasis), Derrida struggles simultane-
ously to deny the apparent fact that differance is synonymous with a
superessential reality . . . beyond the nite categories of essence and
existence and, therefore, a superior, inconceivable, and ineffable
mode of being (134). Immediately, in this pre-emptive defense of
differance, we begin to hear echoes of the accusations Derrida lays
against Sartre. After all, he accuses Sartre of participating in the very
theology that he seriously fears will be mistakenly identied with
differance. With this in mind, Howells claims begin to resonate with
particular signicance. If differance, as Derrida insists, is a successful
evasion of what has previously been a virtually inescapable tradition
58 The Passing of Postmodernism
of onto-theology, and if Sartres nothingness can be attacked for the
same reasons that differance seemingly needs to be defended, then we
must concede the possibility that the projects of an onto-theological
humanist like Sartre and a deconstructionist like Derrida are far
less removed than Derrida would like to believe. Derridas critique of
Sartrelike, more broadly, deconstructions critique of logocentrism,
postmodernisms critique of modernism, and/or poststructuralisms
critique of structuralismthus reafrms the very logic that Derrida
identies in communisms critique of ideology: the logic of opposition
always and necessarily positions itself as the nal incarnation, the real
presence of the specter, thus the end of the spectral (Specters 103). An
effect of this necessary position, this paradoxical promise of the specter
as the end of spectrality, is thus the anxiety I described abovethat
is, deconstruction (or poststructuralism, or postmodernism) seems to
be eeing itself,
29
fearing the specter it senses haunting its own cri-
tique of the specter (of teleology, of transcendentalism, of onto-theol-
ogy, of negative theology, of metaphysics, etc.)or, more specically,
the utopian specter represented by the teleological aporia of the still
incomplete project of modernity. A brief look at Caputos insightful
essay, On Not Circumventing the Quasi-Transcendental, will help to
clarify this point.
While discussing Rortys disdain for the Derrida who [trots]
out new metaphysical creatures of his own devising, quasi-entities
whose hiddenness reminds us of the hidden God in negative theology
(Quasi-Transcendental 154), Caputo makes two noteworthy points.
On the one hand, Caputo argues that Derrida is a transcendental
philosopheralmost (157). Highlighting the self-implicating nature of
Derridas quasi-entities, or infrastructures, Caputo essentially reas-
serts Gaschs claim that deconstruction is a quasi-transcendental phi-
losophy. As a system of argumentation, deconstruction is dependent
upon the quasi-transcendental, that which is both necessary and
impossible in the system, [and] which makes the system both possible
and impossible (158). That is, The very thing that is excluded is what
makes the system possible and must be included (161). On the other
hand, though (and unlike Norris, Gasch, and Culler), Caputo does
not simply oppose this quasi-transcendentalism to Rortys neo-prag-
matism. Instead, Caputo argues persuasively that Rorty needs a quasi-
transcendental theory of the sort one nds in Derrida, even though
he does not feel that need himself (166). This need is seen most
clearly in Rortys reication of the subject. As Caputo points out, and
as I intimated above, Rortys faith in the possibility of a self-creating
ironist, like Derrida, turns on a freely inventive name-making subject
59 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
who invents vocabularies (161). Rather than relying on an imper-
sonal eld [like differance] whose quasistructural laws produce cer-
tain temporary nominal entities called words and concepts, Rorty
clings to a seventeenth and eighteenth-century metaphysics of the
subject (164). Still, Caputo is not interested in condemning Rorty;
this is not about pointing out an avoidable aw in Rortys argument.
What Caputo wants to point outas do Iis the fact that Rorty [and
thus postmodernism] . . . is extremely close to Derrida (167). Both
Rorty and Derrida have reasons to believe that we will never (thats
pretty transcendental talk) attain a metavocabulary within which we
can place everything anybody will ever say, which will enable us to
envisage what people are going to say before they say it (which is very
untranscendental) (1689). However, and as I have already begun to
do, I want to take Caputos position further, closer to a position Caputo
would identify with Norris.
30
As I suggested in the above discussion of early-stage decon-
struction, and as I think Caputos discussion of Rortys absolute reli-
ance on an autonomous subject reveals, the possibility of sustaining
a quasi-transcendental attitude is a spectral illusion. I do not want
to endorse Derrida and Caputos ethical appeal to the possibility of
sustaining what I referred to in the previous chapter as a non-teleo-
logical eschatology. The transcendental must be absolute if it is to compel
movement, criticism, revolution, deconstruction, or whatever; faith in
some type of a telos is an absolute necessity. What I am interested in is
the way in which the above-mentioned specter, or teleological aporia
(for, as Ive suggested, this specter continues to compel teleologies
rather than non-teleological eschatologies) inevitably animates a given
discourse/episteme.
With this separation from Caputo in mind, I would like to turn
to the possibility of articulating a late period of deconstruction, a
period that can be read as the effect of the passing of postmodernism
and/or poststructuralism. This late period seems to be marked by two
overt shifts in Derridas work: (1) a reappraisal of his previous condi-
tions of possibility via an articulation of the spectrological framework
I have been employing throughout my discussion of postmodernism,
and (2) the explicit turn from theories of language and subjectivity
to questions of ethics, justice, and communal responsibility. Moreover,
and as with this period of renewalism after postmodernism, Derridas
late period is marked by an apparent (or, at the very least, more overt)
willingness to concede that the specter is a necessary element in the
war against spectrality, that the transcendental can never be fully aban-
doned if we are to deny the possibility of the transcendental. We might
60 The Passing of Postmodernism
in fact begin to identify this period after postmodernism and, thus, the
most recent phase of deconstruction as a renewed attempt to evade
the hegemonic certainties of an Enlightenment project. However, this
emergent episteme of renewalism attempts to manage its evasion by
abandoning the hegemonic imperative that the spectral persistence of
an enlightenment project must be effaced.
With this in mind, Derridas late work can be read as an apol-
ogy for his early work, work that failed to overtly demonstrate that it
couldnt really be doing what it seemed to be doingthat is, escaping
the logocentric, the transcendental, the theological. Not surprisingly,
then, this later work is also marked by an explicit interest in reli-
gion, and the function of God in deconstructive discourse. While
Derrida during postmodernism is virtually hegemonic in his denial of
Enlightenment assumptions, Derrida after postmodernism is (if I can
borrow Caputos phrasing) a man of the Enlightenment, albeit a new
Enlightenment, one that is enlightened about the Enlightenment and
resists letting the spirit of the Enlightenment freeze over into dogma
(Introduction 2). Indeed, through the lter of Derridas later work
Caputo has repeatedly argued that deconstruction needs to be viewed
as a type of religion without religion. As I said above, though, I do
not think that such a paradoxical position can ever be fully sustained:
even a religion without religion must inevitably be a religion pure and
simple; if it doesnt have faith in itself as a totalizing discourse (as, in
short, a religion), it will not have the motivation to articulate itself as
a religion without religion. What I am suggesting is that deconstruction
after postmodernism (like/as this emerging epoch of renewalism that
seems to be arriving late to the end of history) is troubled by the
very specter with which it claims to have come to terms. This will
make more sense as we turn, at last, to a close reading of Derrida.
In particular, I would like to focus on what we might consider as
one of the rst texts of a late Derrida: Force of Law. By examining
this text in some detail I hope to achieve two basic goals. On the
one hand, I want to explicate further the spectrological argument
I have been employing since the beginning. That is, I would like to
examine the way in which the concept of the specter is, for Derrida,
intimately connected to theological discourse, the possible impossibil-
ity of the messianic, or the quasi-transcendental, and the necessity of
the gamble in the process of ethical decision making. On the other
hand, I want to begin considering, via this shift in deconstruction, the
way in which this epoch after postmodernism continues to struggle
with the very specter, or teleological aporia, with which it claims to
have come to terms.
61 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
The Force of Derridas Indecision
Following Caputo, it would be (in)accurate to say that Derrida is an
atheist.
31
Of course, such a statementit is (in)accurate to say that
Derrida is an atheistis probably misleading; or rather, it doesnt seem
to lead anywhere. Whether or not Derrida believes in God is hardly
addressed; because of the parenthetical prex, this statement fails to
embrace fully a particular position. It is not decisive in the sense that
it is not without doubt. Yet, at the same time (and this is in fact the
point), this statement leaves open, or opens up, the possibility that Der-
ridaand, by implication, deconstructionis not, as seems only logi-
cal, atheistic. If it does anything, this statement gambles with its ngers
crossed on the uncertainty that necessarily surrounds the question (if it
has even been at any time a serious question) of deconstructions athe-
istic position. This statement speaks to the indecisiveness that should,
that must (if we are to believe, if we are to have faith in, Derrida)
haunt any decision concerning the function of God in deconstructive
discourseindeed, that must haunt any just decision.
I begin with these issuesof (a)theism, of indecision and just
decisions, of gambles, of hauntingsimply as a point of departure for
a discussion of the position of late deconstruction. These issues are
of paramount importance in Derridas more recent work on ethical
responsibility, the possibility of justice and the necessity of the messian-
ic in the work of deconstruction. They are also, then, as Ive suggested
previously, a point of departure for a discussion of deconstructions
commitment, or sense of responsibility, to Marxor rather, a certain
specter of Marx, or Marxism. Throughout his later work, as we saw
in the previous chapter, the emancipatory and messianic afrmation
(Specters 89) that Derrida locates in Marxism, the promise of something
to come, the transcendent, is identied as the animating feature of
deconstruction. However, and at the same time, Derrida repeatedly
cautions us. While the possibility that the promise will be fullled, that
the future will become present, encourages the movement of decon-
struction (as it does the utopian impulse of Marxism and, I would add,
postmodernism), such a promise must be understood as impossible, as
only ever the promise of what can never arrivewhat can never be
effaced as the other, as the still to come, as, simply, the promise. By
employing the metaphor of the specter, the later Derrida explicitly
points to the fact that deconstruction, like Marxism, must always be
haunted by the specter of the promise (of the messianic, of the tran-
scendent, of God), haunted in the sense that what haunts it (a ghost)
is never wholly spirit (i.e., ideal), nor is it ever wholly realized, or made
62 The Passing of Postmodernism
present in the esh. Faith in the messianic, or the promise, gives us
the reason (or perhaps, the right) to decide, to deconstruct, or even
to revolt, but the impossibility of the messiah, or messianism, allows
us to decide. The impossibility of the future present,
32
of the messiah,
of God, is the very condition of uncertainty and, thus, of decisions.
A decision is, and must always be, a gamble on an impossible future,
an impossible messiah. Were the messiah nally to have arrived, no
decision would be necessaryindeed, no decision (and, for that mat-
ter, no deconstruction) would be possible.
This ironic positioning, this faith without belief, is the quasi-tran-
scendental ground of, what we might call, late-Derridean ethicswhat
Caputo understands as the rst movements of the rst covenant in a
religion without religion (Prayers and Tears xxi). However, as I pointed
out above, I want to consider the possibility that Derridas arguments
concerning the need to respect the spectrality of the specter, the possi-
bility and the impossibility of the Kantian transcendental, of the future
to come, is necessarily contingent upon the very thing it is intent on
endlessly circumventing: teleology, positivism, absolute faith, and the
effacement of the specters spectrality. The late Derridean (or perhaps
renewalist) imperative to respect the specterthe specter must be
respected (Politics 288, my emphasis)is, itself, an imposition on the
specter; it is tantamount to what Derrida condemns as a conjuration
of the specters spectrality. The inherent positivism of Derridas call
for respect speaks to the impossibility of such respect: our faith in
the truth and necessity of the messianic without messianism (Specters
73) is necessarily contingent upon an implicit, yet absolute, faith in
messianism, teleology, onto-theology, logos, and so on. After all, this
discourse without messianism, this revised deconstruction, is offered
to us as the nal answer, the nal solution to the problem of teleological
traps, humanistic imperatives, or whatever. The gamble that Derridean
ethics requires we endlessly perform is never really a gamble, for its
performance is contingent upon the belief that a gamble is the only
way to win. Let me explain.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has argued that it was good that Der-
rida wrote Specters (his most prolonged consideration of Marx and
Marxism to date) because Deconstruction has been so long associated
with political irresponsibility by those who practice criticism by hearsay
that it was signicant for its inventor to give his imprimatur to reread-
ing Marx (66). The suggestion is that deconstructions entry into the
realm of ethico-political responsibilityor, at the very least, its willing-
ness to recognize and announce its already signicant role in the realm
of ethico-political responsibilityis inextricably linked to its engage-
ment, or association, with some type of, or some specter of, Marxism.
63 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
In other words, this engagement, or rereading, can be thought of as
a response to the apparently polemic issue of deconstructions perti-
nence to the more public realm of ethics, politics and justice. For a
long time, as Thomas Keenan notes, Deconstructions ethico-political
pertinence [has been] either (1) taken for granted (often but by no
means always presumed to be progressive) . . . or (2) condemned (as
nefariously antipolitical or paralyzing) (236, my emphasis). While the
advocates of deconstruction tend to argue that deconstruction is and
has always been fundamentally concerned with ethico-political issues,
its enemiesor, at the very least, its staunchest critics (e.g., Harvey,
Habermas)suggest that deconstruction destroys the very foundations
upon which ethics, or moral and political responsibility, are based. As
Keenan puts it, and as we have seen, [deconstruction] appears to ruin
the categories on which political discourse has tried to found itself
for as long as anyone can remember: subjectivity and agency, and the
reliable knowledge . . . that allows it to act (263).
Speaking specically on the possibility of justice, which is the spe-
cic ethico-political issue upon which Id like to focus, Derrida describes
the debate over deconstructions ethical position in this way:
Do deconstructionists have anything to say about justice,
anything to do with it? Why, basically, do they speak of it
so little? Does it interest them, nally? Is it not, as some
suspect, because deconstruction does not in itself permit any
just action, any valid discourse on justice but rather consti-
tutes a threat to law, and ruins the condition of possibility
of justice? Yes, some would reply; no, replies the adversary.
(Force of Law 231)
This sense of either/or, noted by both Keenan and Derrida, is worth
highlighting. It is, in fact, the issue around which I want to movethat
is, the issue of decisiveness and, thus, indecisiveness, the issue of tak-
ing sides. What seems to be at stake hereboth in terms of the pos-
sibility of justice, or ethico-political responsibility, and deconstructions
relationship to that possibilityis the possibility of determining, or
deciding upon, a just decision. It is in fact, for this reason, that I
would like to focus at this point on deconstructions commitment to
justicewhich is, necessarily, a commitment to decisiveness, a commit-
ment that is (moreover) predicated on the possibility of what Critchley
calls a foundational claim.
According to the later Derrida, deconstruction has always been
concerned with justice; he suggests, in fact, that it would probably be
inaccurate to say that deconstruction is distinct from justice. This is a
64 The Passing of Postmodernism
provocative suggestion, a suggestion that speaks directly to the above
discussion of deconstructive transcendentalism and the (im)possibility
of being pragmatic all the way down. Before we can fully address such
a suggestion, it is necessary to explore in some detail the ways in
which Derrida has attempted to bring the issue of justice (and, in turn,
ethico-political responsibility and the possibility of a transcendental
truth claim) to the forefront of his thinking. In the rst part of Force
of Law, Of the Right to Justice / From Law to Justice,
33
Derrida
begins, before addressing the issue of justice and ethical responsibility
directly, by pointing out that the term forcefor he introduces the
topic of justice by highlighting the fact that justice as law (233) is
enforcedhas often been employed in deconstructive texts. In many
of his own texts, Derrida is quick to point out, recourse to the word
force is both very frequent and, in strategic places . . . decisive, but
at the same time always or almost always accompanied by an explicit
reserve, a warning (Force of Law 234). But Derrida does not list the
particular texts that he has mind, stating that such a list would be
self-indulgent and . . . would waste time (234). Instead, he asks us
to take his word on faith: I ask you to trust me (234). This request
is signicant.
There are two things worth mentioning. On the one hand, there
is a request for trustDerrida implores us to trust him as an authority.
And, on the other, he asks us to trust him because he does not want
to list self-indulgently all of his various texts that deal with the issue
of force and, therefore (however obliquely), with the issue of justice,
law and ethical responsibility. Yet, on the next pageor, rather, at the
end of the very paragraph from which the above portion is drawn
Derrida again addresses the fact that deconstruction has seemed to
be unconcerned with ethico-political issues, noting that There are
no doubt many reasons why the majority of texts hastily identied
as deconstructionist seem . . . not to foreground the theme of justice
(as theme, precisely), nor even the theme of ethics or politics (235).
Although he never species what, precisely, these reasons might be,
Derrida assures us that what seems to be a lack of interest in ethico-
political responsibility is only apparently so (235). Presumably to prove
his point (now made twice, in two different ways), he promptly follows
this statement with an almost comprehensive list of texts by Derrida
that deal, in one way or another, with ethico-political issues:
for example (I will only mention these) the many texts
devoted to Levinas and to the relations between violence
and metaphysics, or to the philosophy of right, that of
65 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
Hegels, with all its posterity in Glas, of which it is the prin-
cipal motif, or the texts devoted to the drive for power and
to the paradoxes of power in To Speculateon Freud, to
the law, in Before the Law (on Kafkas Vor dem Gesetz) or
in Declarations of Independence, in The Laws of Reec-
tion: Nelson Mandela, In Admiration, and in many other
texts. (235)
There is here, it would seem, a certain amount of irony. If self-indul-
gence was a concern twenty-or-so lines previous, it certainly isnt any-
more. There is, in fact, a certain sense that Derrida has now betrayed
the trust that he asked us to grantas if he decided in the end that
we wouldnt (perhaps, shouldnt) trust him. The question is, then: is this
sort of subtle self-contradiction, or rhetorical ip-opping, a sign that
we should not trust himthat our trust is in some way unfounded, that
it is without foundation? Of course, we cannot answer this question with
any certainty. Nevertheless, this irony, or contradictory self-positioning,
seems hardly coincidental in a paper that is interested in dismantling
the distinction, and hierarchical relationship, between two types of vio-
lence: the violence that founds law and the violence that preserves law.
Such irony may be understood as a strategic device in a paper that is
interested in frustrating the possibility of deciding, with any certainty,
between either this or that. But if this is an attempt on Derridas part
to create an ordeal of indecision as regards our faith in him, is it, or
can it be, successful? I would sayif only tentatively at this pointthat
the answer is no. For, as I have already suggested, our willingness
to embrace the necessity of indecisionor, more bluntly, Derridean
quasi-transcendentalismseems to be the effect of a decision that is
necessarily anterior to what Derrida calls the test and ordeal of the
undecidable (Force of Law 253).
In the second portion of Force of Law, First Name of Benjamin,
Derrida engages in a reading of Benjamins 1921 essay, Critique
of Violence. More specically, Derrida concentrates on Benjamins
desire to distinguishor, we might cautiously say, decide betweentwo
types of violence: There is, rst, the distinction between two kinds
of violence of law, in relation to law: the founding violence, the one
that institutes and posits law . . . and the violence that preserves, the
one that maintains, conrms, insures the permanence and enforce-
ability of law (265). Derrida is interested in the way in which these
two forms of violence become indistinguishable, or indeterminable,
from each other: For beyond Benjamins explicit purpose, [Derrida
proposes an] interpretation according to which the very violence of
66 The Passing of Postmodernism
the foundation or positing of law . . . must envelop the violence of the
preservation of law . . . and cannot break with it (272). In other words,
Derrida argues, the distinction between these two types of violence is
dissolved, or threatened, by the paradox of iterability. According
to Derrida, Iterability makes it so that the origin must repeat itself
originarily, must alter itself to count itself as origin, that is to say, to
preserve itself (278). And, for this reason, it would seem, The law
is both threatening and threatened by itself (275). Or, put another
way, Law preserving violence . . . is a threat of law (276). This is, as
Derrida hastens to note, a Double genitive: it both comes from and
threatens law (276). The foundational claim, or the authority upon
which the preservation of the law is based, is a type of prosthetic
origin; it is determined by its own preservation. The preservation of
the law is always based on the founded law but, paradoxically, the
preservation determines that founding by positing it as the condition
of its own preserving violence. For this reason, All revolutionary situ-
ations, all revolutionary discourses, on the left or the right . . . justify
the recourse to violence by alleging the founding, in progress or to
come, of a new law, of a new state. As this law to come will in return
legitimate, retrospectively, the violence that may offend the sense of
justice, its future anterior already justies it (269).
The law (as posited and as preserved, for the two are indistin-
guishable) is haunted by the specter of justicethe to come, the
messianic. The law carries with it the promise of justice (never to be
fullled): The law is transcendent and theological, and so always to
come, always promised, because it is immanent, nite, and thus already
past (Force of Law 270). It is haunted, that is to say, in the sense of
Derridean spectrality, which has to do with the fact that a body is
never present for itself, for what it is. It appears by disappearing or
by making disappear what it represents (Force of Law 276). And it is,
as weve seen already, this specter of the messianic, of the promise to
come, that links justice to deconstruction, deconstruction to Marxism
and, indeed, Marxism to religion. We need to remember, though, that
Derrida is very careful to distinguish the specter of the messianic from
the teleological tendencies of Marxist and religious discourses: what
remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undecon-
structable as the possibility itself of deconstruction is, perhaps, a cer-
tain experience of the emancipatory promise; it is perhaps even the
formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion,
even a messianic without messianism, an idea of justice (Specters 59).
As Ernesto Laclau suggests, This does not mean this or that particu-
lar promise, but the promise implicit in an originary opening to the
67 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
other, to the unforeseeable, to the pure event which cannot be mas-
tered by aprioristic discourse (90). This is worth stressing.
So as to ensure that we understand the messianic without mes-
sianism as a type of non-teleological eschatology, the later Derrida
often struggles to distinguish between teleology and messianic
eschatology. The messianic without messianism does not have a pro-
grammatic or systematic code (i.e., no messiah) that could link us,
or denitively guide us, to the future as present. As Werner Hamacher
points out, There is no preestablished telos for the messianic with-
out messianism which could be recognizable now, programmatically
striven for, and ultimately achieved in some particular organization of
social life (168). It is, after all, the very absence of a telos that denes
this strange concept of messianism without content, of the messianic
without messianism, that guides us here like the blind (Specters 65).
Still, we must consider the possibility that this strange concept is
necessarily a failure, that it is caught within the very teleological trap
it seems to be guiding us safely past. While this faithless faith appears
to function effectively as a way to move without movement, to be goal-
oriented without the possibility of goal fulllment, it necessarily must
exclude itself from the ironic position it demands. It would seem that
our faith in this religion without religion must be absolute or nal
if we are to successfully employ it as a way to avoid the dangers of all
other teleological assumptions.
Ultimately, Derridas concept of the messianic without messian-
ism suggests that the promise is always at a distance and paradoxically
conditioned, or determined, by the entity that stands before it. In a
very Rortian, or privately ironic fashion, the promise, like the law
or, rather, in the form of the law (for the law promises justice)
34
only
appears innitely transcendent and thus theological to the extent that,
nearest to him, it depends only on him, . . . on who is before it (and so
prior to it), on who produces it, founds it, authorizes it in an absolute
performative whose presence always escapes him (Force of Law 270).
Caught up in a type of circular or paradoxical logic, the possibility of
the promise can be understood as the possibility of repetition. As a type
of quasi-transcendental possibility, the messianic leads us in a circular
fashion, but we never nally return to it (to the starting pointwhich
is, also, our nal destination).
35
This circle, within which the messianic
is located, never closes in on itself; the to come never arrives. In this
sense, the movement toward the messianic is more spiral than circular,
for in attempting to return to an origin and/or future destination, law
(like Marxism or even deconstruction) refoundsand, in this sense,
destroysthe origin/future that it seeks to preserve. If the promise
68 The Passing of Postmodernism
were ever fulllable, if the future were ever accessible, then it would
already be known, or realizedthat is, it would already be here and
now. At the same time, though, the possibility of the promise must be
the possibility that its fulllment is possible, that the circle will close
on itself, repeat, and thus dissolve. The messianic promises what can-
not be deconstructed, what is justice (or friendship, or forgiveness, or
arche-writing) itself and, therefore, the very absence or annulment of
justice, or friendship.
While Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond
law, is not deconstructable (Force of Law 243) it is (nevertheless)
always, and must remain, still to come. The same goes for decon-
struction itself, if such a thing exists (Force of Law 243). In this sense,
as Derrida puts it, Deconstruction is justice (Force of Law 243). These
undeconstructablesthese messianic promiseshowever impossible or
unreal they may be, condition, or are the very ground of possibility
for, deconstruction, or justice, or writing, or whatever. They are, as
Derrida seems to suggest, what keeps us moving . . . stronger and
faster (Force of Law 255).
36
Put differently, a Derridean promise can be
understood as a type of horizon, a concept that for Derrida connotes
two contradictory things. On the one hand, horizon, particularly in
Force of Law, stands in for an impossible destination that is ultimately
determined by the position of the entity that moves toward it. On the
other, horizon, as it is often employed in Specters, represents a deter-
minate end; for this reason, Derridas messianic must be understood
as a waiting without horizon of expectation (Specters 168).
37
But these
two seemingly contradictory usages only serve to highlight the way in
which the horizon functions as an apt metaphor for the messianic. By
moving toward the horizon we change the position of, or we refound,
what we are moving toward, as if we were a donkey to which Derrida
had tied a dangling carrot. It is, that is to say, both a determinate end
and an innite opening, a nal destination yet to come that is always
determined by that which precedes it.
38
The horizon is thus representa-
tive of the messianic end, or a priori condition of possibility, an end
for which we will always be waiting. In this way, as Richard Kearney
suggests, Deconstruction is like waiting for Godotnot just in two acts
but forever (go deo) (124). Neverthelessand this brings me at last
and full-on to the issue of decision makingjustice, however unpre-
sentable it remains, does not wait (255). We are every day called upon
to make just decisions. Such decisions, according to Derrida, demand
our attention. They demand our decisiveness.
Because the just decision is required as quickly as possible . . . [,
i]t cannot provide itself with the innite information and unlimited
69 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
knowledge that could justify it. Consequently, the decision always
marks the interruption of the jurdico-, ethico-, or politic-cognitive
deliberation that precedes it, that must . . . precede it (255). As it is
always based on incomplete knowledge, a decision must always gamble
on the future. A decision is possibleit is, in fact, made at allbecause
of the (im)possibility of justice that it anticipates on or at the horizon.
However, and necessarily, the decision (or we might say, the law) always
misses its markthat is, justice always exceeds the decision, or the law.
For this reason, justice, like deconstruction, is always giving itself in that
it is always still to come; it is always arriving as the otherindeed, as
the wholly other. Moreover, as we have seen, this to come is always
in a state of ux, as its very condition is also and paradoxically condi-
tioned by the decisions or laws that are themselves precipitated by the
possibility of its arrival. In order to touch on
39
this idea of the just
decision fully, though, we need to look again at Benjamins attempts
to distinguish between forms of violence.
In addition to, or perhaps as a modication of, the other two
forms of violence that he attempts to maintain as distinct, Benjamin dis-
tinguishes between mythic and divine violence. Mythic violence, which
includes the founding and the preserving violence of the law, comes
as fate. In the sense that it is fated, it is not mediated and it is always
new; it is determined (found and preserved) in the instant that it is
dispensed. Mythic violence, then, leaves us in a state of indecision. It
leaves us without a decision to make: no choice and thus no responsibil-
ity. Divine or Judaic violence, on the other hand, destroys law. It com-
mands an imperativeThou shalt not kill, for examplebut it offers
no judgment: one could not nd in it the authority to automatically
condemn any putting to death. The individual or the community must
keep the responsibility (the condition of which being the absence of
general criteria and automatic rules) (Force of Law 288). Divine violence,
unlike mythic violence, forces us to decide. It leaves us with the possibility
of decision. Accordingly, All decidability is situated, blocked in, accu-
mulated on the side of law, of mythological violence that founds and
preserves law. But on the other hand all decidability stands on the side
of the divine violence that destroys the law, we could even venture to
say, that deconstructs the law (Force of Law 28990). What is important
hereand what, in a fashion, dissolves the distinction between divine
and mythic violenceis the fact that the just decision is only possible
given both the possibility and the impossibility
40
of a decision. Simply
and I can, at this point, begin to tie things togetherthe decision must
always be haunted by indecision. Otherwise it is not a decision. And, as
Derrida assures us, only a decision is just (Force of Law 253).
70 The Passing of Postmodernism
By indecision, Derrida means two contradictory, or ironic, things.
On the one hand, indecision is the impossibility of decisionthat is,
no decisionin the sense of mythic violence, or fate: I must go to
war and spread democracy because I have no choice but to go to war
and spread democracy. Indecision, in this sense, is the effect of the
divine dispensation (in both senses of the word, a distribution and a
rendering useless) of justice. On the other hand, though, indecision
is the burden of uncertainty and, therefore, of responsibility. It is the
hesitancy that is the effect of the impossibility of justice (or indecision,
in the former sense) and yet it makes a just decision possible. The
former being messianism, the transcendent, justice itself; the other, its
impossibility. And it is indecision in both senses that haunts, that, accord-
ing to Derrida, must haunt the just decision. While a belief in, or
even a desire for, the possibility of indecision in the former senseor,
rather, the possibility of a transcendental truth claimprevents paraly-
sis, giving us a reason to move, indecision in the latter senseor rather,
the impossibility of a transcendental truth claimis what makes a deci-
sion necessary in the rst place. For this reason, the test and ordeal
of the undecidable, of which I have just said it must be gone through
by any decision worthy of its name, is never past or passed (Force of
Law 253, my emphasis). This test and ordeal is ultimately a matter
of respecting the spectrality of the undecidablethat is, the possibility
and the impossibility of the just decision: The undecidable remains
caught, lodged, as a ghost at least, but an essential ghost, in every deci-
sion, in every event of decision. Its ghostliness . . . deconstructs from
within all assurance of presence, all certainty or all alleged criteriology
assuring us of the justice of the decision (Force of Law 253). This is
the imperative of Derridean ethics; this is the decision we must make,
yet the decision to make such a decision is necessarily anterior to
the ironic ordeal of indecision. In fact, the decision to make a just
decision, the decision to follow Derridato believe in himis, it would
seem, solely an effect of indecision in the single sense of no decision.
Such a decision (or such faith) is, I am suggesting, necessarily aligned
with what Derrida via Benjamin refers to as mythic violence, or what
Rorty understands as hegemonic a priori conditions of possibility. It is
the only way to make a just decision. The call to respect, to endure,
the spectrality of the specterthe possibility and the impossibility of
the promise, the possibility and the impossibility of the transcendent,
of the just decisionnecessarily conjures/exorcises that spectrality.
Only through such an exorcism can we claim to know that such an
exorcism is impossibleor, at the very least, unethical. Put differently,
and in a manner that will make more sense if we consider the way in
71 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
which the Derridean decision is associated with the gamble, the deci-
sion to gamble on a decision is never, itself, a gamble.
Haunted by indecision in both senses, the Derridean decision
or, if I can continue stressing the inherent positivism of this argu-
ment,
41
the truly ethical decisionis always a type of wager, or gamble.
And, as Jean-Michel Rabat notes, The word wager, for its part, implies
a calculation combining the plural and the future: it yields a plural
futures that has to do with debt and risk, all thrown in a balance
whose equilibrium depends upon a measurement capable of calculat-
ing times to come (182). A wager is infused with a sense of hope,
belief, or faith in the to come, the messianic, the utopian. But that
hope or faith must always be unfounded. There is never any certainty;
there is never, Derrida assures us, a messiah, a stable and transcenden-
tal foundation. If we are to decideand by deciding we are to make
Derrida prouda wager must be placed on a race that isnt xed. The
wager is, simply, the result of the just decision, the decision haunted
by indecision. As Peggy Kamuf suggests in her examination of Specters,
the wager stresses the necessity of taking sides in the absence of cer-
tainty: This wager . . . sums up the principal gesture or act of the book,
the taking of sides that Derrida constantly assumes throughout (280).
And, indeed, Specters is lled with decisions. Derrida chooses to embrace
one specter of Marx over others; he decides on the ten current plaques
of humanity. With each decision, though, Derrida reminds us (or per-
haps, he reminds himself) that he is gambling, that his decisions are
necessarily haunted by indecision. He relentlessly reminds us that the
impossibility of the certainly right decision is what makes the just deci-
sion possible, the decision that must bear the mark, must be haunted
by what it could have been and by what it can never be. The possibility
of the just decision is, in short, wholly contingent on the impossibil-
ity of certainty. Justicelike, say, the transcendental signiedis only
possible because it is impossible.
This brings me back, at last, to the issue of the either/or, and
Derridas ironic self-positioning in Force of Law. For Derrida, the either/
or must, in some fashion, remain (in terms of deconstructions rela-
tionship to the possibility of justice, in terms of founding and positing
violence, in terms of decidability and undecidability, in terms of the
possibility and impossibility of the Kantian transcendental). However,
and at the same time, the to come must also remain a possibility,
if only as the promise of choosing the right side with certainty: jus-
tice, deconstruction itself, God. As I have already stated, this becomes
a type of imperative: it is absolutely necessary to ironically maintain
these two contradictory things. Derrida is essentially imploring us to
72 The Passing of Postmodernism
continue attempting to exorcise the ghost of the messianic (which
haunted Marx, and which continues to haunt deconstruction) while
simultaneously and paradoxically allowing it to remain a revenant,
to return, to continue coming. Derrida seems to be arguing that, if
all gods are dead, then their ghosts continue, and must continue, to
haunt us. While deconstruction, like Marxism, can be understood as
a relentless attempt to exorcise these ghosts, each moment of decon-
struction, like each revolution, must be, itself, haunted. Consequently,
Derridas ironic self-positioning, his attempt to frustrate our ability to
make a decision as regards our faith in him, as regards the nality of
his argument(s), can be read as a necessarily unsuccessful attempt to
evade the absolute decisiveness he would like us to abandon.
42
For, as
I am suggesting, the imperative of Derridean indecision, the ethic of
the possibility and the impossibility of the just decision, the identica-
tion of any condition of possibility or nal vocabulary, is absolutely and
necessarily contingent upon a decision that is not subject to the ordeal
of the undecidable. By way of conclusion, I will attempt to clarify this
point by turning somewhat abruptly, and in a rather platonic fashion,
to a particularly applicable myth.
Toward the end of Exodus, after he has shattered the tablets of
the law and after he has begun to doubt his own authority, Moses
goes into the tabernacle to talk with God. Once in the tabernacle,
Moses asks God to conrm his presence amongst the Israelites: I pray
thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that
I may know thee, that I may nd grace in thy sight (Ex 33:13). We
might say that Moses here asks God to arrive nally so that the law can
be dispensed with, at last. But God (perhaps, I might add, necessarily)
denies this requestor rather, grants it in a very unfullling fashion.
God tells Moses that he will place him in the cleft of a rock and that
he will cover Moses eyes with his hand: And I will take away mine
hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen
(Ex 33:23). This is, it would seem, the experience that, according to
the later Derrida, any law maker/preserveror, for that matter, any
decision maker, any philosopher, any interpretermust endure. It is
the experience of believing (a word that is used repeatedly by Derrida
throughout Force of Law) in, and desiring to have, the authority to
dispense (with) justice, truth, while knowing, or at least discovering,
that that belief is unfounded, that it is only passing, out of reach and
still yet to come.
Yet Moses, even though he is never permitted to see God face to
face, does not consider his faith to be unfounded. It seems reasonable
to suggest that, were he to have any doubts, even ironic ones, he would
73 Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
cease to be active/mobile. With this in mind, I would argue that Der-
rida (and, indeed, Rorty) needs to be viewed as a type of modern-day
Moses, a type of prophet. Or rather, from another anglethat is, if
we consider all those who read and quote and believe in themboth
Derrida and Rorty continually and necessarily slip, however uncomfort-
ably, into the role of Messiah, the role of God (if only because they
resist exposing their private faces to the public). This unavoidable
slippage is the very thing I have attempted to expose throughout
the above discussion of late deconstruction. If we believe in this late
Derridaif we believe, in short, that we must respect the spectrality of
the specter, its impossible possibilitythen we are left in a state of
indecision, but indecision in the mythic or hegemonic sense of no
decision. And it is this particular state of indecision that is the den-
ing characteristic of this emergent epoch after postmodernism. Indeed,
one of the things I have been attempting to highlight through this
examination of late-phase deconstruction is the way in which this
current epistemological reconguration, this episteme of renewalism, is
marked by a distinct manner of representing, or understanding, the
history of knowledge. It is marked, that is, by its view that all previous
epistemic congurations can be understood via their paradoxical and
hostile relationships to a certain spectral remainder, or teleological
aporia
43
relationships that have inevitably resulted in violently hege-
monic claims. My point, though, is that this spectral relationship does
not cease to be a problemthat is, a source of teleological assump-
tionssimply because we claim to recognize it, to accept it. It is, I am
arguing, impossible to respect the specter. This seems to be implicit in
the teleological imperative that we must respect the specter. After all,
if we must do it, its hardly a gamble. Or, as I stated above, a gamble
is hardly a gamble if it is animated by the absolute conviction that
to gamble is to always win. So, Ill end (almost, but not quite) where
this nal section on Derrida began: It is inaccurate to say that Derrida
is an atheistor rather, it is inaccurate to say that any discourse, or
episteme, can ever be atheistic.
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75 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
CHAPTER THREE
Writing of the Ghost (Again)
The Failure of Postmodern Metaction
and the Narrative of Renewalism
Once again I tried committing suicidethis time by wetting my
nose and inserting it into the light socket. Unfortunately, there was
a short in the wiring, and I merely caromed off the icebox.
Woody Allen, Without Feathers
Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest
whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe
and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the
ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an
exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands
and said, Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.
Toni Morrison, Beloved
So why do I do it then? Why do I sit here like this?
Because if writing this bookwhich, according to several
people who are knowledgeable about literature, is the rst tetherb-
all novel evercan help just one kid whos gone through a similar
experience, i.e., having a dad who survived an attempted execution
by lethal injection and is resentenced to NJSDE, and losing your
virginity to a 36year-old warden, then it will have been worth it.
Mark Leyner, The Tetherballs of Bougainville
Neither Logocentric nor Logo Centric
In the preface to The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark Leyner reminds
us that When an astronomer observes a galaxy in some distant realm
of the universe, . . . [h]e is quite literally looking at the past (9). This
75
76 The Passing of Postmodernism
is, of course, as Leyner goes on to point out, an effect of light; by the
time the light of a distant galaxy reaches us, here on Earth and in the
present, the galaxy itself may no longer even exist (9). So, Leyner
goes on to suggest, if we could travel to a point many light-years from
the earth and somehow view the light emanating from our planet with
the resolution of, say, a spy satelliteadvanced photoreconnaissance
spacecraft are capable of reading the washing instructions on a black
silk chemisette from 22,300 miles in geosynchronous orbitwe could
actually observe ourselves in the past (9). However, because we can-
not yet outrace light, Leyner admits that we must make due with
our memories, our diaries and notebooks, our videotapes, microcas-
settes, oppy disks, our photo albums, our evocative souvenirs and
bric-a-bracall the various and sundry madeleines we use to goad our
hippocampi into reverse-scan (9). By highlighting this inevitable limi-
tation, Leyners preface works to stress the problems associated with
any historical account. The preface thus prepares us for the text that
follows: an autobiographical account written from the perspective
of a thirteen-year-old Mark Leyner. This autobiography recounts a
single day in Marks
1
life. On the day in question, Marks fathera
relatively good man who just cant do PCP socially (22)is sched-
uled to be executed for murdering a security guard with a Cuisinart
variable-speed hand blender and a Teon-coated ice-cream scooper
from a vendors kiosk at an outlet in Secaucus (23). Minutes before
the execution, Mark gets a phone call from his agent who tells him
that hes going to win the Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/Oshim-
itsu Polymers America Award (17), an award worth $250,000 a year
(for life), which Marks high school gives out annually for the best
screenplay written by a student. The problem, though, is that Mark
hasnt yet written his winning screenplay, which is due the follow-
ing day. In brief, then, the rst half of the text, or autobiography,
recounts the various experiences Mark has as a result of his fathers
execution (which is unsuccessful), his attempt to have sex with the
thirty-six year-old warden of the prison (which is successful), and his
struggle to produce a screenplay before the end of the day (which is
also, apparently, successful).
What is important to note here is the apparently incongruous
nature of the preface of Leyners text and the text proper. In the
preface, Leyner seems to address the problem of historical accuracy
sincerely (albeit, in a comedic manner that is ultimately or simul-
taneously a type of imitation, or exaggeration, of the most obvious
signs of sincerity and/or seriousness
2
). In doing so, he highlights his
apparent desire to be as honest as possible. After all, Leyner repeat-
77 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
edly intimates that he is intent on accuracy: I have tried my bestin
the following capsulesto provide an accurate chronicle of the past
(10). For Leyner, it would seem such accuracy, or realism, is a vehicle
for shared understanding, the best and perhaps only mode of accu-
rate communication. According to the preface, the text proper func-
tionsor, at the very least, is meant to functionas a tool for relocating
certain human constants; it is meant to produce an effect of shared,
or communal, recognition:
As you read on, some of you may experience an eerie shock
of recognition. You may bolt upright in bed, murmuring to
yourself, I think I actually know this guy. Some of you may
even say, Hey, I think I dated this guy. (For female readers
who lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area in the
mid-eightiesif the droll conversational icebreaker Id like
to get real high and eat your pussy for an afternoon sounds
familiaryes, that was me.) (11)
Not only does Leyner aim to connect his readers via their recognition
of the subject in question (i.e., the author himself), he suggests that
the text may also give us the impression that we are reading our own
autobiography, as if we are peeping through the window of [our] own
doppelgnger (11). Leyner goes so far as to insist that each page is
like a mirror, and youve literally never seen yourself so closely and the
pores of your nose have never seemed so gaping (11). Leyners story
is, in short, our story. As parodic as it might seem, the prefaceand, I
would argue, the text as a wholeis earnestly engaged in an outright
rejection of what is typically understood as the postmodern impulse
toward narrative paralysis, or authorial suicide. The preface, it would
seem, refuses to reject the possibility of communication with the other;
it refuses, that is, to abandon the impossible as impossible. Leyner (like,
we might say at this point, a late-Derrida) actively resists the apparent
nihilism of postmodernism by identifying the impossibility of certain
spectral lures as impossible. While the preface and, indeed, the text as
a whole seems to accept the postmodern lesson that certain teleological
idealscommunication, mimesis, shared understandingare illusions
of a now defunct project of modernity, it simultaneously embraces the
possibility, or promise, of such ideals. Of course, I do not want to sug-
gest that postmodernism was simply and utterly ignorant of, or blind
to, the fact that such illusions are essential animating factors, but I
would like to highlight the way in which a text like Leyners distances
itself from postmodernism proper by overtly embracing the impossible
78 The Passing of Postmodernism
possibility of certain teleological promises. Ultimately, though, the only
difference between a text like Leynerswhich, I would like to sug-
gest, is representative of a newly emergent period of cultural produc-
tionand a work of high postmodern metaction is a difference in
emphasis. Rather than focusing exclusively on the need to expose as
illusory the teleologies associated with a distinctly modern project, a
text like Leyners acknowledges the impossibility of such lures while
simultaneously and emphatically articulating the ways in which they
remain necessary to any critical and/or aesthetic enterprise.
In short, and as his initial claim concerning the possibility of see-
ing the past accurately projected via light suggests, Leyner outwardly
embraces the impossibilitiesthat is, the impossibility of communica-
tion, of shared understanding, of essential human connectionsthat
the historiographic metaction of postmodernism worked to expose as
dangerous ideological lures. Leyners Tetherballs, or so the preface sug-
gests, reembraces the impulse toward mimesis that dened the realist
mode of the nineteenth century as well as the experimental impera-
tives of the early-twentieth. Narrative, Leyner seems to be claiming, can
be a productive form of social, or public, exchange. Still, as I pointed
out above, the text proper, if not the comedic tone of the entire novel,
seems to wholly abandon the mimetic project set out in the preface. As
my brief plot summation (above) suggests, the text is almost decadent
in terms of its postmodern attributes. Not only is the basic plot utterly
improbable, if not simply impossible, the text is lled with digressions,
satirical attacks on mass culture, corrosively self-reexive statements,
absurd dialogue, and temporal incongruities.
That the text shares certain undeniable afnities with a decidedly
postmodern aesthetic is, perhaps, most obvious in the screenplay that
constitutes the last half of the text. This screenplay recounts Marks
affair with the prison warden in the hours following the failed attempt
to execute his father. By the end of the rst half of the text, Mark
realizes that, because of the hours he has spent with the warden, he
will hardly have the time to plagiarize a script (never mind produce an
original work). After being told of his dilemma, the warden suggests
that (to save time) he write about the events that just happened: And
she says, Yeah, this, indicating, with a panoramic gesture, the whole
drug-addled liaison were presently engaged in. And she says, Do
a screenplay that appears to be faux autobiographical documentary,
but thats actuallyheres the ironycompletely factual. Faux irony
(107). What follows is thus a screenplay depicting Marks drug-addled
liaison with the wardenwhich is, from a readers perspective, a c-
tional screenplay pretending to be a faux autobiographical documentary
79 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
that is really completely factual. The sense we get initially is that Leyner,
in an ostentatiously metactional manner, is attempting to frustrate the
line separating fact and ction and thus highlight the illusory nature
of any seemingly stable referent. However, the attemptif such an
attempt is actually being madeends, quite obviously, in failure; the
screenplay is simply too improbable. Along with unbelievably excessive
drug use, the screenplay includes the notorious and achingly beauti-
ful CUNNILINGUS SCENEwhich is over three and a half hours
(171)as well as a reading (by Mark) of an imaginary movie review
Mark wrote for a lm he never made. Although the review, which
takes up almost half of the screenplay, was written before the events
detailed in Marks autobiography, it describes an autobiographical
lm based on the years following the failed attempt to execute Marks
father. In short, the review refers to a lm that recounts events that
occurred after Mark wrote the review.
If anything, then, Leyners confusion of the factual and the c-
tional works to reafrm the ctional as ctional. For this reason alone
Tetherballs is not postmodern in the way that a text like Pynchons
Gravitys Rainbow or Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five is postmodern. While
the latter two texts carefully blur the boundaries between the real and
the imaginary, between history and narrativethat is, both texts are
focused almost exclusively on the way in which the traumatic reality
of World War II is contingent upon narrative ltration, that it exists
only as the unstable effect of an eternally shifting chain of signi-
ersTetherballs seems to do exactly what its preface claims it will do:
it offers us the possibility of shared recognition, even if what we rec-
ognize is the impossibility of recognition. Leyner seemingly embraces
the impossibility of mimesis as a portrayable reality in itself, as a way
of returning to a type of realist mode of representation. In a manner
that speaks to a discernable shift in narrative productiona shift that
seems to mark the end of the postmodern metactional imperative and
that is often associated with the emergence of a type of neo-realism
(discussed below)Leyner reembraces a certain faith in the possibility
of the impossible referent, of the transcendental signied. Leyners
autobiographical account, while absolutely incongruous with anyone
elses reality, highlights the absolutely contingent nature of existence
so as to reestablish the possibility of a common ground, a stable point
of reference. Leyner suggests that the one thing we can communi-
cate is the impossibility of communication, the impossibility of nally
articulating our true selves. Leyner thus articulates the possibility
of communication by stressing the fact that it is an impossibility; he
works to communicate the impossibility of communication by continually
80 The Passing of Postmodernism
failing to communicate. For this reason, Leyners story is indeed, as
the preface claims, our story; it is an impossible and/or necessarily
failed articulation of the self. Put differently, and in a manner that
recalls Derridas claim
3
that a decision is only possible if it embraces
both the impossibility and the possibility of the certainly right decision,
Leyners text speaks to the way in which the recent narrative shift is
dened by the conviction that the narrative actor rather, the deci-
sion to writemust endure the ordeal of indecision. In brief, then
(and as I explain more fully below), a text like Leyners can be read
as representative of a still emergent period of renewalism because it
works to embrace a certain spectral paradox: the paralyzing knowledge
that there can never be an absolutely correct narrative act and the
animating faith that the certainly right narrative act is, in fact, possible.
And, of course, Leyners main vehicle for articulating this impossible
possibility is humor.
Like the traditional male stand-up comedian, Leyner employs
humor that (from the nave perspective of the narrator, Mark and,
perhaps, Leyner himself) is meant to prey on an individuals desire to
recognize her- or himself once and for all.
4
More specically, Leyners
humor is an ostentatious exaggeration of the distinctly phallic and
politically incorrect routines that male comedians tend to perform.
However, while seemingly replicating essentialist and oversimplied
jokes that crudely reafrm illusory categories of gender and race, Mark
ultimately establishes what a late-Derrida would celebrate as a type of
relation without relation. This simultaneous afrmation and deferral
of recognition is, quite simply, accomplished via Marks various attempts
to share events no one would recognize as common experience.
For example, in one of many digressive interruptions of the
basic plot, Mark pastes an article from People into his autobiographical
account. The article, which Mark is perusing while waiting for the
prison doctor to explain why his fathers execution was unsuccessful,
tells of a recent diplomatic party at which several of the high-prole
female guests were hypnotized. After being put in a trance, all of the
women immediately disrobed, rending garments from their bodies as
if they were aame, and then, like deranged children, spreading caviar
and blintz lling over each others naked esh (56). Eventually, or
so the article explains, the women overpowered a chosen male guest,
shackled his legs, cuffed his hands behind his back, and took turns sit-
ting on his face as they swigged caraway and jimsonweed-infused vodka
from crystal decanters (56). After being interrupted in mid-sentence
by a nurse who informs him that the doctor is now ready to see him,
Mark returns to his own story, asking us (in standard comedic form)
81 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
if we have ever had an experience like he just had: Have you ever
read an article in People that was so perfectly suited to your interests
that it seemed as if the writer had intended it exclusively for you, so
that you could . . . perhaps derive some subliminal or encrypted com-
munication or some secret gnostic insight? Thats how I felt about
this particular article (57). While the question itself seems to open
up the possibility that Marks autobiographical experiences are being
communicated with a certain amount of mimetic success
5
after all,
havent we all found an article in a magazine (while waiting for a doc-
tor) that was surprisingly attuned to our personal interests?Marks
reason for enjoying the article in question simultaneously frustrates
that possibility:
I cant tell you how many afternoons Ive fritted away contem-
plating what it would be like to be held captive and abused
by various groups of fanatical and/or unbalanced and/or
unwashed women. For a while its all I talked about, which
I realized became rather tedious for my parents. (57)
In the end, then, Marks various attempts to share his ostentatiously
unique experiences and personality simultaneously and paradoxical-
ly holds out the promise and/or possibility of mimetic accuracyof
shared experience, of subliminal or encrypted communication or
secret gnostic insight, and so onwhile incessantly deferring that
promise and/or possibility. The deferral, or impossibility, of a type
of communal recognition is thus continually reasserted as the very
ground for its possibility.
In Figuring Out Mark Leyner: A Waste of Time, William G.
Little makes a similar observation about Leyners work. Focusing on
Leyners earlier textsin particular, Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My
GastroenterologistLittle argues that Leyner successfully evades the posi-
tivism of modernism, while simultaneously rejecting what Little articu-
lates as the postmodern insistence on negation. Signicantly, Little
bases his argument on Mark C. Taylors suggestion that postmodernism
endorses a type of logo centrism that simply inverts (and thus falls
prey to) the blind idealism typically associated with the logocentrism
of modernism. For Taylor, logocentrism struggles to dismantle the veil
of signiers and nally exposes the transcendental signied; logo cen-
trism, on the other hand, struggles to deny (absolutely, or once and
for all) the possibility of the signied. In the latter, the signierthat
is, the logo, the sign, the symbolis privileged absolutely. Afrming
that nothing exists beyond or beneath the signifying chain, the logo
82 The Passing of Postmodernism
centric impulse abandons, in reaction to the hegemony of logocen-
trism, the possibility of a positive claim, a claim that can escape the
contingent nature of signication. What Taylor suggests, though, is
that the negation we see in logo centrismor, we might say, more
simply, postmodernismultimately becomes a type of backdoor posi-
tivism, or negative theology. In a passage to which Little refers, Taylor
puts it like this:
Postmodern logo centrism appears to involve the rejection
or negation of the logocentrism that informs the theoes-
thetic of modernism. But any simple opposition between
logo centrism and logocentrism is misleading, for they are
really contrasting expressions of a single impulse. Both logo
centrism and logocentrism seek immediate union with the
real. Within this similarity, an important difference emerges:
contrasting interpretations of reality lead to alternative
aesthetic strategies. While logocentrism struggles to erase
signiers in order to arrive at the pure transcendental signi-
ed, logo centrism attempts to extend the sign to innity
by collapsing the signied in the signier. Union with the
real
6
regardless of how the real is understoodholds out
the promise of overcoming alienation and achieving recon-
ciliation. (22223)
In this sense, the paradox of logo centrism can be compared to the
reication of nothingness that Derrida identies in the work of Sar-
trea type of reication that theorists like Rorty see played out again
in Derridas own early, or postmodern, work (particularly in his initial
discussions of trace and differance). Still, we need to remember that
Rortys reading of Derridas early work (like, I would add, Derridas
reading of Sartre in The Ends of Man) is, to a large extent, a mis-
reading. Rorty seems to miss the fact that Derrida subtly, but continu-
ally, points to the fact that his project can never escape the lures
that he aims to deconstruct. And, as Ive suggested throughout, we
can say something similar about postmodernism generally. Indeed,
a black/white (or, rather, a logocentric/logo centric) reading like
Taylors misses much of the subtlety at work in the broad spectrum
of postmodern cultural production. Hutcheon, in fact, makes this very
point when she addresses the work of Terry Eagleton: absolutist binary
thinkingwhich makes postmodernism into the negative and opposite
of modernismdenies much of the complexity of that art (Poetics 18).
As a result, such thinking also fails to take into account the overlap that
seems to dene this period of renewalism as a rejection and a continu-
83 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
ation of a distinctly postmodern project. Like Eagletons, then, Taylors
position, if embraced too rigidly, can blind us to fact that postmod-
ernismlike an early-Derridawas largely cognizant of the ultimately
untenable nature of its seemingly logo centric position. By identifying
all postmodern cultural production as simply logo centric, we risk over-
looking the fact that the postmodern problemthat is, the problem
that seems to be addressed in this most recent epistemological recon-
gurationwas, or became, a problem of emphasis. Because it was, for
the most part, a reaction to the dangers of logocentrism, to an increas-
ingly hegemonic project of modernity, postmodernism was far more
interested in exposing the absence of the real (or the signied, or the
subject, or whatever) than it was in highlighting the need to identify
such illusions as ineffaceable and essential animating lures/possibili-
ties. To a certain extant, then, we should read this current shift away
from postmodernism in the same way we might read the shift from
an early-Derrida to a late-Derrida: this shift is not so much a rejec-
tion as it is a reassessment of/in emphasis, a radical recuperation of
something (i.e., a certain understanding of the spectral lure) that was
present from the beginning.
That said, we should not simply abandon Taylors understand-
ing of the logo centric impulse. For even if postmodernism was, to
a degree, aware of the impossibility of completely rejecting all ideal-
istic lures, it was primarily motivated by a desire to expose all such
lures as illusory, as false. Regardless of its subtleties, postmodernism
can be accurately dened by its willingness to endorse some form of
logo centrism. Consequently, it is worth exploring Taylors claim fur-
ther, particularly his claim that logo centrism is animated by the very
theoesthetic program that so obviously dened the modernist, or
logocentric, aesthetic. For Taylor, this strange inversion is the effect
of an ongoing process of dis-guration. In a manner that recalls
Kenneth Burkes terministic screens,
7
Taylor understands this process
of disguring as simultaneously both revealing and repressing, both
demystifying and mystifying. For example, the formalist and the realist
designs of the modernist/logocentric enterprise are meant to disg-
urethat is, to expose the real beneath gurationand thus liberate
the referent from the contingency of the signifying chain: Modern art
and architecture dis-gure by removing gure from the work of art.
Abstract or nonobjective art and formalist architecture seek to uncover
the transcendental signied by erasing signiers and to discover pure
form by eliminating all ornamentation (189).
Postmodernism, argues Taylor, comes to understand this effort to
disgure as just another delusion of the enlightenment, another inevi-
table process of guration. Ultimately, then, Taylor would like to view
84 The Passing of Postmodernism
all postmodern production as an utter rejection of the theoesthetic
or spiritual enterprise of the Enlightenment project, an utter rejec-
tion that, By inverting logocentrism, . . . not only allows but actually
solicits the return of the repressed (189). And certainly, the modern-
ist project does attempt to withdraw from consumer culture and the
impurity of the signier (which the process of modernization increas-
ingly fetishizes) while postmodernism, as seen in the work of a pop
artist like Warhol, rejects the possibility of an aneconomical space of
production and self-consciously aunts its contingent position in an
inescapable exchange of signiers. However, as I suggested above, post-
modernism rarely abandons (without, at the very least, some latent
sense of nostalgia) all logocentric lures. As an epistemological response
toor, perhaps, as an epistemological reconguration ofthe ideal-
ism of modernity, postmodernism worked to expose the dangerous
and illusory nature of the prevailing logocentric illusions; but (as I
demonstrate below) postmodernism often seems to suggest, if only
subtly, that such illusions are impossible to abandon. I do not want to
suggest via Taylor that postmodernism is logo centric; rather, I would
like to argue that postmodernism employed a logo centric mode of cri-
tiquealbeit, in an increasingly ostentatious and unsustainable man-
neras a way of deconstructing the logocentrism of modernity. To a
degree, then, Taylors critique of logo centrism and, thus, postmod-
ernism speaks to my own understanding of a certain spectral return,
a certain inevitable return of the repressed. In fact, Taylors reading
of postmodernismwhile limited by an overly strict logo centric/logo-
centric binarystresses the ways in which the logo centric aspects of
postmodernism were necessarily haunted by the very spectral impulses
they were expected to exorcise.
Although he cites various examples, Taylors reading of post-
modern cultural production is most succinct when he discusses two
well-known buildings: Le Corbusiers overtly modernist Villa Savoye and
Philip Johnsons distinctly postmodern AT&T Corporate Headquarters. In
the case of the former, all gurations or ornamentations are de-formed.
The building is thus an architectural continuation of a type of cub-
ist aesthetic; it is stark, monochromatic and simplistically geometric,
a structure that epitomizes purity, transparency, levity. As Taylor sug-
gests, The use of empty space and the interruption of the outer walls
creates a liberating feeling of openness. The ethereality of the villa
is accentuated by its elevation above ground. The pilotis, or slender
pillars, supporting the structure give the sense of a building about to
ascend to higher spheres (110). The building is presented, in other
words, as completely self-referential, as the referent itself. As I briey
85 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
suggested in chapter 1, this distinctly modern sense of elevation, or
purity, is meant to have a revolutionary function; it is meant to draw
the still ignorant masses toward the utopian state represented by its
very deformed form. Johnsons building, on the other hand, stresses the
impossibility of getting beneath or beyond form. A work of obvious
pastichethat is, it employs, as Taylor puts it, a classical three part
structure as well as a Romanesque lobby and a cathedral-like base
(204)Johnsons structure revels in the fact that its reality is purely
simulation. The AT&T Headquarters combines both real and false
masonry work, and the circular openings give the illusion of incredibly
thick stone walls. In the end, as Taylor puts it, the building aunts its
articiality, repeatedly stressing the fact that apparent depth is really
supercial (204). In terms of the spectrological argument I have been
articulating throughout, we might say that Johnsons building speaks
to the way in which the postmodern desire to exorcise the specter of
a distinctly modern utopianism is necessarily animated by the very
specter it aims to conjure awaythat is, the specter, or utopian prom-
ise, of a nally non-utopian mode of production, one that is nally
uncontaminated by all such ghostly promises. Not surprisingly, Taylors
point is similar, stressing the way in which this distinctly postmodern
act of disguration is ultimately, if ironically, effected by the very same
theoesthetic impulse that animated Corbusiers construction of the
Villa Savoye. What Taylor usefully demonstrates, then, is the fact that,
in its extremity, postmodernisms logo centric critique of logocentrism
seems to risks becoming a type of reied negation, a form of inverted
logocentrism, for ultimately logo centrism is logocentric (189).
Put differently: a work like Warhols 192 One-Dollar Billsa
work that ostentatiously confuses the distinction between the real
value of a dollar, the value of the material object or sign that desig-
nates that value, and the value of Warhols own piece (which is ulti-
mately caught up in the illusory system of valuation represented by the
economic signier Warhol reproduces)seems to eviscerate the sign
utterly, repositioning the image as the real. What is obscured in a
process like this, Taylor argues, is the inevitable return of repressed.
Taylors point is this: the postmodern aesthetic (or perhaps, theoes-
thetic) is, in the end, idealistit is the idealism of the image. Since
there is nothing outside the image, the image is (the) real. Within
the secular economy, the real is ideal and the ideal is real (181).
Of course, I would modify this claim somewhat; rather than stating that
postmodernism was simply, always and inadvertently idealist, I would
argue that the more it insisted on a type of logo centric critique the
more it came to be viewed as little more than a simple and increasingly
86 The Passing of Postmodernism
hegemonic inversion of the utopianism it aimed to disrupt once and for
all. The problem needs to be understood as a problem of emphasis;
postmodernisms overt demystication of logocentrism does eventu-
ally seem hegemonic, and few now associate postmodernism with little
else. Nevertheless, this does not mean that postmodernism (in all its
complexity) is logo centric.
Still, from a certain perspective, as Little argues, both modern-
ism and postmodernism can be understood as puritanical regimens
undertaken in the hope of realizing whole-some identity (Little 152).
What this means for both Taylor and Little is that postmodernism, as
most typically dene it, is not really POSTmodern. Indeed, given the
inevitable conuence of the logocentric and logo centric impulses,
Taylor distinguishes between a modernist postmodernism (i.e., a
logo centric postmodernism) and a POSTmodernism proper. And, of
course, according to Taylor, postmodernism sensu strictissmo subverts
both modernism and modernist postmodernism as if from within
(6). At this point, then, we might transpose Taylors framework onto
a more obviously spectrological one. As Ive already suggested, Taylors
understanding of logocentric modernism echoes the claim, discussed
in chapter 1, that modernism attempted to deal with the specter of
the Real by ontologizing the spectrality of the ghost (i.e., by falsifying
all things immaterial). Likewise, Taylors identication of postmodern-
isms logo centric impulse suggests yet again that postmodernism tried
to conjure its spectral inheritance by emphasizing the illusory nature
of all things material, or real, by identifying as false all seemingly stable
distinctions. Modernism, in other words, works to deny absolutely the
specters immateriality while postmodernism, at its extreme (or in its
now canonized form), seems to deny absolutely the specters material-
ity. In both cases, though, the ghosts ironic spectralityits presence
and its absence, its possibility and its impossibilityis challenged and
seemingly effaced altogether. Both poles thus becomebecause, I am
arguing, they are spectrally compelled to do sohegemonic, or logo-
centric, ideologies. However, in Taylors third epochthat is, within
the period that Taylor associates with true postmodernismlogos is
neither denied as an impossible illusion nor privileged as the ultimate
origin/end. This third period is, for Taylor, another period of disg-
uring, but it is also a period that paradoxically promises the end of
guration while simultaneously and incessantly drawing our attention
to the impossibility of such an end:
In its third guise, disguring neither erases nor absolu-
tizes gure but enacts what Freud describes as a process
87 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
of denegation, through which the repressed or refused
returns. . . . When interpreted in terms of denegation, disg-
uring gures the impossibility of guring in such a way that
the ungurable appears as a disappearing in and through
the faults, ssures, cracks, and tears of gures. (230)
In other words, and in terms of my own spectrological argument, Tay-
lors third epoch, or epistemological reconguration, is dened by a
willingness, as Derrida would put it, to respect the spectrality of the
specterthat is, the impossible possibility of the logos, of the certainly
right decision, of an end, of meaning, and so on. This brings me back
to Leyner. It is, after all, within Taylors third epoch that a critic like
Little positions Leyners work.
According to Little, Leyners work is characteristic of Taylors
late, or successful, postmodernism because it overtly undercuts both
modernisms positive negation of gure and modernist postmodern-
isms positive negation of ground (157).Leyner manages to expose
both the presence and the absence of the trace, or deferred signied,
simultaneously; in so doing, he evades the process of reication that
inevitably occurs when either extreme is privileged. Along with a writer
like Pynchon, Leyner (in Littles opinion) produces texts that carefully
occupy, and thus endorse the reality of, Derridean differance
8
a space
that is neither present nor absent, a space in which meaning endlessly
proliferates. Although Little is primarily interested in demonstrating
the way in which a text like Et Tu, Babe performs this evasion via
a satirical look at mass culture and the idealism of pop art, we can
locate this same effort to avoid hypostatization in Tetherballs. However,
in Tetherballs, Leyners attempt to respect both the materiality and the
immateriality of the signthat is, his desire to respect the specteris
seen less as a comedic negotiation of consumer culture and more as a
concern for the possibility of communication and shared understand-
ing. Nevertheless, it seems evidentgiven the cursive analysis of the
text abovethat Tetherballs, like Et Tu, Babe, can be read as both a pop
critique of modernisms vacuous attempts to re-present presence by
making gure absent [and] a critique of modernist postmodernisms
attempt to re-present presence by making gure all there is (158).
What we see in Leyners work, then, is a satirical repudiation of post-
modernism
9
that continues to reject the modernist impulses that post-
modernism struggled to reject. Quite simply, Leyners work privileges
neither the logocentric nor the logo centric.
That said, Id like to complicate things somewhat. As I pointed out
above, and as I explain in detail in chapter 2, Derridas conception of
88 The Passing of Postmodernism
differance changes subtly over time; in an apparent attempt to account
more obviously for the reication, or transcendental impulse, critics
like Rorty sees contaminating his original theorizations of differance
as a fundamental non-ground for all processes of signication and
representation, Derrida turns in his later more ethics-oriented works to
the model of the specter. This later model functions as a way of more
overtly identifying and embracing the latent idealism that necessarily
haunted concepts like differance, trace, and the supplement while
reafrming them paradoxically as articulations of the illusory nature of
any idealist impulse. Because they fail to embrace this spectral contami-
nation outwardly, Derridas early conceptions of differance are often
viewed as still complicit with, what Taylor understands as, modernist
postmodernism. However, Derridas shift from a theory of differance
to a theory of the specter is, like the current shift in narrative produc-
tion, a shift in emphasis. While the early Derrida is primarily intent
on exposing the problems and dangers of logocentric assumptions, the
later Derrida is far more willing to announce overtly that the lure,
or spectral promise, is necessarily the animating factor in all critical
discussions (his own included).
With this in mind, I would argue that what Taylor and Little iden-
tify as modernist postmodernism can be more correctly and more use-
fully understood if we continue to identify it as postmodernism proper.
10
And, while it is not entirely incorrect to argue that a concept like dif-
ferance is being worked out in Leyners texts, it is more accurate to say
that Leyners work aligns with Derridas later work on specterswhich
cannot be disassociated from his earlier discussions of differance and
trace. And as I suggest in chapter 2, Derridas ethical turn in the late-
1980s marks a larger cultural transition from a postmodern episteme to
a period of renewalism, a period in which the still incomplete project
of modernity is renewed and reassessed in the wake of a postmodern
failure.
11
By reading Derrida (along with the entire shift away from
postmodernism) through Derridas own spectrological framework, it
is possible to see that the teleological impulse, or specter, that ani-
mated the Enlightenment projectthat animated modernitys desire
for meaning, truth, historical progress, and so oninevitably passed on
to postmodernism in the form of a hegemonic mode of logo cen-
tric critique that became increasingly hegemonic. The paradox of a
modernist postmodernism makes sense, then, if we understand it as
the effect of this spectral persistence. What Taylor, and thus Little, see
as a type of inverted modernismthat is, a rejection of depth that
ultimately reafrms depth as surfacespeaks to the way in which the
postmodern mode of critique was necessarily animated by the very tele-
89 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
ological promise, or spectral possibility, that it sought to undermine
nally, that it sought to expose as absolutely immaterial. Like Derridas
later workwhich attempts to account for the inevitability of a certain
spectral compulsion, which seeks to embrace the specter by denying
neither its immateriality (as modernism did) nor its materiality (as
postmodernism ultimately seemed to do)Leyners work stresses and
embraces the necessity of the spectral promise; it reafrms a certain
faith in the possibility of the impossible. In this sense, Leyners work
is less an example of late postmodernism than it is a literary mani-
festation of renewalism. What Im suggesting is that Leyners work
particularly as it is exemplied in Tetherballsspeaks to an emergent
narrative strategy, a strategy that abandons the increasingly nihilistic
(or, we might say, suicidal) trajectory of postmodern metaction while
simultaneously and perhaps paradoxically embracing the postmodern
rejection of a distinctly modernist form of idealism. We might then say
that a renewalist work like Leyners rejects what Slavoj iek critiques
as the celebration of absolute perversitywhich is to say, tentatively
and somewhat crudely, that renewalist forms of narrative can be read
as, what iek has termed, the art of the ridiculous sublime.
From an Ethics of Perversity to an Ethics of Indecision
In his extended discussion of David Lynchs Lost Highway, iek argues
that the art of the ridiculous sublime, as exemplied in Lynchs lms,
is neither a cold postmodern exercise nor a New Age afrmation of
a subconscious Life Energy uniting all events and experiences. High-
lighting the fact that Lynch is associated with both positionsthat is,
some view him as the ultimate deconstructionist ironist while others
insist that his work seriously exposes a Jungian universal subconscious
spiritualized libido (3)iek exposes the way in which a lm like
Lost Highway can be taken seriously if we understand that its seri-
ousness does not signal a deeper spiritual level underlying supercial
clichs, but rather a crazy assertion of the redemptive value of nave
clichs as such (3). As iek suggests, The enigma of this coincidence
of opposites is . . . the enigma of postmodernity itself (3). But, for
iek, this is the enigma of a postmodernity that, if we borrow a
line from ieks The Sublime Object of Ideology, does not fall prey to
any kind of post-modernist traps (7). One of these postmodern-
ist traps, it would seem, is the trap of textual perversity. Associated
specically with the absolute contingency of a cyberspace notion of
hypertext (36), ieks perversity can be understood as unchecked
90 The Passing of Postmodernism
textual play: the perverts universe is the universe of the pure symbolic
order, the signiers game running its course, unencumbered by the
Real of human nitude . . . a universe without closure, unencumbered
by the inertia of the Real (36). In a manner that recalls the logo cen-
trism identied by Taylor, the perverse text refuses closure absolutely
only to inadvertently enact a proto-ideological denial (36). Through
the lter of Lacan, iek explains the paradox of the perverse post-
modern text like this:
The paradox is that this ultimately helpless confusion, this
lack of nal orientation, far from causing an unbearable
anxiety, is oddly reassuring: the very lack of a nal point
of closure serves as a kind of denial which protects us from
confronting the trauma of our nitude, of the fact that our
story has to come to an end at some point. (37)
The answer, or cure, for these false acts of subversion is, iek insists,
the type of textual negotiation we see in the work of a director like
Lynch. Instead of texts that simply abandon the Real as impossibleas
nothing more than the effect of an always contingent symbolic order
iek thus endorses a type of enigmatic postmodernism that refuses
closure within the horizon of the impossible Real, which iek repeat-
edly associates with the unspeakable nature of certain traumatic events.
According to iek, such texts, in typical postmodern fashion, endorse
the reality of an innite number of discursive perspectives (or, as Ken-
neth Burke might put it, terministic screens) while simultaneously
highlighting the fact that each of those perspectives is conned by, or
faced with, an ultimately unrepresentable truth or end: the endlessly
repeated reenactments refer to the trauma of some impossible Real
which forever resists its symbolization (all these different narratives
are ultimately just so many failures to cope with this trauma, with the
contingent abyssal occurrence of some catastrophic Real, like suicide,
apropos of which no why can ever serve as its sufcient explanation)
(38). This is not to say that such texts simply incorporate multiple ver-
sions of a single event, although that certainly could be the case. The
point is that postmodern textssuccessfully enigmatic or notstress
the semantic slippage that necessarily prohibits the possibility of any
conclusive narrative, or representational, act. While iek seems to sug-
gest that the intended representations are always representations of
some unspeakable trauma, it seems obvious, if we follow ieks logic,
that all events are necessarilyand, to some extent, traumaticallyinex-
plicable from the perspective of a distinctly postmodern text.
91 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
In ieks opinion, though, lms like Lost Highway and Blue Velvet
repeatedly and successfully point to the fantasmatic and contingent
nature of any given reality while simultaneously highlighting the inef-
faceable determining factor of the unspeakable and/or impossible Real.
While portraying reality and, indeed, the subject as the fragmentary
effect of innumerable layers of discursive screensfrom popular cul-
tural clichs to bizarre ritual and mundane traditionLynch manages
to incorporate bursts of the incomprehensible or unspeakable. Like
any good Lacanian symptom, these bursts evade full reintegration
into the signifying chain (or, we might say, the plot); they thus repeat
throughout a Lynch lm, appearing in any number of dream-like
images and/or phrases. ieks Lynch puts the two dimensionsreal-
ity and its fantasmatic supplement, surface and its repressedon the
same surface (Ridiculous Sublime 35). By doing so, Lynch successfully
highlights the persistent inuence of the impossible Real while main-
taining the standard postmodern acceptance and celebration of an
inescapable economy of contingent signifying acts. In Lynchs lms the
traumatic kernel, or impossible Real, can only be recognized via a
contingent symbolic order. Understood by iek in terms of its mani-
festation as a symptom, or disruption of the signifying chain, the Real
both threatens and entices. Only once it is spoken, only once it appears
sensicaland is thus reincorporated into the symbolic orderis it once
again satisfactorily alleviated as symptom. To know, or actualize, the Real
is always portrayed as impossible; like the Sartrean desire for the ens
causa sui, or the self-identical subject, the desire for the Real is the
desire for the impossible, the desire for death. Consequently, a lm
like Lost Highway is based on the impossibility of the hero encounter-
ing himself (18). This is, as with the Leyner text discussed above, a
question of self-recognition. Beginning with the main character, Fred
Madison (played by Bill Pullman), hearing a strange message coming
through his home intercom systemDick Laurent is deadthe lm
depicts Freds futile attempts to make sense of a series of increasingly
bizarre events: his eventual transformation into a young man named
Pete (played by Balthazar Getty), his change back into Fred (or Bill
Pullman), and his nal act of speaking the very message he heard at
the beginning into his own intercom system and paradoxically posi-
tioning himself as the very catalyst for the events leading to this nal
utterance. Instead of a nal answer, or stable representation of the
Realin this case, an explanation of the signicance of the motivating
messagewe get a type of circular pattern that works to repeatedly
reintegrate the unrepresentable Real into some contingent yet sensi-
cal reality, or mode of representation. Freds repetitive attempts to
92 The Passing of Postmodernism
apprehend his impossible-real object of desire (i.e., himself) is nec-
essarily prevented by a corresponding series of repressive fantasmatic
constructions, or lters, that ultimately protect the subject from the
incomprehensible trauma of the Real.
12
What we get, then, is a type of
temporal loop that highlights the innite process of apprehending
the Real. And, for iek, this temporal loop is the very loop of the
psychoanalytic treatment in which, after a long detour, we return to
our starting point from another perspective (18).
Although ieks Lacan-inected criteria for a successfully enig-
matic text is far too limiting to be applied to an entire epistemological
transition, his separation of perversity and the art of the ridicu-
lous sublime can be usefully employed to further explain and modify
Littles reading of Leyner and what I have been calling a renewalist
narrative strategy. As I suggested above, a work like Leynersor, more
broadly, recent works of renewalismcan be read as a reaction to
the hegemonic endorsement of a type of iekean perversion. From
a spectrological perspective, this perversion can be seen in any text
that is focused almost exclusively on exposing as illusory the promise
of the impossible end, or the impossible-real object of desirethat
is, the promise of the specters impossible materiality, or presence.
Any number of postmodern texts can be identied as such: from a
popular lm like Waynes World, which simply abandons the concept
of narrative closure (the lm ends with Wayne and Garth offering a
variety of possible conclusions, including a Scooby Doo version that
sees the primary villain exposed as a very minor character in a mask)
to more academically privileged texts like Barthelmes Snow White and
Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49. Still, as with Taylors concept of logo
centrism, ieks perversity tends to suggest a very simplistic this-or-
that schema: either a text is perverse and, thus, unwittingly complic-
it with a type of inverted onto-theology or it works to highlight and
embrace the inescapable paradox of the lure, or the Realthat is,
the possible impossibility of the mimetic act. However, such a schema
excludes the possibility of texts that, while perversely exposing the
illusory nature of modernitys logocentric assumptions, demonstrate
(like the texts of an early Derrida) a certain awareness of the unsus-
tainability of absolute perversity. Such a schema excludes the possibility
that this emergent shift in narrative production is, to a certain degree,
a simple shift in emphasis, a development of a narrative tendency that
was latently present in postmodernism from the beginning. After all,
there is good reason to resist the increasingly prevalent opinion that
all postmodern cultural production can be categorized, simply, as irre-
sponsible and nave nihilism. Unless we are careful, a concept like
93 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
ieks perversity can become dangerously restrictive. The limiting
nature of such a term is, perhaps, most apparent if it is rigorously
applied to a distinctly postmodern and seemingly perverse textlike,
say, The Crying of Lot 49.
The Crying of Lot 49 quite obviously works to expose the depthless
nature of all representational acts. The fact that it works to expose
reality as nothing more than an innite layering of contingent sur-
faces is most obvious when Oedipa Mass, the texts central character,
recalls how her desire to be rescued from her discursively constructed
prison-tower only seemed to be satised by her once boyfriend, Pierce
Inverarity. Oedipa becomes disillusioned when Pierce takes her to Mex-
ico and she sees a painting by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios
Varo, the description of which seems to echo the famous Borges alle-
gory about cartographers, which Baudrillard employs at the beginning
of The Precession of the Simulacra:
a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes,
spun gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower,
embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit
windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to ll the void,
for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships
and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and
the tapestry was the world. (21)
Because of what it suggested, Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front
of the painting and cried (21). We might, given the above discus-
sion, make some tenuous claims about Pynchons use of the term
perverse, but such claims are, perhaps, unnecessary; the specics
of Oedipas realization clearly speak to the texts overall endorse-
ment of the type of perversity in question: She looked down at her
feet and known, then, because of the painting, that what she stood
on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in
her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce
had taken her away from nothing, thered been no escape (21). This
sense of ultimate groundlessnessof reality as a weave, or textile,
of so many intersecting narrative constructionspervades the entire
novel; it is evident in the unstable nature of the stories and rumors
surrounding the Tristero (which exists, in the end, as nothing more
than an unstable sign, or pictograph), and it is further articulated
by the slow dissipation of Oedipas husband, Mucho: Hes losing
his identity. . . . Day by day, [he] is less himself and more generic. He
enters into a staff meeting and the room is suddenly full of people,
94 The Passing of Postmodernism
you know? Hes a walking assembly of a man (140). Just as the basic
events in the novel can be recognized as nothing more than the effects
of an innumerable number of other narratives/textsfor example,
the plot of The Couriers Tragedy, a ctional play that interrupts the
rst half of the novel, begins to echo throughout, or predetermine,
the remainder of the textthe disintegration of Mucho
13
works to
expose history and identity as the contingent interstices of signs with-
out depth, the perpetually unstable effects of Words (150).
Still, even a text as ostentatiously perverse as The Crying of Lot
49 seems to understand that the very promise of the Real it aims to
expose as illusory must be maintained as a possibility, even if we know it
to be a false ideological lure. After all, Oedipa (once she has seemingly
accepted the impossibility of understanding, or locating, the Tristero
and, thus, the nal solution to the mystery of Inverarity) optimistically
attends the crying of lot 49. In other words, a postmodern text like The
Crying of Lot 49 is perverse, but to a degree; it is perverse insofar as
it focuses primarily on the impossibility of apprehending the real and
not the persistent and ironically necessary faith that such apprehension
is possible. As with logo centrism, then, perversity is not synonymous
with postmodernism. It is an emphasis on, or application of, perversity
that marks postmodernism, not perversity itself. To be clear, though: I
am not here simply recasting the argument that postmodernism anti-
utopianism always retains, as Marianne DeKoven puts it, a muted, par-
tial, local, [and/or] diffuse (25) utopianism; such an argument does
not differentiate between the spectral and, thus, unwelcome utopianism
of postmodernism and the subtle, yet strategic, moments when post-
modern texts acknowledge the impossibility of any truly perverse, logo
centric, and/or anti-utopian aesthetic.
14
And, of course, these strategic
moments are what I want to highlight. Another approach, though,
might help to clarify things.
A critic like Little is quite right to identify a process of differ-
ance working itself out in Pynchon (or postmodernism generally, for
that matter). But we should be careful to align Pynchons articulation
of a type of differanceat least in texts like The Crying of Lot 49 and
Gravitys Rainbow
15
with the differance we see employed in Derridas
early texts like Differance, Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology.
The differance of/in Pynchons seminal works is far more identiable
as a type of logo centrism, or perversity than is the differance at
work in Leyners texts. Pynchons early work (unlike Leyners Tetherballs
or, for that matter, Lynchs Lost Highway) is not interested in overtly
performing a pop critique of modernisms vacuous attempts to re-
present presence by making gure absent [and] a critique of modernist
95 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
postmodernisms attempt to re-present presence by making gure all
there is (Little 158). Rather, a text like The Crying of Lot 49 seems to
be emphatically focused on expressing, as iek would have it, the
pure symbolic order, the signiers game running its course, unencum-
bered by the Real of human nitude. Like Derridas early work on
differance, a postmodern text like Pynchons is far more interested in
exposing the fundamental absence of a transcendental signied than
it is in reembracing the possibility suggested and/or promised by its
impossibility. In his essay on paranoia and semiotics in The Crying of
Lot 49, John Johnston makes this point succinctly: In reading the
novel . . . we are compelled to consider paranoia less as a mental aber-
ration than as a specic regime of signs, that is, as a basic type of
organization of signs in which the semiotic or signifying potential is
dominant (47). To a degree, then, it makes sense to read a text like
The Crying of Lot 49which is, I would argue, a signpost of postmod-
ernism generallythe same way that someone like Rorty reads the
early Derrida, or as Taylor reads Johnson. At the same time, though,
we should not ignore the ways in which even the most seemingly per-
verse, or inversely onto-theological, text can subtly express a distinct
awareness of the lures to which it has necessarily succumbed.
As a quintessential postmodern text, The Crying of Lot 49 does
indeed work to eviscerate the sign utterly, challenging the modernist
impulse toward meaning; it aims to expose the dangerous lure of logo-
centrism, the illusion that the sign can be made to signify once and for
all. But as Johnston notes, Oedipa hopes to learn how to move from
sign to reality (67, my emphasis). While this desire ultimately high-
lights how signs themselves possess a seductive power (Johnston 51),
it also speaks to postmodernisms willingness to accept the unavoidable
necessity of a certain promise of the end, a certain teleological lure. In
short, the postmodern text can be dened by an absolute emphasis on
absence, or groundlessness, but this emphasis is often tempered, if only
subtly, by an awareness that the promise of meaninglike, as Derrida
would argue, the messianic or spectral promiseironically and neces-
sarily animates the very discourse that aims to expose such a promise as
an impossible ideological lure. For this reason, the difference between
a postmodern aesthetic and a renewalist one can be reduced, as I have
been suggesting throughout, to a matter of emphasis. The postmodern
text is too caught up in a struggle to repudiate logocentric impulses to
be overtly concerned with the paradoxical and necessary reassertion of
presence that occurs in any articulation of absence. Just as Rorty reads
Derridas early work, we can read the postmodern emphasis on the
unxed nature of the signier as a type of inverted idealism, or negative
96 The Passing of Postmodernism
theology, a reication of the very claims repudiating any and all reifying
impulses. The apparent failure of postmodernism can be read, then,
as the effect of an increasingly persistent and eventually hegemonic
focus on the impossible, the absent, the illusory. This increasingly
emphatic insistence on a type of perverse aesthetic ultimately exposed
the pointlessness of postmodernisms own raison dtre. By failing to
address explicitly the impossibility of its own project, postmodernism
ironically failed to justify its own efcacy: why continue writing about
the futility of writing? Ironically, though, and as I explain in more detail
below (via an analysis of Barths early work), it is this spectral para-
dox that accounts for both the persistence and the perceived failure of
postmodernism, its motivation to continually communicate/represent
the impossibility of communication/representation.
Still, what is important to note at this point is that postmodernism
can be understood via its endorsement of a certain perverse aesthetic,
a perverse aesthetic that cannot be simply discarded, la Taylor and
iek, as a sign of postmodernisms utter complicity with a type of
negative theology. I would argue, in fact, that the work of the major
postmodernistsfor instance, Barthelme, Barth, Pynchon, Coover,
Vonnegut, Ackerendorses, what we might begin to think of as an
ethics of perversity. It is this ethical impulse that accounts for the
didactic tone that typically haunts the postmodern text. Take, for
instance, Vonneguts Breakfast of Champions. Like many of Vonneguts
texts, Breakfast of Champions is narrated by a ctionalized Kurt Von-
negut and includes one of Vonneguts various reoccurring characters:
the curmudgeonly science-ction writer, Kilgore Trout. While Trouts
character typically voices a type of nostalgia for the possibility of truth
and stable meaninghis frequent summations of his various novels
and short stories tend to function as satirical critiques of postmodern
society
16
Vonnegut (as narrator) repeatedly suggests that a writer has
a responsibility to express the impossibility of truth, meaning, stable
categories, order:
As I approached my ftieth birthday, I had become more
and more enraged and mystied by the idiot decisions made
by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity
them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was
for them to behave abominably, and with such abominable
results: They were doing their best to live like people invented
in stories and books. This was the reason Americans shot
each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for
ending short stories and books. (215)
97 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
For this reason, Vonnegut decides to shun storytelling and bring
chaos to order: If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not
in literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world
around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos
instead (215).
17
Grounds for a postmodern metactional imperative,
Vonneguts assumption that the promise of order animating realist
forms of narrative ultimately fosters dangerous impulses is veried by
Dwayne Hoovers rampage at the end of the novel. Signicantly, it
is a novel by Trout that sparks Dwaynes nal violent outburst. After
speed-reading Trouts Now It Can Be Tolda novel written in the form
of a letter from the creator of the universe to the only human on
earthDwayne comes to believe that the novel is actually a letter to
himself and that, as the novel claims, he is the only human in a world
of robots designed to test Dwayne as the prototype for a new race of
beings. Convinced that only he can think or feel, that only he has free
willthat only he is realDwayne decides to attack people at random.
And, when he is nally apprehended by the police, Dwayne fails to
notice his restraints because he believes that he is now on the virgin
planet promised by the book by Kilgore Trout (280). This idea of a
virgin planet is central to Dwaynes rampage. As we are told earlier
in Vonneguts novel, Trouts ctional creator, after apologizing for his
experiments, promises to transfer The Man to a virgin planet. On
this virgin planet, which will eventually include all sorts of creatures
with free will, The Man frequently swims in icy water and screams
out random phrases: The creator never knew what he was going to
yell, since The Creator had no control over him. The Man himself got
to decide what he was going to do nextand why (179). In direct
contrast to Vonneguts own novela novel in which Dwayne, Trout,
and even the author (i.e., Vonnegut) himself are repeatedly identied
as nothing more than effects of intersecting narrative acts
18
Trouts
Now It Can Be Told is represented as a dangerous form of storytelling,
a form of storytelling that encourages its readers to impose hegemonic
order, or a sense of nite meaning, on the arbitrariness that surrounds
them. Echoing the logocentric faith in the transcendental signieda
faith that is inextricably linked to humanist conceptions of autonomy
and free willTrouts virgin planet encourages a dangerous desire
for a nally liberated state of being, a state of being in which, we
might say, all ideological state apparatuses have been dismantled.
19
In the form of an edenic, or utopian, ideal, this virgin planet thus
represents the impossible, the spectral promise.
Although it is certainly fair to say, along with a critic like Peter
Reed, that Trouts work in Breakfast of Champions ultimately brings
98 The Passing of Postmodernism
chaos (74), we should be wary of assuming that Trouts text is not, in
Vonneguts eyes, a lamentable form of storytelling. We should, that is,
be wary of reading Trout as Vonnegut.
20
It is, after all, more accurate
to say that Trouts book brings about violence and oppression, not
chaosor, at least, not the chaos Vonnegut seems to have in mind. In
the end, Trouts book is represented as dangerous because it fails to
celebrate chaos, because it voices frustration with the arbitrary and the
contingent. The irresponsible nature of Trouts text is, perhaps, most
obviously highlighted when it is juxtaposed to Vonneguts book (i.e.,
Breakfast of Champions) as a whole. Like Trouts book, Breakfast of Cham-
pions addresses the problem of free will and the apparently mechanical
processes affecting, or animating, the individual. Quite simply, both
books suggest that reality is an articial construct and that our sense
of autonomy is an illusion of programming. Like Trouts, Vonneguts
suspicion is that human beings are robots, are machines (3). Von-
negut, however, offers no possibility of escape. By entering the text
himself, Vonnegut (as author/creator) overtly rejects the possibility of
an originary position outside the text. Trapped within the same economy
of textuality that imprisons his creations, Vonnegut is repeatedly faced
with his own lack of autonomy. Without any real authority, Vonnegut
must accept the fact that his characters are, for the most part, beyond
his control. Even his attempt to free Trouta moment, we should
note, that directly parallels Trouts conception of a creator speaking
to his creationseems hollow; Trout (and, indeed, Vonnegut) remain
in text and Trouts one real desire (to be made young again) remains
an ignored and impossible dream. The suggestion is that the type of
freedom Vonnegut offers Trout, and that Trouts creator inadvertently
promises Dwayne, is impossible.
21
With this in mind, we might read the
opening lines of Vonneguts later work, Jailbird, as an overt reafrma-
tion of reality as an inescapable play of signiers: YesKilgore Trout
is back again. He could not make it on the outside (9).
What we see in a work of overt metaction like Breakfast of Cham-
pions is the extent to which a certain ethics of perversity informs,
or animates, the postmodern aesthetic. Vonnegut, if we can apply
Hutcheons phrasing, seems intent on pointing out that postmodern
relativity and provisionality are not causes for despair; they are to be
acknowledged as perhaps the very conditions of historical knowledge
(Politics 64). But, with such a claim in mind, we are immediately faced
again with the problematic situation Rorty identies in the early work
of Derrida; we are faced, that is, with a supposedly post-ideological
imperative that, because it demands a rigorous critique of something as
big as logocentrism, needs to be understood as one more logocentric
hallucination (Is Derrida 139). A type of ineffaceable remainder,
99 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
or revenant, the logocentric impulse returns, as Taylor argues, at the
very moment it seems to be nally placed to restthat is, identied as
immaterial, as impossible, as a dangerous and beguiling illusion. At
the same time, though, it is important to stress that Vonnegut does
offeror rather, promisesTrout freedom. Of course, this freedom is
ultimately identied as impossible, as a promise that will always be yet
to come; but the fact that Vonnegut makes the offer speaks to a post-
modern willingness to accept the necessity of the promise and, thus,
the belief that the promise can be fullled. Still, Vonneguts overtly
postmodern desire to critique something as big as logocentrism does
result in a certain didactic and/or political tone. And, as I have dem-
onstrated throughout, this tone that haunts the general spectrum of
postmodern production can be understood as the effect of a latent
and paradoxically impossible ideal: the ideal of nally exposing, if not
wholly abandoning, all ideals as impossible.
The work of Kathy Acker is a good illustration of this paradox.
Via its desire to expose reality as the effect of hegemonic ideological
apparatuses, Ackers work comes to repeat the very ideological ges-
tures it aims to critique and, nally, discard as dangerously false. In
the work of a writer like Acker, we get the distinct sense of a virtually
hegemonic ethical imperative, an imperative that typically results in
the angry and, at times, violent repudiation of all spectral promises.
Perhaps not surprisingly, when this latent idealisman idealism, of
course, that is quite distinct from the subtle proto-renewalist accep-
tance of the transcendental lure we see in Derrida, Pynchon, Vonnegut,
and othersbecomes hegemonic, the distinctive humor and irony of
postmodernism is often effaced. In Ackers texts we thus see the post-
modern ethics of perversity at its most imperativewhich is to say that
in texts like Ackers postmodernisms spectral contamination becomes
most obvious. The specter (or, we might say, the ordeal of indecision)
is stripped of its ironic duality; all that seems to remain in Ackers
work is one aspect of the specter, one aspect of indecision. By emphati-
cally suggesting that we are ethically compelled to reject the spectral
promise of identity (of an end, of reality, of a nal decision, etc.) as
an immaterial lure, Ackers texts paradoxically betray the postmodern
desire for a utopian state of absolute, or purely mythic, indecision, a
state in which no decision is necessary, a state in which the correct, or
mythic, decision is nally known. In short, Ackers textstexts that, as
Christina Milletti suggests, are dened by Ackers terrorist aesthetics
(353)are particularly representative of postmodernism at the point
of outright imperiousness: when it is most obviously dependent upon
the very spectral promise(s) it is striving to repudiate as impossible,
as dangerously false and restrictive.
100 The Passing of Postmodernism
Take, for example, Ackers In Memoriam to Identity. Not only
does the title of the text suggest an explicitly perverse aesthetic,
the stories of the three central charactersRimbaud, Airplane, and
Capitolrepeatedly challenge and problematize the politics of identity,
working to expose as illusory the dangerous and hegemonic constructs
that determine our reality. Like her other texts (Empire of the Sense-
less, for instance), In Memoriam to Identity persistentlyand, we might
say, violently
22
explodes the illusion of what Acker seems to identify
consistently as a restrictive and patriarchal symbolic order. A text like
In Memoriam is thus lled with moral outrages: rape, pedophilia, incest,
a mix of all three. The sense we get is that the arbitrary categories we
passively accept as reality impose dangerous restrictions upon our
perception of the world, and thus our desire. Like Vonnegut, Acker sug-
gests that our desire to avoid the uncertainty and instability of chaos
results in violent efforts to cling to the ideological interpellations that
provide us with a sense of self and/or solidity. Consequently, and in a
manner that makes Dwayne Hoovers rampage in Breakfast of Champions
seem perfectly benign, Ackers characters nd themselves participat-
ing in all manner of violent and obsessive acts, acts that are typically
animated by an ideologically determined desire to reafrm a certain
patriarchal order, and thus certain comforting categories of identity.
Acker, though, opposes this dangerous logo(or, phallogo)centrism with
her own type of textual violence. Her overt use of syntactic ambiguity,
pastiche, and characters that defy categorizationher characters are
often transgendered, bisexual, cybernetic, and so onforces us to rec-
ognize the untenable nature of our logocentric assumptions.
Ultimately, then, Ackers texts seem to endlessly repeat a single
lesson, a single perverse ethical imperative: only when we have rec-
ognized and accepted the logocentric assumptions of modernity as
illusory are we truly free and responsible for our own actions. Milletti
puts it like this:
Ackers message is clear: if language is inected with sys-
tems of power, then readers must begin to recognize their
culpability within the discourses they embody or reject, and
become equally accountable in the endeavor to resist those
structures of power that marginalize the Other. Ackers prose
is therefore specically designed to shock readers into an
awareness of the normative systems they embody. (360)
Texts like In Memoriam attack the social order that controls norma-
tive constructions of identity (361). Acker thus works to expose the
fact that even something as seemingly real as biology is . . . nothing
101 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
less than a material ploy (363). The suggestion is that, by realizing
and embracing this fact, we can begin to frustrate the hegemonic sys-
tem of codes imposed by the prevailing social order. Indeed, Airplane
and Capitol seem to become more and more liberated as In Memoriam
progresses; and, not surprisingly, this sense of liberty is intimately tied
to a disintegration of gender barriers. Toward the end of the text, in
fact, we are told that Capitol could use her feminine or masculine
charms to persuade (202) and that Harry (one of Capitols lovers)
could love this man or woman without being upset by her need to be
alone (229). As I suggested above, though, this ostentatiously didactic
endorsement of a postmodern ethics of perversity highlights the way
in which postmodernism was necessarily animated by the very idealism,
or utopianism, it strove to dismantle and reject; instead of the illusion
of xed gender categories, racial barriers, class distinctions, or what-
ever, postmodernism seemed to be offering us the idealistic and xed
assumption that such illusions had to be and, thus, could be rejected
once and for all. In short, and in a manner that speaks to postmod-
ernisms most rigid rejections of humanist teleology, texts like Ackers
necessarily begin to echo a distinctly humanist mantra: this is how, or
what, humanity is supposed to be.
23
As Zygmunt Bauman suggests in
Postmodernity and Its Discontents, postmodernism ultimately and perhaps
more and more obviously seemed to be rejecting modernitys quest
for purity by reinscribing a utopian quest of its own.
24
Such quests,
though, Bauman argues, inevitably become obsessed with the possibility
of a nal expulsion of impuritywhich we might understand, simply,
as a nal expulsion of the ironic spectrality of the specter. And, as we
see with Acker and Vonnegut, an increasingly didactic and/or political
tone speaks to the reality of a distinctly postmodern quest for pervasive
anti-foundationalism, a quest that became increasinglyor, better, more
obviouslydependent upon the very spectral promise (of an end, a nal
solution, a state of pure indecision, etc.) that it sought to exorcise.
Of course, this didactic/political tonewhile most ostentatious
in the work of Vonnegut and Acker, as well as a writer like Tom Rob-
binsis necessarily evident, to one degree or another, throughout the
general spectrum of postmodern cultural production. Even the work of
Pynchon, which often seems to temper its distinctly perverse ethics,
is susceptible to this didacticism. Jerry Varsavas article on Thomas
Pynchon and Postmodern Liberalism makes just this claim: I read
Pynchon as an exponent of liberalism, though not a retro-liberalism
determined by the social and political exigencies of 1776 or the 1930s,
but a postmodern version shaped by both liberal traditions and those
cultural circumstances and impetuses peculiar to the late twentieth
century (64). Varsava, in short, views Pynchons postmodernism as
102 The Passing of Postmodernism
representative of Rortys concept of postmodern liberalism, a liberalism
that insists on plurality and (one assumes, following Rorty) the celebra-
tion of the private liberal ironist. Resistant to both the excesses of
libertarianism and the hegemony of consensus, this strain of liberal-
ism (which, as I suggested in the previous chapter, could be read as a
dening characteristic of postmodernism generally) endorses a Rortian
concept of pragmatism that denies absolutely the possibility of closure,
consensus, or some nal vocabulary. Viewed (from the perspective
of the postmodern liberal) as the remains of an outmoded Enlighten-
ment project, these logocentric concepts must be rejected utterly
if we wish to avoid slipping back into the stiing discourse of meta-
physics. However, Rortian postmodern pragmatism inevitably enters
into public discourse, becoming itself a type of reied nonground for
consensus. As we saw with Derrida, then, the postmodern pragmatism
that Varsava locates in Pynchon, and that seems to be so obviously at
work in Acker, is symptomatic of an effort to ee and/or deny the very
thing that animates postmodernism as a discourse: the specter it senses
haunting its own critique of the specter (of teleology, of transcendental-
ism, of onto-theology, of negative theology, of metaphysics, etc.)or,
more specically, the utopian specter represented by the teleological
aporia of the still incomplete project of modernity.
This paradoxical aporia is, quite simply, the specter of postmod-
ernismor, we might say at this point, the specter of a perverse ethics,
the very ethics that denes the postmodern aesthetic. It is, moreover,
the inability, or unwillingness, to identify this aporia overtly and embrace
it as the necessary element of any radical discourse that denes the
apparent failure of postmodernism. Assuming, then, that postmod-
ernism is indeed dened by the specic spectral relationship I have
detailed above, we might begin to view any narrative strategy that func-
tions as a critique of postmodernisms spectrological failurethat, in
other words, attempts to transcend overtly the hegemonic reversals of
an aesthetic that increasingly insisted upon an ethics of perversityas
symptomatic of an emergent narrative form that can no longer be
called, with any real accuracy, postmodernism.
What Little, Taylor, and iek (above) understand as proper,
or late, postmodernismthat is, the solution to the nave, or per-
verse, ideological inversions practiced by a past modernist postmod-
ernismcan thus be viewed as instances of a narrative impulse that
is emerging in the wake of postmodernism. Following ieks concept
of an art of the ridiculous sublime, we might say that this emergent
aesthetic has a tendency to manifest stylistically (in certain instances,
at least) as postmodernism. David Lynch is, after all, embraced by
103 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
most critics, and with good reason, as a postmodern writer/director.
But I would argue that the dening characteristic of these emergent
narrative forms isas we saw in the work of Leynertheir insistence
on the possibility of what they paradoxically continue to expose as
impossible: meaning, truth, mimesis, telos, communal understanding,
and communication. Like Derridas later work, these texts are overtly
focused on the ironic nature of the spectral promise, its impossible
possibility; they work to expose the necessity of respecting the specter,
of embracing the irony of relation without relation, meaning with-
out meaning, religion without religion, and so on. Moving beyond
the restrictions of ieks Lacanian-inected criteria, we can begin to
reread much of the recent narrative production that continues to be
labeled postmodern as advocating a type of spectral relationship that
is in anything but postmodern. Tim OBriens The Things They Carrieda
text that, on the surface, seems to simply redeploy the postmodern
and/or metactional strategies we see played out in the work of writ-
ers like Pynchon and Vonnegutis a perfect example of the way in
which recent narrative production attempts to renew the postmodern
evasion of hegemonic discourses by abandoning the postmodern, and
hegemonic, imperative that the basic goal of all aesthetic production
is to expose as illusory the apparent materiality of the specter, or uto-
pian promise.
A novel that is also a collection of short stories, The Things They
Carried employs a variety of distinctly postmodern strategies. Not only
does its very form challenge traditional generic categories, it overtly
aims to frustrate our ability to apprehend an event. In a manner that
recalls Vonneguts workand parallels LeynersOBriens text is, for
the most part, presented as a type of autobiography. Both rst-person
and third-person accounts are offered; in the former, OBrien is the
narrator; in the latter, a character. As a result, the line between the c-
tionalized narrator and the author himself is much more tenuous then
it is in the work of Vonnegut or Leyner. The text refuses to supply overt
markers that might lead us to assume that an event described didnt
actually happen. As far as the typical reader is aware, the OBrien that
narrates is the very same OBrien whose name appears on the cover
of the published text.
25
This overt evasion of categorization is only
exasperated by the twenty-two interconnecting stories that make up the
text proper. Concerned with the exploits of a certain Alpha Company
during the Vietnam War, these stories tend to repeat themselves; events
that were described in one story are recounted in another, but never
with the same result. At times, in fact, the individual stories directly
contradict one another. In The Man I Killed, for instance, we are
104 The Passing of Postmodernism
given a harrowing rst-person account of the trauma OBrien endured
after killing a seemingly innocent Viet-Cong soldier. In the later Good
Form, though, OBrien denies that he participated in the event: I
want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail
near the village My Khe. I did not kill him (179). Ultimately, the text
as a whole begins to seem circularor, more accurately, and in terms
of the spiral-like process I associated with Derridean indecision, and
which we can now view in light of iekean repetition discussed above,
it insistently returns to the events in question, always trying (in earnest)
to get it right. Steven Kaplan puts it like this: the facts about an event
are given; they are quickly qualied or called into question; from this
uncertainty emerges a new set of facts about the same subject that are
again called into questionon and on, without end (45).
This circular (or spiral) movement is overtly addressed in the
story Speaking of Courage, a story that details the problems one
of the Alpha Company (i.e., Norman Bowker) encounters after he
returns home. Unable to explainor rather, to representthe trauma
he suffered while at war, Bowker repeatedly circles the lake near his
home. This compulsive movement around the lake is, I would argue,
a direct representation of OBriens own attempts to get the story right.
OBrien, in fact, tells us in the following story (i.e., Notes) that
Speaking of Courage was written in response to Bowkers own sug-
gestion that OBrien had failed to tell the truth in his earlier novel,
If I Die in a Combat Zone. Consequently, by the time we read In the
Field, the story (following Notes) that details the specic event that
traumatized Bowkerthat is, the sight of a fellow solider drowning
in a eld of shitwe realize that each of OBriens stories can be
read as just another pass around the lake. Following a critic like Tina
Chen, then, we might argue that Bowkers story explicitly highlights
the way in which OBriens work insists upon multiple returns (81).
But what is particularly important to note is that each pass, or return,
seems to be animated by a very sincere desire to arrive at a nal
representationor, as in the case of Bowker, a cleansing step into
the lake itself. Indeed, as Mark Taylor suggests, a desire for truth
forces OBrien to go over ground again [and, we should add, again
and again] (OBriens War 223).
This compulsion to get it righta compulsion that results in a dis-
tinctly spiral-like aesthetic patternbecomes particularly overt when
OBrien attempts to describe the death of Curt Lemon: if I could ever
get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick
him up and lift him high into a tree, if I could somehow re-create the
fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious effect, then
105 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
you would believe the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him
mustve been the nal truth (84). Told again and again in How to
Tell a True War Story, the story of Curt Lemons death comes to be
understood, in a rather postmodern fashion, as transphenomenal, as
impossible to get just right. But, unlike the typical postmodern text that
would be interested primarily in exposing the promise of the truthful
account as dangerous idealism, OBriens text insists on the importance
of the narrative return, on the possibility of the impossible Real. The
promise of the truththe promise, that is, of the true war story, the
true autobiographyis given privileged status in OBriens text even
though it is endlessly deferred. Thus OBrien repeatedly performs, what
we might think of as, the Derridean gamble; his text overtly embraces
the the test and ordeal of the undecidable (Force of Law 253). The
spiral-like returns in The Things They Carried stress the responsibility of
making a (narrative) decision, of having faith in the possibility that a
correct decision is possible, while simultaneously acknowledging that
the absolutely correct decision is always still to come. With each story
in The Things They Carried OBrien wagers on the possibility of truth,
on the possibility of the transcendental signied. So, while it seems
reasonable to assume, as does a critic like Catherine Calloway, that the
metactional strategies in The Things They Carried lead [the reader] to
question the ambiguous nature of reality (251), it is probably more
accurate to say that epistemological doubt in OBriens work, as in
Leyners, is repeatedly identied as the very thing that animates the
promise of certainty.
OBriens more recent In The Lake of the Woods explores this para-
dox even further. The narrator clearly suggests that the promise of
certainty animating his story is necessarily a condition of inexhaustible
doubt: The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence eternal
doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. Its a standoff. The human
desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma (266). Not sur-
prisingly, the concept of the wager is a recurrent theme throughout
Lake of the Woods. The main characters, John and Kathy Wade, are,
in fact, haunted by the guilt of a bad wager (158). For this reason,
John Wade is driven by a desire to be free of the decision-making
process, to be free of the responsibility associated with the gamble:
The magician in him. Likes to rig up the cards. Lucks irrelevant
(223). However, and in a manner that reads like an implicit critique of
postmodernisms insistence on an ethics of perversity, Wades attempts
to eschew his responsibility by transforming reality into mere illusion
are repeatedly countered by the narrators persistent efforts to piece
together, or take gambles on, the events that lead to Kathy Wades
106 The Passing of Postmodernism
mysterious disappearance: I prowl and smoke cigarettes. I review my
notes. The truth is at once simple and bafing: John Wade was a pro.
He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture.
No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on (266). The possibility of
the certainly right decisionthat is, in this case, the nally accurate
narrative representationis, in other words, repeatedly represented as
necessarily contingent upon its impossibility. This paradox is, as Der-
rida would remind us, the paradox of the specter.
My argument is this: the forms of narrative that have begun
to emerge after postmodernism are marked by an overt willingness
to respect both sides of the spectral equation. The shift away from
postmodernism can thus be understood as an epistemological shift in
emphasis, a shift from a postmodern ethics of perversity to a renewalist
ethics of indecision. While the postmodern aesthetic can be dened
by a need to expose the impossibility of the mimetic textor, what
amounts to the same thing, the messianic promisethe shift away from
postmodern metaction is marked by a pronounced realization that
faith in, or a gamble on, the possibility of absolute certainty must
necessarily haunt any claim or narrative act, even the claim that such
faith is a dangerous ideological illusion. And it is this overtly renewed
faith in an impossible projecta revenant of the Enlightenment,
as it werethat seems to dene the narrative forms associated with
the current epistemic shift away from postmodernism. However, as we
saw via a discussion of Derridas more recent work, this willingness to
respect the specters spectrality only seems to be respect; it is ultimately
and necessarily a type of renewed disrespect. That said, I would like to
move slowly in terms of identifying this lack of respect in the narrative
strategies identied above as renewalist. What is important to note, at
this point, is the fact that this renewalist trend extends well beyond the
small group of recent texts that remain outwardly (at least) postmod-
ern. Indeed, and not surprisingly, we can locate this same renewalist
shift in the neo-realism that a variety of critics, since the early 1990s,
have associated with the passing of postmodernism.
Metactions Failure and the Rise of Neo-Realism
If we were to wager on itwager, that is, on the exact moment when
the passing of postmodernism became undeniably imminent1989
would be, as I suggested in chapter 2, a fairly safe bet. Following
a writer like Raymond Federman, we might in fact argue that the
rst symptoms of some terminal epistemological illness became irre-
107 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
futable on December 22, 1989the day Beckett died.
26
However, we
might also argue (perhaps more accurately) that a certain undeni-
able epistemological collapse occurred a month earlierwhen the
Berlin Wall fell (and, with it, the last viable political alternative). But
perhaps we should cast the net wider; the mid- to late-1980s saw a
number of events that seemed to herald the impending decline of
one aesthetic dominant (i.e., postmodern metaction) and the emer-
gence of another (i.e., neo-realism): the journal Granta published
an issue dedicated to American dirty realism;
27
neo-realist writers
like Raymond Carver began to rise in status; Beckett died; Tom Wolfe
published his Literary Manifesto for the New Social Novel;
28
and
the Berlin Wall fell, suggesting the nal triumph of capitalism. Taken
together, these events quite clearly signal a new period of mourning.
Yet, as I suggested above, the fall of the Berlin Wall resonates with
particular signicance. Given that postmodernism is typically dened
by its opposition to all latent utopian impulses, the fall of the last
viable political alternative (i.e., the utopian promise of communism)
seemingly speaks to the victory and hegemony of a distinctly postmod-
ern, or late-capitalist, ideology. Not surprisingly, then, it is at the very
moment when this victory is imminent, when postmodernism seems
to have become the very thing it aimed to destroy, that we begin to
see signs of an emergent epistemological conguration. That is, this
emergent epoch seems to mourn the apparent loss of the very ideal-
istic alternatives that postmodernism strove to efface. And if we recall
Derridas take on mourning this period can be dened by its desire
to get overor, rather, to lay to rest nallythat which came before.
This particular work of postmodern mourning becomes most evident in
the early-1990swhen critics began to make claims about the fact that
the high-tide of postmodernism had nally begun to crash
29
and
that a new form of realism had begun to emerge in its wake. Indeed,
with the First Stuttgart Seminar in Cultural Studiesa conference
in 1991 that included writers like Ihab Hassan, John Barth, Raymond
Federman, William Gass, and Malcolm Bradbury, and that was aptly
titled The End of Postmodernism: New Directionscritics began to
formally conrm an apparent shift in stylistic privilege. Since then,
I would argue, we have been engaged in a process of mourning, a
process that sees us trying to break nally with postmodernismor,
at the every least, trying to break nally with postmodernisms spec-
tral impulse to exorcise all specters once and for all. After all, since
the beginning of the 1990s, the suggestion has been that, for one
reason or another, postmodernism failed and that its failure, via the
emergence of a new form of realism, was inevitable. In short, and in
108 The Passing of Postmodernism
a manner that highlights my own claims regarding a certain spec-
tral passing, critics have increasingly stressed the fact that the basic
imperative that animated postmodernism paradoxically necessitated
its demise. And, so, in order to understand how this apparent shift
from metaction to neo-realism played out, we must rst examine the
critical commentary that has developed over the last couple decades
a commentary, I should add, that isnt always anti-postmodern.
According to Federman, the search for the means to put an end
to thingsan end to language, an end to literatureis what enabled
the postmodern discourse to perpetuate itself (Part One 48).
30
This
aporia, this movement that is animated by a desire to expose the futil-
ity, or impossibility, of movement thus becomes the primary cause of
postmodernisms departure:
Obviously, [the postmodernists] work could only be marked
by doubt and distrust, but especially self-doubt, which, how-
ever, the stubborn but clever writer, who faced at the same
time the impossibility and the necessity of writing, quickly
turned to self-reexiveness, which for a while at least, helped
him survive so he could continue to destroy the novel he
was in the process of writing. (Part One 58)
For someone like Federman, as with many of the critics who attended
the Stuttgart Seminar, this is not really a failure so much as it is the
inevitable trajectory of an anti-idealist avant-garde movement. As his
later critical work (particularly in the recent Symploke issue dedicated
to the present state of ction) suggests, Federman sees the current
rejection of the postmodern aporia as lamentable, as an effect of an
increasingly homogonous literary marketplace. For Federman, recent
works of realism are less concerned with reality than are works of
high-postmodernism: Most of the books published today no longer
concern themselves with reality, but with the melo-dramatized image
of reality projected by mass media (164). Federman thus positions the
self-reexive and fragmented works that aimed to expose the illusion
of reality as (and however paradoxical it may sound) more realistic than
recent works of realism. Such an argument, of course, simply speaks
to the way in which a certain teleological specter necessarily animated
the various postmodern attempts to exorcise the specter of a realist, or
teleological, impulse/imperative. Indeed, postmodernism ultimately
nds itself asserting an anti-realist stance as the most realistic, as the
most moral.
31
The sense we get from Federman is that the death of
postmodernism speaks to its success, not its failure; only a truly avant-
109 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
gardeand, thus, moral and/or accuratemovement could write
itself to the brink of self-destruction. From this distinctly postmodern
perspective, the death of postmodernism is simply an understandable
interruption, an inevitable reconguration of a radical and ongoing
project: because it carried in itself its own demise (epistemological
and ontological doubt conveyed through disjointed formal structures)
Postmodernism had either to die or go elsewhere and become some-
thing else, which is what it did, even though it continues to be called
by the same name (Part One 52). Federman, as he eventually makes
clear, is referring here to the type of ction discussed above:
32
texts
that, at least outwardly, seem postmodern yet somehow renew the nar-
rative possibilities that postmodernism denied. These works, and not
the the uninspired Minimalist K-Mart ction of the last decade (52),
33
are, for Federman, the result of an interruptive transformation of the
postmodern avant-garde spirit. Unfortunately, though, such texts are
being out-marketed by the easy realism that Federman sees cluttering
the shelves at his local bookstore.
Unfortunately, a position like Federmans is simply too nostalgic
to be useful. Still, he is right to stress the central aporia that animated
the postmodern movement, and his virtually modernist insistence on
the privileged status of the postmodern avant-gardean insistence that
echoes Lyotards often utopian claims
34
highlights the hegemonic
position postmodernism eventually came to occupy. Federmans lament
for the growing rejection of an avant-garde spiritfor the privileged
status of difcult and impenetrable textscan be read as symptomatic
of the awkward position in which postmodernism seemed to nd itself.
Put differently, Federmans take on the demise of postmodernism sug-
gests the possibility that postmodernism didnt fail because it tried
to make claims about the futility of attempting to speak the truth; it
failed because it continued to speak, because it continued to make and
privilege truth claims about the impossibility of making such claims
(while, for the most part, failing to overtly articulate the fact that such
claims were necessarily and ironically animated by the latent belief that
the truth could nally be expressed). Postmodernism failed because it
didnt die as it should have. Instead, its increasingly loud movement
toward silence and/or the absolute denial of objective truth claims
became dogmatic, institutionalized, and programmatic. As a result, and
by the late-1980s, we see previously propostmodern theorists criticiz-
ing the apparent hegemony of the postmodern project. Ihab Hassan,
for instance, begins making gestures toward the need for a new and
liberated aesthetic formwhat he tentatively calls, following William
Gass, operatic realism (136). In Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and
110 The Passing of Postmodernism
Beyond, Hassan explicitly calls for a return to belief and public
criticism (149), arguing that the hegemony of postmodernisms theo-
retical claims has damaged our ability to embrace literature and the
possibility of social critique.
Signicantly, Hassan cites the postmodern imperative to be inac-
cessible, or utterly private, as an example of this absurdor, we
might say, paradoxicalwithdrawal from public discourse: Jonathan
Culler tries to make that case by denouncing the ideology of lucid-
ityhow bizarre in a scholar opposed to elitismand Derrida offers
a more considered argument against the ideal of universal translat-
ability, from every language to every other, that the university cher-
ishes (149). The fact that everything is now homogenously identied
as ideology (or politics, or discourse, or whatever)that, in short, all
distinctions have been identied as tenuous illusionsbecomes, for
Hassan, a sign of decadence and moral vacuity.
35
In a more recent
article, Towards an Aesthetic of Trust, Hassan suggests that Beyond
postmodernism, beyond the evasions of poststructuralist theories
and pieties of postcolonial studies, we need to discover new rela-
tions between selves and others, margins and centers, fragments and
wholesindeed, new relations between selves and selves, margins and
margins, centers and centersdiscover what I call a new, pragmatic
and planetary civility. (204) This is, for Hassan, a call to reafrm faith
in certain forms of pragmatic, or contingent, truths. It is a call for trust.
Of course, as his earlier take on the subject anticipates, Hassan turns to
(neo)realism as an aesthetic form that reafrms the possibility of such
trust. Without stretching his argument too far, I would venture that
Hassans call for new relations speaks to a much broader renewalist
call for, what Derrida would understand as, relations without relation,
trust without trust, and so on. This call for trust is, after all, as Has-
san tentatively suggests, a matter of reafrming a certain postmodern
spirit, or spiritual attitude (210). It is, in other words, a matter
of having faith in, or making a decision based on, what we know to
be unfounded: the specter that is and is not: I need only repeat that
duciary realisma postmodern realism, if anydemands faith and
empathy and trust precisely because it rests on nothing, the nothing-
ness within all representations, the nal authority of the void (210).
Hassans position thus speaks to much of the more recent criticism on
neo-realism, criticism that typically stresses the past hegemony of high-
postmodernism and the need for a form of ction that is no longer
conned by a corrosive and socially impractical aesthetic imperative,
however paradoxical such an imperative might have been. In brief,
and somewhat crudely put, neo-realism, if not renewalism generally, is
a direct reaction to the apparent hegemony of postmodernism.
111 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
In Recent Realist Fiction and the Idea of Writing After Post-
modernism, Gnter Leypoldt uses a recent Coen Brothers lm to
highlight this apparent reaction to postmodernisms hegemonyor,
perhaps, exhaustion. In The Man Who Wasnt There, the protagonist,
Ed Crane (played by Billy Bob Thornton), after being accused of
murder, is defended by an attorney named Freddy Riedenschneider
(played by Tony Shalhoub). A satirical representation of the typical
postmodern hero, Riedenschneider is so convinced that reality is noth-
ing more than an effect of contingent representations he attempts
to defend Crane by arguing that what really happened can never
really be known, for the The more you look, the less you really
know. Riedenschneider, though (and this is Leypoldts point), loses
the case, and Crane is really sentenced to death. As Leypoldt argues,
Riedenschneiders xation on uncertainty recalls the playful skepti-
cism of the metactional tradition, but in contrast to the heroically
self-reexive philosopher narrators of classic postmodernism, he is por-
trayed as moronic, vain, and ultimately feckless (20). For Leypoldt,
the presence of a character like Riedenschneider in a Hollywood lm
speaks to the way in which the metactional and fabulist devices lost
their subversive edge and began to seem less interesting, less progres-
sive, because they had been repeated so often that the self-proclaimed
literature of replenishment began to appear no less trite than the lit-
erature of exhaustion it had set out to replenish (26). While I think it
is somewhat incorrect to construct postmodernism as a self-proclaimed
literature of replenishment that sought to move beyond some past
literature of exhaustionthe terms exhaustion and replenish-
ment, it seems to me (and following Barth), are both applicable to
postmodernismLeypoldts claim that postmodernism became hege-
monically repetitive is indicative of a general critical opinion regarding
the rationale for the emergence of a type of neo-realism.
36
As Robert L. McLaughlin puts it, the emergence of forms of neo-
realism can be, and typically is, read as a response to the perceived
dead-end of postmodernism: a dead end that has been reached
because of postmodernisms detachment from the social world and
immersion in a world of non-referential language, its tendency to
disappear up its own asshole (Post-Postmodern Discontent 55). As
McLaughlin suggests, postmodernism has come to be viewed as an
aesthetic failure because it tried to deny what, as I demonstrated in the
previous chapter via a discussion of Rorty and Derrida, it could never
deny without descending into absolute silence: the relevance of the
public, or social sphere. Forms of new realism, like the later work of
Derrida, outwardly embrace the impossible and futile project of becom-
ing utterly private, a project (McLaughlin is quick to point out) that
112 The Passing of Postmodernism
the majority of postmodernists never seemed to be completely invested
in to begin with:
37
We can think of this aesthetic sea change, then, as
being inspired by a desire to reconnect language to the social sphere
or, to put it another way, to re-energize literatures social mission, its
ability to intervene in the social world, to have an impact on actual
people and the actual social institutions in which they live their lives
(Post-Postmodern Discontent 55).
From the perspective of a neo-realist, then, the failure of post-
modernism is twofold. On the one hand, its apparent self-afrmation as
an anti-ideological discourse, a discourse that privileged individualism
and solipsism over the illusion of communal bonds and the possibility
of communication, seems quite naturally to parallel the progress of
modernization. Consistent with the trajectory of modern avant-garde
movements, postmodernisms value as a subversive discourse ends
when its dominance appears evident. Not surprisingly, this moment
for postmodernism is heralded by many critics of neo-realism by the
fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold Waror, rather, the
end of the last viable utopian ideal/impulse. On the other hand, the
postmodern withdrawal from public and/or social discoursethat is,
the postmodern imperative to be inaccessible, to expose as illusory the
ideal of shared experience and communal understandingbecomes
itself a very public (because academically dominant) claim. An aes-
thetic that aimed to dismantle binary distinctions, that attempted,
more specically, to destabilize the opposition between high and low
culture, becomes itself an aesthetic of the elite. It is, after all, the elit-
ism of postmodernism that most critics identify as its most glaring
failure. Postmodernisms increasingly emphatic insistence on inacces-
sibilityon, that is, the utterly private discourse or, rather, the futility
of the social or public textbecame a dominant ideal, a standard in
academia and the artistic community. For critics like Mark Shechner,
then, the return of realism speaks to the victory of the popular and,
thus, the relevance of the public: Metaction was a concept-ridden
ction, whose appreciation depended mainly upon an understanding
and acceptance of inated and dubious concepts for which we have
now less patience (38). From this perspective, A realist revival might
be thought of as the revenge of common sensibility, a demotic upsurge
of taste from social orders that lack the leisure, and the will, to cultivate
mandarin sensibilities (39).
This positiona position that is echoed in much of the cur-
rent criticism on the emergence of neo-realismtends to ignore the
broader affects of postmodernism and thus the fact that its dominance
extended far beyond university walls. On a certain level, postmodern-
113 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
ism did indeed penetrate the popular front. In fact, it is postmodern-
isms eventual omni-presence that seems nally to efface its efcacy as
a subversive and revolutionary aesthetic program. As McLaughlin notes
in a more recent article, postmodernisms increasingly hegemonic cel-
ebration of heteroglossia and plurality has been nally co-opted and
thus pacied by extremist groups and fundamentalists on the political
right: the Right is using the forms of postmodernism with a clearly
nonpostmodern agenda. That is, they make their attacks not by insist-
ing on the truth of their position or rightness of their claims but by
gestures toward rhetorical situations, dialogism, and respecting others
in their otherness (Distracting Discourses 5960). Postmodernisms
very strategies have become, in short, aligned with the very thing they
sought to undermine: fundamentalism (in all its forms). The omni-
presence of, if not fundamentalist insistence on, postmodern plurality
has, in brief, effaced the possibility of that plurality. Or, as Katherine
Hayles and Todd Gannon suggest in a recent article, things have sim-
ply become too postmodern to be postmodern any longer. Hayles and
Gannon, though, associate the hegemony and, in turn, death of a
postmodern reality with the 1995 inception of Netscape as a user-
friendly Web-browser. According to Hayles and Gannon, by the time
the world was fully exposed to such browsers and, thus, the everyday
experience of virtuality and plurality,
Fredric Jamesons idea that space, mirroring the inconceiv-
able complexities of the infosphere, had become fractally
complex was not so much proved wrong as displaced by the
increasingly banal activity of surng the web; Jean-Franois
Lyotards assertion that the contemporary period is marked
by an incredulity towards metanarratives was absorbed into
the cultural mainstream, only to come smack against a return
to fundamentalism and simplistic global explanations emanat-
ing alike from evangelical Christians and Islamic extremists
(xxiv); Jean Baudrillards titillating suggestion that reality
had imploded into hyperreality ceased to function as a
transgressive theoretical conceit, displaced by the everyday-
ness of navigating virtual spaces that somehow left no one
in doubt reality was as real as ever.
38
(99)
The sense we get from both McLaughlin and Hayles and Gannon is
that postmodernism ultimately negates its own apparent function as an
artistic imperative via its ultimately widespread dispersal as a dominant
epistemic conguration. Postmodernisms nal success as a pervasive
114 The Passing of Postmodernism
and publicly embraced dominant negates its ability to foster a rejection
of all things publicly embraced as the truth.
The extent to which postmodernisms hegemony pervaded all lev-
els of cultural production is, of course, most evident in corrosively anti-
foundationalist television programs like Seinfeld and The Simpsons. The
acutely solipsistic and impenetrable private world(s) portrayed via the
unlikable characters in Seinfeld and the always ungrounded repudiation
of moral authority in The Simpsons
39
speaks to the way in which popular
cultural absorbed the high-theory of postmodernism by creating what
many critics now view as a type of moral vacuum, a vacuum that has
been ironically disguised as an ethical, or morally responsible, world
view. As McLaughlin suggests, while discussing the neo-realist posi-
tion of writers like Jonathan Franzen
40
and David Foster Wallace,
TV has become increasingly about TV and/or TV watch-
ing, and, in a reversal of its earlier role as promulgator of
American values, TV cynically mocks, deates, and debunks
these values and their spokespeople. . . . The epitome of
all this for Wallace is David Letterman, whose talk show is
an elaborate parody of talk show conventions in which no
guest and no idea escape the smirk and eye-rolling of self-
referential irony. (Post-Postmodern Discontent 64)
I would argue, though, that television has not ceased endorsing Ameri-
can Values. Television very much continues to promulgate such values
and/or ethical imperatives; the dominant value is simply dened now
by an imperative to be utterly skeptical of values as such. If popular
television, or even music
41
and lm, is not properly ironic and self-
aware it is, it would appear, ostracized as irresponsibly sentimental
and dangerously idealistic. To a degree, then, the techniques that
were for early postmodernists the means of rebellion have become,
through their co-option by television, agents of a great despair and
stasis (McLaughlin, Post-Postmodern Discontent 645). Consider,
for example, a television show like Seinfeld.
Seinfeld is, after all, a show that prided itself on being about
nothing. Most episodes, in fact, abandoned the traditional concept of
plot altogether. In the rst few seasons, most of the episodes depicted
a single mundane eventnding a car in a parkade or waiting for
a table at a restaurantwhile the characters engaged in extended
bouts of circular, and often solipsistic, dialogue. The Contest, for
instance, focused exclusively on Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramers
various attempts to stop masturbating. The fact that all fourGeorge,
115 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
of course, holds out the longestultimately fail can be read as a self-
reexive commentary on the show as a whole: all the characters are
dened by an acute inability to escape their private fantasies and lim-
ited perspectives. While most of the episodes are driven by exchanges
of dialogue, the general suggestion is that all attempts to communicate
are ultimately futile; no one is ever really capable of understanding the
other, of apprehending the Real. This co-option of postmodern
technique and ideology becomes most obvious, though, in a later epi-
sode: The Pitch. In this episode, George and Seinfeld are given the
opportunity to pitch a television show to executives at NBC. George
decides that the show should be about Seinfelds day-to-day life; the
show, in other words, should be about nothing. While George and
Seinfeld attempt to solidify the premise of their ctional Seinfeld over
coffee, we are forced to consider the possibility that they are mimicking
exactly the events that lead to the creation of the real Seinfeld. And,
as George and Seinfeld grow increasingly indistinguishable from their
real life counterpartsthat is, Larry David, who is the co-creator of
Seinfeld and the model for George, and the real Jerry Seinfeldthe
show itself becomes increasing solipsistic and reective of a postmod-
ern epoch dened by the prevalence of simulation and vacuous dis-
tinctions. Indeed, while they are discussing possible episodes, George
pitches an episode that actually aired in the rst season of the real
Seinfeldthat is, the episode in which Jerry tries to nd his car in a
parkade. At this point the line between ction and reality becomes
incredibly tenuous, and the entire show seems to be in danger of
folding in on itself, of slipping into innite regress.
But like most postmodern narratives, Seinfeld never dismisses abso-
lutely the possibility of some authentic difference between reality and
the discursive, or ctional, constructions that dene that reality. Seinfeld
remains distinct from the real life of Seinfeld: George is not Larry
David and Elaine has no real counterpart. Moreover, the ctional
Seinfeld, when it nally airs as a pilot on the real Seinfeld, is unique;
its called Jerry not Seinfeld; the ctional actors create distinctly original
versions of Kramer, Elaine and George; and the set (i.e., Seinfelds
apartment) is distinct from the real set.
42
In short, and as I have
suggested repeatedly, even the most perversely ethical postmodern nar-
ratives tend to express a certain necessary belief in the possibility of
some nally accurate understanding of reality. However, and as we see
with Seinfeld, postmodernism can be dened by an almost exclusive
emphasis on the impossibility of such a promise. As we have seen,
though, this emphasis appears to have nally shifted. In fact, a recent
television show like Larry Davids Curb Your Enthusiasmwhich takes a
116 The Passing of Postmodernism
distinctly neo-realist approach to the issues and themes David explored
on Seinfeldcan be viewed as representative of a larger shift in televi-
sion programming. Like The Ofce, or Arrested Development, Curb Your
Enthusiasm (which refuses to supply a laugh track, has certain actors
playing themselves, and employs documentary-style footage) seems to
embrace a type of dirty realism that works to shift the postmodern focus
and thus overtly renew the possibility of apprehending some version
of the Real. Before discussing this renewalist shift further, though, I
want to return to the arguments of McLaughlin and Shechner.
The point I want to make is this: critics like Shechner are, to a
certain degree, incorrect when they simply blame the failure of post-
modernism on the academic impulse to privilege it as an aesthetic
ideal. It makes more sense to view postmodernism as an aesthetic
imperative that failed to remain or, for that matter, to become wholly
withdrawn from public discourse. This is not to say that postmodernism
should have been, or should have remained, an elite and esoteric aesthetic.
What I am suggesting is that the passing of postmodernism can be
best understood as the effect of a necessary inability to avoid social
and/or public discoursean inability, that is, to avoid making truth
claims, to avoid being repositioned as an aesthetic imperative, to avoid
succumbing to the teleological impulse it strove to repudiate.
This brings us back, of course, to Taylors conception of postmod-
ern logo centrism: the idea that postmodernism, via an increasingly
dogmatic emphasis on negation, or relativism, nds itself making overt-
ly positive and/or public claims. The failure of postmodern metac-
tion is, in this sense, a failure to avoid becoming or, at the very least,
seeming entangled in the totalizing impulse, or dialectic, it claimed
to repudiate. As Philip Tew suggests, while discussing Roy Bhaskars
43
argument that postmodernism was mistaken to elide the referent,
all aesthetic responses, most particularly negation, depend upon an
ontologically persistent reality principle, or a realist dialectic (48).
For Tew, the attempt to evade this paradox is symptomatic of what,
not surprisingly, iek repeatedly identies as the fundamental and
perverse error of most postmodern texts. For this reason, Tew argues,
via a iekean lter, that postmodernists like Hutcheon and Derrida
are naively mistaken in their outright rejection of a Hegelian concept
of totalization. What such postmodernists fail to embrace, thenfail
to embrace, that is, because they are too busy stressing its impossibil-
ityis a
totalization that never totalizes all and where one perceives
the unattainable, ever elusive excess of the infrastructure
117 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
which can never be fully mirrored within the text [. . .] a
redoubled reection, the reective re-marking of the very
surplus of reection, offering a notion of an absolute that
mediates and acknowledges its own impossibility, of which
Hegel makes use dialectically as iek demonstrates. (40)
The postmodern aesthetic fails, because, as iek might say, it fails
to embrace the impossible Real that its perpetuation as a discourse
necessarily (re)afrms. Or rather, as Tew puts it, while quoting Bhaskar,
it fails especially in its denial of [. . .] the capacity for rational assess-
ment of philosophical and other positions, [whereby] it undermined
its own capacity to sustain itself, for the post-modernist discourse must
be real, if it is to have any effect at all [. . .] (49). In response to
this failure, Tew offers the possibility of a meta-realist critique, or a
type of critical realism that, in a manner that echoes ieks concept
of an art of the ridiculous sublime, offers a recuperation of an
appeal to a reality principle that involves an extension of an ongoing
complexity of understanding of being and objectivity, incorporating
an acknowledgement of provisionality (even though this concept pre-
sented a challenge that seduced many into attempts to dispel its very
elusiveness by prioritizing it as a determining constant) (36). In this
way, Tew anticipates my own position: the apparent failure of postmod-
ernism is the inevitable effect of the very specter that animated it in
the rst place, the specter of a still incomplete project of modernity,
the specter that promised the end of just such a project.
What we begin to see is that this current realist revival is not
simply the revenge of a public that is, as Shechner seems to sug-
gests, too simple or too lazy or too exhausted to bother with the dif-
cult nature of postmodern narratives; rather, it is symptomatic of an
epistemic response to postmodernisms inability to do what it claimed
to be doing all along. Neo-realism, like Tews critical mode of meta-
realism, is, in other words, a response to the futile project of exorcis-
ing all spectral, or utopian, remainders. The end of postmodernism
does not, as critics like Shechner would have us believe, parallel the
end of a socialist alternative because both communism and postmod-
ernism were privileged in the ivory tower of academia. Rather, post-
modernisms decline seems to coincide with the dissolution of the
Soviet Union because that dissolution marks the very moment when
postmodernism, like the process of modernization, became hegemonic
and thus utopian
44
in its repudiation of all utopian, publicly shared
and/or universalizing impulses (such as socialism). And it is in this
inevitable moment of hegemonythe moment in which an epistemic
118 The Passing of Postmodernism
focus becomes a virtually inescapable imperativethat a certain vic-
tory of the specter takes place. Simply put, postmodernism begins to
pass at the moment when, in its attempt to repudiate past hegemonic
discourses, it becomes both dominant and restrictivethat is, when it
becomes impossible to ignore its own spectral contamination. In the
case of postmodernism, a latent and paradoxical impulseteleologi-
cal, utopian, humanist, or whateverbecomes undeniable and a new
epistemological reconguration begins to emerge. This latent impulse
is most evident, we might say at this point, in the simple fact that a post-
modern ethics of perversity should have lead to solipsistic silence; yet,
rather than going silent, rather than performing a nal act of narrative
suicide, postmodernism necessarily continued to become louder and
more public, insisting all the while that being loud and being public
was an effect of false and dangerous ideological imperatives.
Like the still stylistically postmodern texts discussed above,
then, neo-realism speaks to the way in which this current epistemologi-
cal reconguration can be dened by its relationship to the spectral
inheritance that animated postmodernism. This emergent period of
renewalism abandons the postmodern need to expose, above all else,
the impossibility of the specter and, instead, works to embrace both
the possibility and the impossibility of the specter. Renewalism is, I am
arguing, dened by an epistemological willingnessor, we might begin
to say at this point, an imperativeto, as a later Derrida would have it,
respect the specter. In works that outwardly continue to employ the
stylistic devices associated with postmodernismworks by, among oth-
ers, Mark Leyner, David Lynch, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston,
Mark Z. Danielewski, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Tim OBrien,
and (perhaps) Louise Erdrich and Quentin Tarantino
45
this respect
is played out via a focus on the necessity of the spectral promise and
a renewed faith in its impossible possibility. More overt works of neo-
realism demonstrate this same spectral relationshipalbeit in a more
obvious mannerwhile also demonstrating a concerted effort to aban-
don the metactional imperative that dened postmodernism. For this
reason, neo-realism seems to be indicative of a more general epistemo-
logical relinquishment of aesthetic imperatives as such.
Using Wallaces Innite Jest as an example, McLaughlin argues
that recent works of neo-realism focus less on self-conscious wordplay
and the violation of narrative conventions and more on represent-
ing the world we all more or less share (Post-Postmodern Discon-
tent 657). This is not, however (and as the majority of neo-realist
critics tend to agree), a simple return to modernism or an outright
rejection of postmodern claims: this new ction nevertheless has to
119 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
show that its a world that we know through language and layers of
representation (11). In his introduction to Neo-Realism in Contempo-
rary American Fiction, Kristiaan Versluys puts it like this: The task [of
neo-realism] is to question everything, including the by now rather
hackneyed habit of subjecting every assertion or perception to mas-
sive onslaught of doubt and endless deferrals of meaning (8). This
isnt a simple return to mimesis; realism is now employedor, rather,
acceptedas just another language game (8). The renewalist accep-
tance of the specters ironic spectrality is, perhaps, most apparent in
the fact that neo-realism seems willing to do what postmodernism was
not (yet) willing, or able, to do: embrace both realism and metac-
tion as equally contingent language games. The dening feature of
neo-realism (especially when it is categorized along with recent works
that seem, at least stylistically, to be postmodern) is thus its apparent
evasion of the paradoxical idealism implied in the postmodern claim
that a responsible narrative must overtly acknowledge the absolute con-
tingency of all narrative acts. To a certain extent, then, and if we recall
Taylor and/or iek, neo-realism positions itself as a form of nally
successful POSTmodernism. By exposing the metactional imperative of
postmodernism as a type of back-door idealism, or truth claim, the
turn to a postmodern-inected realism aims to sidestep the traps of
pervasion and/or logo centrism; it does this, as Versluys suggests,
via an acceptance of realism as a contingent narrative act. Rather than
insisting on the impossibility of mimesis, of the spectral promise ful-
lled, of a telosrather than enforcing an impossibly corrosive stylistic
imperativeneo-realism seems to move beyond the problematic truth
claim that all truth claims are dangerous illusions and embraces the
need for such claims while simultaneously demonstrating an aware-
ness of their illusory status. Embracing what we might call, following
Klaus Stierstorfer, contingent referentiality (10), this emergent neo-
realism thus aims to reafrm the necessity of gambling on some type
of universal claim, or common ground. By viewing metactionor,
rather, the need to expose every narrative act as one more contingent
petit rcitneo-realism or, more broadly, renewalist narrative relaxes the
formal restrictions of postmodernism and returns to realist forms that
more openly negotiate the mimetic impulse that postmodern metac-
tion could never truly abandon. This return to realism is, then, ulti-
mately symptomatic of a broad epistemological renewal of faiththat
is, faith in the promise (of mimesis, of communication, etc.) and the
impossible possibility that it will be fullled.
As Winfried Fluck suggests, realism seemed to return when
people remembered, or rather nally dared to admit that they had
120 The Passing of Postmodernism
continued to be interested in stories based on the illusion of the ref-
erent (67). What is important to note here is that realism does not
simply reemerge along with a renewed insistence on the possibility of
the referent; it reemerges, instead and more signicantly, along with a
desire for narrative strategies that fulll a latent desire for the referent
as illusion. Consequently, as Fluck goes on to argue, the new realism
is not just a nave conservative backlash to postmodern daring and
innovation, but a new type of writing with its own potential for con-
tributing to our contemporary cultural situation (67). However, unlike
postmodern metaction, neo-realism allows for the possibility that the
referent can be accessed, that a representational act can be accurate.
At the same time, though, this new realism is aware of itself as no
more (and no less) than a system of rhetorical strategies . . . It does
not simply reect or mirror reality, but offers a version of it (67).
Focusing on the work of Raymond Carver, Fluck goes on to argue that
this current manifestation of realism does not, as it did in its previous
liberal manifestations, claim to reveal some authentic or universal
experience. As Fluck suggests,
one of the major sources of authorization for the [past]
realist text has been a power of experience to provide
knowledge. In claiming to depict reality as it really is, real-
ism not only refers to the criterion of a shared experience,
but, by doing so, also promises to provide a more truthful
and relevant version of that experience than other forms
of literature. (71)
Exemplied in the work of a writer like Hemingway or, perhaps,
Fitzgerald, This search for authentic experience is part of a modern-
ist project to penetrate to a deeper level of human existence that lies
beneath the shallow surface of Victorian conventions (71). For Fluck,
this type of realism is symptomatic of a modernist quest for deep
knowledge, a quest that can be identied as the animating feature of
a number of modernist discourses.
Recalling Jameson, Fluck asserts that discourses as diverse as
Marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism and nally structuralism all
offered versions of this discourse of deep knowledge (71). How-
ever, according to Fluck, recent works of neo-realism, as exemplied
in the stories of Carver, mange to eschew this modernist desire for
deep knowledge:
In contrast to the skillful insinuations of Hemingway, Carvers
stories no longer offer such promises of deep. In Carvers
121 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
work, crises and catastrophes are not heroic moments valued
for their potential to reveal an existential truth but accidental
occurrences in a dehierarchized sequence of daily events.
Consequently, the characters that experience them are not
transformed or deeply affected by them, but continue to
live on as before. (72)
Looking specically at Carvers Why Dont You Dance?, Fluck high-
lights the way in which a work of neo-realism seems to promise and
defer the possibility of transcendent truths and/or moments of epipha-
ny. A story that climaxes with a bizarre dance during a mundane yard
sale, Why Dont You Dance? is, according to Fluck, a form of realism
that puts into question the easy equation of defamiliarization and an
anti-mimetic mode of writing (72). By failing to provide a climax or
epiphany that could provide the rest of the events with actual mean-
ing, Carvers stories refuse to provide teleology, sustained argument,
or moral structure (73). Instead, a work like Why Dont You Dance?
simply offers a chain of events in which one scene acquires an inex-
plicable, almost surreal transcendence for the briefest of momentsa
moment that seems to carry, in contrast, for example, to Hemingway,
no representative power beyond itself (73). The modernist moment
of epiphany is thus both promised and deferred as a moment of
decontextualized experience (73). Moving on to a discussion of two
paintings that he identies as neo-realist precursorsEdward Hoppers
Nighthawks and Richard Estes Central SavingsFluck expands this argu-
ment, stressing the fact that a realist mode can be used to recharge
the possibility of meaning, truth, or whatever, while endlessly defer-
ring that possibility. Again, Flucks position here conrms the asser-
tion (above) that the narrative strategies after postmodernism can be
dened by their willingness/ability to maintain the necessarily ironic
nature of, what a late-Derrida would privilege as a state of, indecision,
a state in which the decision process (or, in this specic context, the
act of narrative representation) is animated by both the impossibility
of the certainly right decision, or representation, and the promise of
pure indecision (or no decision in the sense that there is only one
right decision, or true representational act).
Let me clarify this. Because a work of high-postmodern metac-
tion is overtly focused on emphasizing the impossibility of mimesis, it is
seemingly conned to two readings: either it forces us to acknowledge
the pointlessness of any narrative representation (in which case its
persistence as an art form becomes redundant) or it presents itself as
the nally right representation because it accurately represents reality as
an ideological illusion (in which case we are left wondering why one
122 The Passing of Postmodernism
metactional text is not enough, why one metactional text isnt simply
the nal word on all narrative acts as such). In either case, we are left
without a reason to move. We are left in a state of paralysis. We are
left, that is, in a state of mythic, or pure, indecisionin the sense
that there is no longer a decision, or narrative act, to make/perform.
46
What a work of neo-realismor, rather, any of the works that we might
identify with this emergent period of renewalismstresses is thus the
very thing that continued to animate postmodernism: the necessarily
possible and impossible nature of the certainly right decision, or nar-
rative act. At the very moment postmodern works of metaction seem
to present themselves as nally decided on the impossibility of any nally
right decision, they continue to be animated by the very fact (however
paradoxical it may sound) that such a decision is impossible. Neo-
realism, in short, attempts to get over this paradoxical problem by
embracing itby embracing, that is, the necessity of the spectrological
lure: What a realist surface manages to quite effectively do is to con-
stantly refuel the viewers interest and curiosity because of a promise of
representation that is . . . never fullled (Fluck 77). Rather than sim-
ply rejecting the spectral promise as illusory idealismand thus, like
postmodernism, becoming hegemonically opposed to the very promise
that necessarily animates any anti-ideological movementneo-realism
endorses an ethics of indecision; it overtly embraces the need to believe
in the spectral promise of the certainly right decision while simultane-
ously embracing, la postmodernism, its innite deferral.
A nice example of this neo-realist promise can be found in
the opening chapter of Russell Banks Continental Drift. Entitled
Invocation, Banks opening chapter seems to outwardly challenge
the postmodern rejection of mimesis and the possibility of historical
objectivity:
Its not memory you need for telling this story . . . Its not
memory you need, its clear eyed pity and hot, old-time anger
and a Northern mans love of the sun, its a white mans
entwined obsession with race and sex and a proper middle-
class Americans shame for a nations history . . . nothing
here depends on memory for the telling. (12)
In a manner that recalls Carvers minimalist dirty realismthat is,
his realistic accounts of middle America, or American white trash
Banks promises the possibility of representative experience yet con-
sistently populates his text with characters and situations that overtly
escape complete apprehension. While moments of climax hold out
123 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
the promise of positive change and shared understanding, they are
consistently eviscerated of meaning. At one point, the main character,
Bob Dubois (a middle-aged man who frequently cheats on his wife), is
dramatically held up by gunpoint while working at a liquor mart. The
scene ends with Bob shooting one of his assailants twice and nding
the other, with shitpants (104), cowering in a storeroom. While this
event seems to change Bob, the change we see, as well as the event
itself, is quickly diffused by a persistent and unchanging narrative ow;
the signicance of the eventif, we begin to wonder, it had any at
allis slowly lost on the reader (as it is, we could argue, on Bob). As
with Carver, then, We are . . . constantly moving between a promise
of representative experience, its subversion and its subsequent restitu-
tiona movement that is received time and again by [the neo-realist]
strategy of recharging the realistic surface of the text with a meaning
that cannot be rmly grasped (Fluck 78).
In brief, neo-realism seemingly escapes the dogmatism of post-
modernism by explicitly embracing and deferring the possibility of
the referent, of mimesis. By embracing the fact that both realist and
metactional strategies are necessarily animated by a belief, even if
latent, that there can be, in principle, only one correct version of
reality (Fluck 69), neo-realism works to escape the postmodern ten-
dency to make a grand narrative out of an incredulity to grand nar-
ratives. Neo-realism seems to respect the specterit seems, that is,
to respect the necessity of an animating, yet impossible, idealso as
to avoid being dangerously compelled to either insist upon the pos-
sibility that the spectral ideal can become real and in the esh or
to emphatically and repeatedly expose such an ideal as impossible.
Viewed alongside the more formalistic texts touched on above, neo-
realism can thus be understood as symptomatic of an emergent episte-
mological reconguration that can be dened, as I suggested above, by
a desire to abandonor rather, to get over, to lay to restall aesthetic
imperatives. What is most signicant about this apparent return to
realisma realism, we need to stress, that is informed by postmodern
formalismis that it signals the end of metaction as a privileged aes-
thetic style while simultaneously identifying both itself and metaction
as equally contingent and equally relevant language games. More
simply, neo-realism or, more broadly, the literature of renewalism can be
dened as an attempt to relax the rules. By overtly acknowledging that
all aesthetic imperatives are necessarily animated by, what I have been
calling, a certain spectrological aporia, the literature of renewalism
works to avoid becoming, like its modern and postmodern predeces-
sors, another hegemonic idealwhich is to say that it works to avoid
124 The Passing of Postmodernism
effacing the necessarily ironic spectrality of the specter. However, as I
have suggested throughout, this impulse to respect the specter inevi-
tably becomes a new way of dis-respecting the specter; it becomes, in
other words, another imperative, another mythic decision that is itself,
and in ways it necessarily cannot control, the effect of a certain spectral
compulsion, a certain absolute belief in a utopian ideal. Before I can
fully reapproach this claim from the perspective of emergent modes of
narrative, though, it is perhaps necessary to look more closely at this
apparent shift from a postmodern to a renewalist aesthetic. Indeed,
with the above discussion in mind, and in a rather spiral-like fash-
ion, I would like to clarify the distinctions, cursively identied above,
that separate postmodern narrative strategies from the strategies of an
emergent renewalist episteme.
The Project of Renewalism
In Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonzes lm, Adaptationtheir follow-
up to the particularly solipsistic Being John MalkovichKaufman writes
himself into his adaptation of Susan Orleans book, The Orchid Thief.
Played by Nicolas Cage, Kaufman accidentally becomes the main char-
acter of the lm, a lm that is supposed to be about Susan Orlean
(played by Meryl Streep). In a manner that makes Vonneguts presence
in Breakfast of Champions look perfectly normal, Kaufmans ctionalized
self comes to dominate the lm, effacing, at least partially, the source
material that is the lms raison dtre. Concerned more with the process
of adaptation than with the adaptation itself, the lm begins, as the
end result of what we see Kaufman attempting to produce throughout,
in a state of apparent paralysis; feeling a sense of what we might call
postmodern responsibility, Kaufman feels compelled to be corrosively
self-reexive. For the ctional Kaufman, an adaptation must ostenta-
tiously acknowledge its process of production, as well as the contin-
gent subject-position of the artist that is engaged in that production.
A screenplay mustnt simply reafrm the romantic illusions of stable
meaning, nal answers, authorial control, and so on. So, instead of the
traditional Hollywood romance, or thriller, or whatever, Kaufman pro-
duces, well . . . nothing. Indeed, apart from credits, the lm opens with
a completely black screen. We then hear Nicolas Cage, as Kaufman,
in a voice-over: Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald
head? The answer is, apparently, no. Rather than what Kaufman would
consider to be an original thoughtor, in other words, the start of
the moviewe are given more of the self-critical voice-over: Kaufman
125 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
tells us that he has a fat ass, that he needs to fall in love, that he
needs to learn Russian or something, that he needs to be real.
Eventually, the credits include a line stating that the lm is, indeed,
Based on the book, The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean; by this point
the information seems incidental.
When the lm proper nally begins, it doesnt begin with
Susan Orlean or John Laroche, the orchid thief who is the subject
of Orleans investigation. The initial sequence occurs on the set of
Being John Malkovich. The actors and crewincluding the real John
Malkovichare milling about, preparing for the next shot. Filmed in
documentary style, this initial sequence is presented as authentic mak-
ing-of footage. In the background, though, Nicolas Cage as Kaufman
self-consciously tries to get involved. Ignored by actors and crew alike,
Kaufman eventually leaves. This confusion of reality (the Malkovich
set) and ction (Cage as Kaufman) sets up the basic conceit of the
lm: the only real thing Kaufman can write is himself, yet the self
he writes is inevitably forced, ctionalized, discursively determined. All
Kaufman can doas a responsible postmodern artistis draw attention
to the fact that everything he produces is inevitably caught up in this
inescapable paradox.
After the scene on the set of Malkovich, we see Kaufman getting
the job of adapting Orleans book. He informs the studio representa-
tivea beautiful young womanthat he doesnt want to write anything
that is articially plot driven. Hes not going to write an Orchid
Heist movie, or a movie about poppies and drug runners. Hes not
going to cram in sex. There wont be any car chases or characters,
you know, learning profound life lessons. Life isnt like that. However,
Kaufman inevitably fails to realize a way out of the romantic archetypes
that he repudiates. So he stalls. He gives us Susan Orleans story, ran-
domly cut in with his own, up to the point when the lm studio buys
the rights to The Orchid Thief and gives him the job of adapting it. At the
same time, he creates another character: his own twin brother, Donald,
who is writing a screenplay of his own. The screenplay, Donald tells
Charlie, is a Hollywood thriller in which a female detective is hunting
a male serial killer who feeds his victims to themselves in small bits.
The big payoff is that the detective is really the killer. So, in the end,
when he forces the woman whos really him to eat herself hes also eat-
ing himself to death. Charlie, of course, thinks that Donald is a sell-
out. He repeatedly tells Donald, who has been attending a seminar by
Robert McKee, that he needs to be more original, that there are no
rules, that screenwriting seminars are bullshit, that Anybody who
says they have the answer is going to attract desperate people. Apart
126 The Passing of Postmodernism
from the rule that there are no rules, the basic postmodern rule, accord-
ing to Kaufman, is that the true artist is always on a journey into the
unknown. Taking the Lyotardian incredulity toward metanarratives
and the imperative to make it new to its extreme, Kaufmans position
becomes virtually suicidal, or cannibalistic. His screenplaythat is, the
lm were watchingbecomes transxed on his own inability to write a
screenplay. For much of the lm he sits in front of his computer, trying
to write. When hes not trying to write, hes masturbating.
47
Eventually,
he decides that the only thing he can do is write about himself. This
realization is articulated in another voiceover: I have no understand-
ing of anything outside of my own panic and self-loathing and pathetic
little existence. Its like the only thing Im actually qualied to write
about is myself and my own self. . . . This epiphany (of sorts) is fol-
lowed by a look of excitement on Kaufmans face and an abrupt cut.
In the next shot we see Kaufman at home, speaking into a recorder:
We open on Charlie Kaufman, fat, old, bald, repulsive, sitting in a
Hollywood restaurant across from Valerie Thomas, a lovely statuesque
lm executive. Kaufman, trying to get a writing assignment. . . . After
another cut, Kaufman is in bed. Hes still recording himself, but now
hes reading from notes: Fat, bald, Kaufman pitches furiously in his
bedroom. He speaks into his handheld tape recorder and he says:
Charlie Kaufman, fat, bald, repulsive, old, sits at a Hollywood restau-
rant with Valerie Thomas. . . .
In danger of slipping into innite regress, the lm seems to run
into aor rather, thepostmodern dead end. Kaufman, once again,
begins to despair, and when Donald tells him that he got the idea
for his trick ending from a tattoo he saw of a snake biting its own
talea symbol Kaufman recognizes as the Ourobouroshe realizes
that his own work has become pointlessly and dangerously cannibalis-
tic: Im insane. Im Ourobouros. . . . Its self indulgent. Its narcissis-
tic. Its solipsistic. Its pathetic. At a loss, Kaufman goes to New York
and attends McKees seminar. At the same time, the segments about
Orlean become subtly more dramatic; Orlean becomes obsessed with
both Laroche and the possibility of seeing a Ghost, an elusive and
legendary orchid. At the seminar, McKee tells Kaufman that voice-
overs are ridiculous and that any attempt to make a lm in which
nothing much happens will be both boring and unrealistic. Love,
murder, sacrice, pain: these things are occurring everyday. If youre
making a movie, McKee tells Kaufman, you got to put in the drama.
If Kaufmans lm is to be a success, if it is to be relevant at all, it
needs an ending. It needs to assume, or embrace, a certain teleo-
logical impulse; it needs to animate itself with the promise of an end,
127 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
a nal answer, the truth. Excited, Kaufman has Donald, who begins
to function much more obviously as Kaufmans double, come to New
York and help with the script. As Donald and Charlie begin to inves-
tigate Orlean in the present day, the segments that involve Orlean at
the time of writing the Orchid Thief begin to take on a different tone.
We discover that Orlean despises her passionless marriage and job;
she wants to be passionate in the way that Laroche (who continually
becomes obsessed with hobbies and then abandons them altogether) is
passionate. Moreover, Laroche tells Orlean that he has been trying to
nd the Ghost Orchid because it produces a drug that seems to help
people be fascinatedwhich is to say that it allows people to believe
in a type of telos, a type of animating goal (even if such a telos/goal
is impossible). In the narrative present, Charlie and Donald discover
that Orlean has become addicted to the Ghost drug, and that, while
writing her book, she began an illicit affair with Laroche, who is now
mass-producing the drug in Miami. In brief, then: after a drug cartel
subplot, a foot chase through a swamp, a car chase in which Donald is
killed, Charlies epiphany that you are what you love, not what loves
you, and some gratuitous, and crammed in, sex, the lm ends with
Kaufman telling us, in another voice-over, that hes ready to nish his
adaptation: It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with
[his ex-girlfriend] thinking he knows how to nish the script. Shit,
thats a voiceover. McKee would not approve. Well, who cares what
McKee says? It feels right. So: Kaufman drives off from his encounter
with Amelia lled for the rst time with hope.
On the most supercial level, the shift in narrative strategy that
the lmor, rather, Kaufman undergoesis a compact representation
of the current shift I have attempted to articulate above. It is a shift
away from the basic imperative that animated, and eventually came to
dominate, the postmodern aesthetic: corrosive and ultimately paralyz-
ing self-reexivity. Indeed, the rst part of the lmthe acutely metac-
tional partfunctions as a conscious articulation of the postmodern
failure I described above. Kaufmans initial need to be self-reexive,
to be responsible, to demonstrate that there is no nal answer, no
possible telos, or end, inevitably forces him to turn on himself. If he is
to escape the archetypes and predetermined discourses that his work
inevitably perpetuates, he must withdraw la Rorty from all public, or
coherent, discourses; he must become utterly and inaccessibly private.
At the same time, though (and quite paradoxically), he must enter
into public discourse if he is to make his pointwhich is, ultimately,
that all points are contingent and pointless. We see this problem play
out most obviously in those moments when Charlie corrects Donald.
128 The Passing of Postmodernism
There are no rules, there is no answer, but dont say pitch, dont
say industry, art has to be original, new, and so on. Quite simply, the
rst portion of the lmits paralysis, its inability to progresscan
be read as a critique of a postmodern ethics of perversity and, thus,
the ostentatious metaction that postmodernism has always privileged.
What Kaufman seems to suggest is that the postmodern aesthetic neces-
sarily leads to silence, paralysis, utterly private self-reexivity, masturba-
tion in the dark.
John Barth, the postmodern writer par excellence, makes a similar
point in The Literature of Exhaustion. Using Beckett as an example,
Barth notes that silence is the ultimate ideal of any artist who aims to
escape the discursive connes in which he or she necessarily works:
For Beckett . . . to cease to create altogether would be fairly meaning-
ful: his crowning work; his last word. What a convenient corner to
paint yourself into (68). The sense we get, from both Kaufman and
Barth, is that this move toward absolute withdrawal is a type of failure.
48
By recalling Lyotards terms, as well as the above discussion, we can
rephrase the problem like this: not only does the imperative to deny all
grand narratives become, itself, a type of grand, or hegemonic, narra-
tive, the postmodern recourse to the petit rcit, or personally contingent
narrative, ultimately leads to the denial of all possible communication,
or shared understanding. Again, though, this is not to say that post-
modernism was wholly blind to this problem.
49
After all, Barth him-
self seems to be acutely interested in the paradoxical implications of
postmodern solipsism.
50
Still, what we see in the work of a writer like
Barth is an investment in provisionality that does not yet seem willing
to outwardly embrace the possibility of a truth, or ideal, it knows to
be impossible. Consequently, in much high postmodernism we see an
emphatic movement toward silence and/or paralysis.
However, the fact that postmodernismlike the beginning of
Adaptationnever really ceased to move, never really dissolved into so
many fragments of private incoherence, speaks to its often repressed
desire, its faith in the very promise of the telos it worked to expose as
impossible. The postmodern desire to claim that history is over, that
nothing original can be said, that the Real is an illusion, becomes
the very reason to continue writing. As Barth suggests, an artist may
paradoxically turn the felt ultimacies of our time into material means
for his workparadoxically, because by doing so he transcends what
had appeared to be his refutation (71). Along with someone like
Baudrillard, then, the postmodern writer is spectrally compelled to
write about the pointlessness of writing, or the impossibility of com-
munication or meaning. Silence is always evaded because the prom-
129 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
ise of an end (a ghost) is nether possible nor impossible. And, as I
demonstrated in the previous two chapters, a promise, like a specter,
is never here and now, but it is never entirely absent either; if it were
absent or if it were here now and, thus, an actuality, it would cease
to animate. This spectral paradox of transcending the very refutation
that animates the transcendence of that refutationa paradox we see
Kaufman struggling with and nally embracing as an inescapable part
of any narrative actis played out most obviously in Barths rst novel,
The Floating Opera. A text that we might readily identify as the rst work
of American postmodernism, The Floating Opera is an overtly metac-
tional piece that articulates its own raison dtre, for the text as well as
the main character/narrator, by denying the possibility of ever locating
a purpose, or meaning, for the text (or character).
Narrated by the lawyer Todd Andrews, The Floating Opera begins
by questioning its own narrative relevance. Throughout, though, the
promise of an endthat is, in this case, the promise of a satisfactory
conclusion to, and explanation for, Andrews storyis repeatedly iden-
tied as a type of illusory lure. As Andrews continually insists, this end
(which we are always, as Derrida would say, awaiting) is never going
to arrive. Andrews makes this point most clearly when he decides to
explain the novels title: The Floating Opera. Why The Floating Opera?
I could explain until Judgment Day, and still not explain completely
(13). Signicantly, the apparent impossibility of a conclusive answer
does not prevent Andrews from offering some sort of explanation. In
fact, Andrews goes on to supply us with his reections on the name of
a showboatAdams Original and Unparalleled Floating Operathat used
to travel around the Virginia and Maryland tidewater areas (13). A
setting for the nal portion of the book, Adams Original and Unparal-
leled Floating Opera gives Andrews the idea of a large boat on which a
play is running continuously. This imaginary boat, Andrews tells us,
would drift up and down the river on the tide and audiences would
sit along the bank to watch: They could catch whatever part of the
plot happened to unfold as the boat oated past, and then theyd
have to wait until the tide ran back again to catch another snatch of
it, if they still happened to be sitting there. To ll in the gaps they
would have to use their imaginations (13). Like any work of histo-
riographic metaction, The Floating Opera included, Andrews oating
opera functions as a way of highlighting the illusory nature of narra-
tive coherence: Most times the [audience] wouldnt understand what
was going on at all, or theyd think they knew, when actually they
didnt (13). The promise of full disclosure compels the audience of
this oating opera, just as it does Andrews as narrator of The Floating
130 The Passing of Postmodernism
Opera, to reassemble the fragments, to re-member the event. Neverthe-
less, and as Andrews repeatedly notes, the event always remains absent.
By continually highlighting this inevitable and necessary absence, The
Floating Opera (as text) perversely highlights, as Maurice Couturier puts
it, the impossibility of all true communication between author and
reader (7). Not surprisingly, then, Andrews, like Kaufman, is driven
by a need to justify his work. And it is because of this need to justify
his reason for writing that Andrews arrives at his nal solution, his
nal postmodern answer: I awoke, splashed cold water on my face, and
realized that I had the real, the nal, the unassailable answer; the last
possible word; the stance to end all stances. . . . Didnt I tell you Id
pull no punches? That my answers were yours? Suicide! . . . Suicide was
my answer; my answer was suicide. (23). What is interesting here is
that Andrews is telling us, some sixteen years after his epiphany, that
the nal true answer is suicideor rather, we might accurately infer,
artistic silence. While the entire text is, in fact, an account of the day
Andrews planned, and tried, to commit suicide, it is also, as Andrews
repeatedly tells us, a story of the day he changed his mind. The text
itself, as the impossible attempt to articulate the impossibility of articu-
lating anything, delays the moment of silence that the text anticipates
on, or at, its horizon. More simply, the texts desire to expose the
impossibility of its own narrative telos remains spectrally animated by
the possibility of just such a telos.
51
At the end of the text, and right before Andrews commits his
nal actor, rather, before he performs what Barth would consider to
be Becketts nal artistic solutionhe nds that he is paralyzed, that
he is unable to do anything, suicide included.
52
This paralysis is, sig-
nicantly, articulated as a narrative problem: why explain at all? Why
move at all? . . . there was no reason to do anything, and I will say that
the realization of this worked upon me involuntarily. This is impor-
tant: it was not that I decided not to speak, but that, aware in every
part of me of the unjustiable nature of action . . . I simply could not
open my mouth (264). At this moment, the text seems to be in real
danger of losing all faith, however latent, in the promise, or specter,
of its own narrative end; via the model of the narrators physical body,
this moment exposes the danger of a seemingly inevitable postmodern
textual collapse, the absolute cessation of narrative movement. Put dif-
ferently, this moment seems to be dangerously close to fullling the
promise of a truly POSTmodern text. It points to the silencewithout
itself being silentthat would be the effect of any successful rejection
of spectral compulsion, of the impossible promise, of what the later
Derrida would call the messianic. Ultimately, Barth and Andrewsor
131 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
perhaps, Barth as Andrewsrealizes this. Instead of going through with
it, though, Andrews (like any good postmodern narrator) continues
to explain why there is simply no reason why he shouldnt have gone
through with it. Shocked out of paralysis by the danger in which he
has inadvertently placed his illegitimate daughter, Andrews once again
nds a reason to mobilize himself. With this return of desire, however
illusory he understands it to be, Andrews decidesquite arbitrarily, he
insiststo change his mind. He then spends the next sixteen years
preparing to do what he knows is impossible: communicate, to himself
and to his readers, his reasons for deciding that suicide was the nal
and only answer because there are no answers.
53
In the end, the promise of a nal answer, or telos, ironically
becomes the animating goal of The Floating Opera as a discourse, or
narrative act. Like the postmodern texts examined above, The Float-
ing Opera highlights the way in which postmodernism, and thus post-
modern metaction, is spectrally compelled to expose the specter as
impossible, as an ideological illusion, as the cause of all past discursive
hegemonies. As a type of response to this paradox, then, the current
narrative turn overtly embraces this animating specterthis specter
that postmodernism attempted to exorcise once and for all and that,
consequently and paradoxically, animated its major narrative strategy.
Simply put: because it was intended to exorcise the very thing that ani-
mated its exorcisms, the stylistic mode typically associated with the still
residual episteme of postmodernism ultimately and necessarily failed,
becoming the very thing it sought to undermine: an aesthetic, if not
an ethical, imperative. This, of course, brings us back to Adaptation.
While the initial portion of Adaptation seems to expose and,
indeed, mock this particularly postmodern problem, the latter portion
seemingly functions as a type of solution. Like any narrative mode we
might associate with a renewalist episteme, works of neo or dirty
realism included, the nal portion of Adaptation speaks to the way in
which, as Robert Rebein puts it, contemporary realist writers have
absorbed postmodernisms most lasting contributions and gone on to
forge a new realism that is more or less traditional in its handling of
character, reportorial in its depiction of milieu and time, but is at the
same time self-conscious about language and the limits of mimesis
(20). The latter portion of Adaptation speaks to the way in which this
emergent epoch after postmodernism seems to reject postmodernisms
stringent focus on anti-foundationalism. What renewalist works like
Adaptation overtly announce and accept is the fact that the desire to
deny the possibility of any stable truth, or grand narrativethat is, the
desire to abandon as a dangerous illusion the still incomplete project
132 The Passing of Postmodernism
of modernityis ultimately animated by some type of (blind) faith, or
teleological impulse. Without descending into absolute silence, which
itself becomes a type of ideal end, postmodern narrative strategies
must, to a certain extent, remain blind to their own teleological, or
positivist, contamination if they are to identify themselves as truly
POSTmodern. Kaufmans acceptance of this truth allows him to
abandon the implicit and perverse ethics of postmodernism and relax
his allegiance to its ultimately unsustainable strategies. So, in the end
(of Adaptation, or of postmodernism generally), we get forms of narra-
tive that revive the possibility of communal understanding, humanism
and/or consensus. They renew, in short, the possibility of a still incom-
plete project of modernity, which is to say that they no longer attempt
to do without what Jameson would call a latent utopian impulse (and
what iek understands as the impossible Real) that animated postmod-
ernism in the rst place; renewalism, in short, outwardly embraces the
necessary and inevitable return of the repressed. It is, I would argue,
hardly coincidental that the concept of a Ghost Orchidthat is, an
elusive, if not mythical, ower that stimulates compassion and compels
actionbecomes a major theme in the last half of Adaptation. While
it might be going too far to suggest an intentional link between the
Ghost Orchid and Derridas theory of the specter, the presence and
discussion of the orchid does highlight the distinctly renewalist assump-
tion that we must believe in a certain impossible telos, a certain impos-
sible Real. It is this ability to hopeor, perhaps, to gamblethat is
nally articulated as the solution to Kaufmans distinctly postmodern
dilemma. Quite simply, then, renewalist forms of narrative are dened
by an overt willingness to respect the specter, to endorse, in other
words, a certain ethics of indecision.
And, signicantly, these renewalist forms of narrative are not
restricted to any one specic style. While many critics have associated
the end of postmodernism with the growing dominance of neo(or,
dirty)-realism, the examples above seem to suggest that, whether or
not we call them neo-realist, the emergent forms of narrative are
marked by an overall rejection of past aesthetic imperatives. For the
most part, these narratives do indeed seem more realisticespecially
as evidenced in the work of overtly dirty realists like Carver and
Banksbut I am arguing that such narratives are better dened by
the relationship they reestablish with a certain spectral inheritance, a
spectral inheritance passed on by postmodernism. Rather than just new
realisms, then, what we seein the work of writers and/or directors
like Leyner, Morrison, Banks, Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace,
Lorrie Moore, Danielewski, Lynch, Sophia Coppola, Wes Anderson,
133 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
Paul Thomas Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Jared Hess, Maxine Hong
Kingston, Nicholson Baker, and Dave Eggersare narrative forms
that renew the realist faith in mimesis while simultaneously deferring
and frustrating that faith via the irony and stylistics of a now past, or
passed, postmodernism. For the sake of clarity, let me employ another
example: the early work of Nicholson Baker. After all, if Barths The
Floating Opera is one of the rst overtly postmodern novels, The Mez-
zanine (i.e., Bakers rst novel) is one of the rst clearly identiable
works of renewalism.
54
Just as Kaufman, in the end, saves his lm by
abandoning, or relaxing, his postmodern convictions, Baker works
to reestablish the possibility of mimesis and universal understanding
while remaining wary of the dangers that postmodernism struggled to
expose and move beyond. To a degree, then, a novel like The Mezzanine
continues to be postmodern; but, then again, and as we have seen,
postmodernism (for its own part) seemed to anticipate the renewalist
sensibilities Baker overtly embraces.
A novel that consists of nothing more than one mans memories
concerning the day he bought shoelaces on his lunch break, The Mez-
zanine (via a series of footnotes) repeatedly draws attention to its own
textuality and thus the fragmentary and unstable nature of any narra-
tive reconstruction of the past. Moreover, the narrators (i.e., Howies)
focus on everyday minutiahow he learned to enjoy sweeping, the
problem with oating straws, the strange effect of farting in a bath-
room stall while your boss washes his hands and talks business with
a colleaguefunctions as a conscious acknowledgment of the abso-
lutely private nature of existence. At the same time, though, Bakers
text remains outwardly realistic; it is always coherent, straightforward,
and accessible.
55
In fact, the absolutely private thoughts of the narrator
become a way of drawing the reader into the text, a way of reafrming
community; the narrators idiosyncrasies speak to our own idiosyncra-
sies. While there is little point in the narrators conclusion that, when
paying for groceries, the differential in checkout speeds between a fast,
smart ringer-upper and a slow, dumb one [is] three transactions to one
(117), it is likely that such a conclusion is not unlike other conclusions
to which the reader has, somewhat pointlessly, arrived. Like the work of
Leyner, this particular brand of narrative is neither a simple rejection
of postmodern strategies nor a back-lash return to Luksian realism.
In other words, critics like Philip Simmons are, to a certain extent, cor-
rect when they associate The Mezzanine with a postmodern historical
imagination (603). The text is, after all, so extremely solipsistic, so
limited to the domestic, the personal, and the resolutely mundane, that
any larger historical frame . . . is gestured at only through the irony of
134 The Passing of Postmodernism
its absence (603). Still, as even Simmons admits, Bakers text (like, as
I suggested above, Leyners) performs the most fundamental comic
function of validating our perceptions in unexpected ways (611). In
the end, the postmodern fragmentationthat is, Bakers willingness
to privilege innumerable microhistories (Simmons 605) over a single
grand narrativeis employed in a manner that seems designed to ironi-
cally frustrate the postmodern rejection of communal understanding
and/or essentially human experience; we gain, as Simmons himself
suggests, a pleasurable shock of recognition (611).
Instead of suggesting that Baker works to endorse a postmodern
historical imagination, then, we might argue, along with a critic like
Arthur Saltzman, that The Mezzanine does not feature the vanquish-
ment of historical nostalgia, as Simmons contends, so much as it alters
its course; it does not eliminate depth per se but posits deep sur-
faces (27). In a manner that recalls Flucks discussion of Carverin
particular, his suggestion that neo-realism is dened by a willingness to
privilege surface knowledgeSaltzmans take on Baker highlights the
way in which a text like The Mezzanine can be read as overtly reafrming
the possibility of communication, or communal understanding, while
simultaneously deferring the realization of that possibility. What we
get, and what makes The Mezzanine utterly distinct from a text like The
Floating Opera, is the promise of a type of communication without com-
munication, an articulation of community without community. The Mez-
zanine readdresses the postmodern denial of shared understandingof
representational accuracy, of mimesisby identifying its impossibility
as the very grounds of its possibility. Like Blanchots community with-
out communityor, what the later Derrida associates in The Politics
of Friendship with the term lovence, a term that seems to suggest the
possibility of connection via disconnection, touching without contact
the communal promise offered by The Mezzanine is continually made
possible by the impossibility that it will be fullled (or, put differently,
nally effaced as promise). The ruminations of Howie in The Mezzanine
offer us, as Saltzman puts it, contact and privacy simultaneously (69).
I dont want to suggest, though, that a text like The Mezzanine ultimate-
ly reafrms a traditional notion of privacy, and thus a notion of the
subject as essentially anterior to the social, or symbolic. Instead, by
pointing to the possibility of a type of community without community,
a text like The Mezzanine seems to present the subjects privacy as an
effect of its singularity, but a singularity that, as a theorist like Jean-Luc
Nancy
56
would suggest, is singular only insofar as it is simultaneously
and paradoxically with others. This singularity is not individuality;
it is, each time, the punctuality of a with that establishes a certain
135 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
origin of meaning and connects it to an innity of other possible ori-
gins [or singularities] (Singular Plural 85). It is in this sense that I
agree with Saltzman that the text offers the possibility of contact and
privacy simultaneously. The text, in other words, renews, as does
a work like Leyners, the possibility of connection as disconnection.
If we return again to the work of Nancy, we might in fact say that
The Mezzanine works to suggest that the common measure . . . is not
some unique standard applied to everyone and everything, but rather
the commensurability of incommensurable singularities. (75). And, I
would argue, this paradoxical renewal of the possibility of connection
and/or communication (and, thus, of a nally correct and successful
representational act, or decision) is even more obviously endorsed in
Bakers later, slightly pornographic, novel Vox.
Another seemingly minimalist piece, Vox also focuses on the mun-
dane and the personal. However, Vox, which is nothing but recorded
dialogue between a man (Jim) and a woman (Abby) on a phone sex
line, is much more overt than The Mezzanine in terms of suggesting the
utterly private nature of human existence. Jim and Abby spend most of
their time telling each other about their sexual habits, habits that tend
to be extremely fetishistic and personal. At the same time, though, and
as does The Mezzanine, Vox reembraces a type of sentimental faith in
social experience and communal sharing. However, this faith is not
nave in the way that prepostmodern realism is understood as being.
Like The Mezzanine, or Leyners Tetherballs, Vox remains postmodern in
terms of its articulation of a type of inescapable solipsism, or singular-
ity. The conversation, after all, takes place on a phone. There is no
real contact. Still, as Mikko Keskinen notes, In phone sex, bodies are
disconnected, but minds are connected by disembodied voices. . . . The
point in phone sex seems to be to embrace and indulge in the distance
rather than to grieve or curse it (102). Jim and Abbys quest for the
real thing is thus fueled by its impossibility; their desire is, in fact,
repeatedly identied as an effect of the impossibility of its fulllment.
What produces their desire is the absence of the Real; its promise, its
possibility, is the effect of its impossibility. Jim, as we eventually learn,
phoned the hot line because he wanted to move beyond the arti-
cial: I felt at that moment that I wanted to talk to a real woman,
no more images of any kind, no fast forward, no pause, no magazine
pictures. And there was the ad (33). What Jim gets, though, is a
phone conversation and another night of masturbation. On a certain
level, in fact, the entire conversation can be read as Jims private fan-
tasy: Although nominally divided into two voices, two speakers, the
novel gives the impression of one narrative voice characterized by wit,
136 The Passing of Postmodernism
wordplay, and stylistic virtuosity (Keskinen 111). Once again, then, we
are given an overt promise of communication, of a mimetic utterance,
that is simultaneously deferred as impossible. Like Fred speaking to
himself through his own intercom at the end of Lost Highway, Jims
conversation in Vox can be read as an articulation of an always and
necessarily deferred movement toward the articulation of some impos-
sible Real: The long-distance call from Abbys place to Jims is, in this
sense, a local one, or even an intercom call: Jim attempts to speak to
himself through a thin inside wallthe borderline separating narrative
levelsof the house of ction (Keskinen 112).
What I want to stress here is the fact that this renewalist reaf-
rmation is marked by a certain redeployment of postmodernist strate-
gies, a certain relaxing of the rules that seems to have resulted in both the
growing relevance of a type of neo-realism and the persistence of narra-
tive strategies that remain outwardly postmodernor, in other words,
metactional. As the end of Adaptation suggeststhat is, the return to
the metactional framework with which the lm began and Kaufmans
realization that he shouldnt adhere blindly to McKees rules any more
than he should adhere to the postmodern rule that all rules must be
rejectedthis period after postmodernism is dened by a renewed will-
ingness to abandon all imperatives, including postmodernisms. Texts
like Bakers thus seem to point to the postmodern failure around
which I have been circling since the beginning. As an example of emer-
gent renewalist narratives, Bakers work suggests that postmodernism
failed because it refused, or was unable, to acknowledge clearly that
it ultimately and necessarily reafrmed the very positivist ideology it
claimed to be refuting.
As I have suggested throughout, emergent narrative forms, in
a manner that parallels late-phase deconstruction, seem to take into
account outwardly a certain postmodern failure, or limitation. What
these narrative forms suggestand what a lm like Adaptation seems to
expose, or play outis that the corrosively self-reexive works of post-
modernism were necessarily haunted by the very specter they attempted
to exorcise: the specter of a telos, the specter of positivism, the specter
of humanism. In brief, the very specter we see at work in postmod-
ernism is the very same specter the later Derrida locates in Marxism
and, in turn, deconstruction: a past revenant, or ghost, of emancipa-
tory and messianic afrmation, a certain experience of the promise.
And it seems clear that this current narrative turn is marked by an
acceptance of the very spectrality of this particular specter, a ghost that
ultimately and necessarily haunted postmodernisms desire to exor-
cise all past ideological revenants. As an apparent reappraisal of the
137 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
postmodern relationship to the spectral remainder that animated the
aesthetic strategy of metaction, this current movement away from the
recent hegemony of postmodern narrative strategies is, in short, the
latest attempt to deal with the specter of postmodernismwhich is,
quite simply, the specter of a still incomplete project of modernity,
the essential specter haunting both Marxism and deconstruction.
A Conclusion . . . Perhaps
One nal example. In Toni Morrisons Beloved, the concept of the spec-
terof the ghost, of the repressedis pivotal. For this reason, Beloved
can help us to clarify two distinct yet intimately related concepts. On
one hand, the text exemplies a distinctly renewalist aesthetic; its nar-
rative strategies overtly endorse and embrace the ironic spectrality of
the mimetic promise. On the other hand, Beloved, like Hamlet, offers
us a very specic model of the specter, a model that speaks to the
very narrative in which it is articulated. And it seems more than a
mere accident that the spectral negotiation that determines the plot
of Beloved comes to highlight the distinctly renewalist negotiation that
denes the texts overall aesthetic.
Like all of the renewalist texts discussed above, Beloved redeploys
a series of overtly postmodern stylistic devices. Most obviously, Beloved
(like Morrisons later novel, Jazz) approaches its central animating
eventthat is, Sethes protective, yet brutal, slaughter of her child,
Belovedagain and again via a spiral-like series of narrative returns.
Indeed, the event is recounted several times and from a series of differ-
ent perspectives. As in OBriens texts, this repetition comes to suggest
the impossibility of the certainly accurate narrative act, the certainly
right narrative decision. However, and as we see in a text like OBriens
The Things They Carried, the events essential inexplicability (or, rather,
the specters essential spectrality) becomes the very thing that animates
the narrative act. Ryan P. McDermott puts it like this:
The unspeakable scene(/seen) of Beloved is not only an
unwittingly productive critical constructionit is symptom-
atic of the novels own desire to break and yet preserve the
fungibility of its pervasive silence through the production
and reproduction of the image outside of the symbolic
order of language. As such, the unspeakable scene works
a structural device that both appeals to and frustrates our
attempts to translate this silence into narrative. (77)
138 The Passing of Postmodernism
The promise of complete narrative apprehension is made possible by
the fact that the eventor rather, the impossible Realcontinually
resists narrative apprehension. We see this paradoxthat is, the para-
dox that the impossibility of the certainly right narrative act allows
for the possibility of such an actin Sethes own circular attempts to
tell her story: Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the
room, him, the subject, would remain one. That she could never close
in, pin it down for anybody who had to ask (163). Like OBriens
narrators, though, Sethe empathically yields to the belief, however
contradictory it may be, that her story and, thus, the reality of her
trauma can be made manifest; she yields to the belief that, eventually,
she will no longer be haunted by the past. Put differently, and in a
manner that speaks to the ethical imperative that denes renewalism,
Sethe determinedly and ironically opposes the paralysis of narrative
indecision (i.e., the effect of knowing that no nally correct decision
is possible) with the certainty of indecision (i.e., the belief that there
is, indeed, an absolutely correct decision). This ethics of indecision is
doubly stressed via the actual event that Sethe, among others, repeat-
edly tries to apprehend/understand. The texts emphatic willingness
to undergo the ordeal of indecision is, in short, mirrored by the
impossible decision with which Sethe was faced: to kill her children or
to let them be taken as slaves. As deplorable as her ultimate decision
might appear prima facie, the fact that she makes a decision at all can
be read as a clear endorsement of the ethical imperative animating
the entire text: the ethical imperative that any decision or narrative act
must endure both aspects of indecision, that any decision must, respect
both the possibility and the impossibility of the spectral promise.
Of course, this ethics of indecisionor rather, this apparent
endorsement of the renewalist imperative to respect the specteris
also mirrored by the texts theme of revenants, of ghosts. The narra-
tive, after all, begins with the assertion that Sethes house is haunted;
Sethe and Denver (Sethes other daughter) live in a house palsied
by the babys fury at having its throat cut (5). From the very begin-
ning Sethe and Denver are invested in the possibility of some type of
exorcism and/or conjuration. In the initial pages of the text, in fact,
we are told that Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by
calling forth the ghost that tried them so (4). What is important to
note here is that the desire to call forth (i.e., to conjure) the spirit
is intimately tied to a desire to explain things once and for all, to make
the baby (Beloved) understand at last. If shed only come, Sethe
asserts, I could make it clear to her (4). To begin with, then, Sethe
is animated by the promise that the specter can be made manifest and,
thus, that the traumatic event can be nally and accurately related.
139 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
But, in the beginning at least, this promise is continually deferred and
Sethe and Denver continue to be haunted. However, when Paul D, an
ex-slave with whom Sethe was once held captive, returns and performs
a type of exorcism on the house, Sethe and Denver seem to get their
wish. The promise is, in short, fullled; and, for a time, everything
seems better. The sense we get is that Paul Ds presence allows Sethe
to repress her trauma, to believe that its nally over, to believe that it
has been reckoned with at last. Paul D frees Sethe from her responsibil-
ityfrom, especially, the responsibility of her decisions both past and
present. Not surprisingly, though, and in a manner that speaks to the
spectrological argument I have been employing throughout, Paul Ds
exorcism is followed almost immediately by the manifest appearance
of Beloved. The suggestion is that the utter rejection of the ghosts
presence is tantamount to an utter rejection of its absence; in either
case, the ironic spectrality of the specter is effaced. An exorcism is,
after all, always also a form of conjuration. Still, combined with Paul
Ds presence, Beloveds manifestation as an adult woman seemingly
liberates Sethe once and for all. However, we are slowly brought to the
realization that Beloveds manifestation and, thus, the absence of the ghost
is a dangerously seductive reality, a reality that slowly and quite neces-
sarily tears the makeshift family apart.
Eventually, both Denver and Sethe begin to sense the dangerous
effects of Paul Ds exorcism/conjuration; they both seem to realize
that the ghost continually promised and opened up certain possibili-
ties because those possibilities remained deferred. While Denver admits
that her and Sethes attempts to reason with the baby ghost . . . got
nowhere and that, in the end, It took a man, Paul D, to shout it
off and take its place for himself, she also comes to realize that she
preferred the venomous baby (104). Likewise, Sethe begins to lament
the loss of the ghost, while simultaneously falling prey to the comfort
that Paul D and Beloved seem to offer:
Alone with her daughter in a haunted house she managed
every damn thing. Why now, with Paul D instead of the
ghost, was she breaking up? getting scared? needing Baby?
The worst was over, wasnt it? She had already got through,
hadnt she? With the ghost in 124 she could bear, do, solve
anything. Now a hint of what had happened to Halle and
she cut out like a rabbit looking for its mother. (97)
Signicantly, this troubling train of thought is interrupted by the plea-
sure of a massage that Sethe is, at the time, receiving from Beloved:
Beloveds ngers were heavenly. Under them and breathing easy,
140 The Passing of Postmodernism
the anguish rolled down. The peace Sethe had come there to nd
crept into her (97). Still, and regardless of the apparent comfort that
Beloved and Paul D seem to offer, the dangerous absence of the ghost
and/as the presence of Beloved becomes increasingly evident; we are
even led to believe that Beloved may be intent on harming Sethe.
What I want to highlight, though, is the fact that, with Beloved nally
present, Sethe slowly loses the reason to explain herself, to tell her story,
to make (in short) decisions about the representative acts that dene
her past. Beloved, after all, knows what happened. She was there. She
is, we might say, the manifestation of the event itself.
As McDermott suggests, Beloveds reincarnation can . . . be read
as a materialization of the visual trace that eludes appropriation into the
sphere of narrationthe latter being the condition which makes the
visual trace not fully recoverable and consequently outside the bounds
of historiographic discourse (79). This materialization becomes a com-
forting, if problematic, presence for Sethe: Sethes own investment in
the newly returned Belovedmore pointedly, in Beloveds bodily pres-
encebecomes a way of compensating for the failure of language to
account for this lost object (McDermott 79). I would like to take
this suggestion a bit further, though. By nally compensating for the
[necessary] failure of the narrative act, Beloveds presenceor rather,
the presence of the event itselfannihilates the possibility of all future nar-
rative acts. Beloveds presence doesnt, as we might expect, exacerbate
the weight of Sethes responsibilitythat is, her future responsibility
to make narrative decisions about her past; instead, Beloveds pres-
ence (like, to a certain extent, Paul Ds) strips Sethe of all (narrative)
responsibility. Consequently, Beloveds presence strips Sethe of her
authority and her control:
Then the mood changed and the arguments began.
Slowly at rst. A complaint from Beloved, an apology from
Sethe. . . . Wasnt it too cold to stay outside? Beloved gave
a look that said, So what? Was it past bedtime, the light
no good for sewing? Beloved didnt move; said, Do it,
and Sethe complied. She took the best of everything
rst . . . and the more she took, the more Sethe began
to talk, to explain, . . . Beloved wasnt interested. . . . Sethe
pleaded for forgiveness, counting, listing again and again
her reasons . . . (24142)
Paul Ds exorcism and/or conjuration of the specterfor, as we have
already seen, the two are ultimately synonymousleaves Sethe in a
141 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
state of mythic indecision; she no longer has a reason to get her story
right, to tell it in truth. The story has become, for all intents and
purposes, manifest, and its presence leaves no room for other pos-
sible accounts. All Sethe can do is apologize (to Beloved) or forget
(with Paul D). Either situation, though, can be read as an effect of
the ghosts absence. Without the ghost, without the possibility and the
impossibility of nally apprehending the moment of Beloveds death,
without the possibility and the impossibility of forgiveness, Sethe loses
both the ability and the need to make decisions about her own story.
More simply, Morrisons distinctly renewalist text suggests, via its own
narrative strategies and its employment of a specic model of the spec-
ter, that without the ghost, without the ironic spectrality of the specter,
there is no ordeal of indecision and, thus, no possible decision, no
possible responsibility (narrative or otherwise).
This renewalist endorsement of spectrality, or narrative indeci-
sion, becomes particularly explicit when, in the concluding portions of
the novel, the women in the Sethes community nally come together
to perform what seems to be a second and nal exorcism. At this point,
though, Beloved is no longer the ghost that haunted 124. She has
become real: in the esh. For this reason, we should avoid referring to
this communal act as an exorcism. If anything, it is the exact opposite
of an exorcism. The community seemingly comes together to insist
upon Beloveds spectrality, her status as ghost. The women reject her
material presence so as to reafrm her possibility and her impossibility
as a ghost of the past. And while we are told that, afterward, the com-
munity forgot her like a bad dream (274), it would be a mistake to
assume that she is nally expelled. After the community confronts her
presence, Beloved, as Roger Luckhurst astutely notes, remains (249).
Or better: her remains persist. The community reopens the possibility
of remembering the dismembered past by performing a ritualized act
of forgetting, by dematerializing Beloved, by insisting upon her essen-
tial spectrality. Once this ritual act is performed, Derridean indecision
once again becomes possible. Paul D is told that, Maybe, Beloved
disappeared, maybe she exploded, maybe she is hiding in the tress
waiting for another chance (264). Once again, no one knows with
certainty what happened; and, in the absence of certainty, the process
and possibility of making sense out of the stories (267) is renewed.
By coming together to insist upon her impossibility, the community
makes possible the act of making narrative decisions about Beloved
(and all the past traumas with which she is associated).
The conclusion of Beloved stresses the impossible possibility of
exorcising the past nally, of remembering or forgetting. Because It
142 The Passing of Postmodernism
was not a story to pass on the community works to forget Beloved. But,
because This is not a story to pass on, Beloveds spectral footprints
necessarily continue to come and go, come and go (275). The novel
thus concludes with an almost audible call to respect the specter.
Even the slippage in this line that repeats without repeatingIt was
not a story to pass on and This is not a story to pass onis utterly
spectral in nature. It demands a reading that can never be settled, or
decided upon. One meaning (to forget) is wholly present only when
the other (to remember) is wholly absent. The condition of absolute
meaning is here the condition of its impossibility. As a result, Beloved
works to pass on and pass on the very specter of a telos that ani-
mated postmodernism. On the one hand, Morrisons text accepts, or
passes on, postmodernisms rejection of the modernist compulsion
to conjure this specter into being once and for all; on the other, Beloved
clearly moves beyond, or passes on, the postmodern imperative to
utterly deny the possibility of the specters materiality, its potential
as a promise of an ideal future still to come. Beloved, in short, out-
wardly works to suggest that the impossibility of social justice, authentic
experience, and/or true and nal decisions need not prevent us from
sincerely struggling for such things. What we see, then, as I said above,
is that only in the absence of absolutely just decisions (and/or narrative
acts) are any decisions (and/or narrative acts) possible.
Put differently and, perhaps, in conclusion, Beloveds distinctly
renewalist imperative to respect and endure the ordeal of indecision
is, if we follow Derrida, an ethical call to embrace the spectral con-
tingency of the perhaps. In Politics of Friendship, and while elaborat-
ing on the ethical implications of the specter (implications that he
began to address overtly in Specters of Marx) Derrida spends an entire
chapter reading, enumerating, and interpreting Nietzsches use of the
word perhaps. The question Derrida wants to answer is this: what
does this perhaps suggest about the possibility and the impossibility
of friendship, of an ethical and nally true understanding of the other.
Derrida, of course (and while reading Nietzsches own discussions of
friendship alongside the famous Aristotle quote, 0 friends, there are
no friends), comes to suggest that the frequency of the term perhaps
in Nietzsches work can be read as symptomatic of a type of promise.
This promise is, as are most things for Derrida, twofold. On the one
hand, this promise promises the veracity of what has been said while
simultaneously rejecting the certainty that a promise typically seems to
afford: there will come, perhaps; there will occur, perhaps, the event of
that which arrives (und vielleicht kommt), and this will be the hour of joy,
an hour of birth but also of resurrection (28). This promise promises,
like the ghost that originally haunts Sethe, that the event will become
143 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
manifest. It promises the absence/manifestation of the ghost, perhaps. In
terms of Morrisons text, this promise could be said to promise the true
narrative representation of the event, perhaps. The perhaps thus defers
the possibility of the promise while simultaneously opening up, yield-
ing to, hoping for, the possibility that the deferral is only temporary,
that there will occur, perhaps, the event of that which arrivesthat
there will occur, that there can occur, a nally right decision, a nally
right narrative and/or interpretive act. On the other hand, this prom-
ise promises the perhaps itself; it promises the possibility that we can,
nally, accept the dangerous irony of the perhaps: What is going to
come, perhaps, is not only this or that; it is at last the thought of the
perhaps, the perhaps itself. The arrivant will arrive perhaps, for one must
never be sure when it comes to arrivance; but the arrivant could also be
the perhaps itself, the unheard-of, totally new experience of the perhaps.
Unheard-of, totally new, that very experience which no metaphysician
might yet have dared to think (Politics 29)
For Derrida, the future to come is the future of the perhaps. It
is the future of the specter, of that which is and is not, that which we
know we can never know yet somehow believe we will know . . . perhaps.
Perhaps, then, we might argue, the future is already here and now?
Doesnt Derrida, after all, position himself as the philosopher to come?
Indeed, Derrida argues for a future of the perhaps as a philosopher
of the perhaps: the thought of the perhaps perhaps engages the only
possible thought of the event (29, my emphasis). Furthermoreand
assuming that the above analysis is, to a degree, accurateare not these
narratives after postmodernism, are not these narratives of renewal-
ism, narratives of the perhaps? Are these not narratives that seemingly
embrace the spectrality of the specter, narratives that embrace the nec-
essary possibility of the impossible? Yet, if this is trueif, that is, the
future of the perhaps is nowdoes it not suggest, quite paradoxically
of course, that the perhaps is, itself, an impossibility? Does not this
apparent claim (and imperative) to achieve the perhapsto respect,
that is, the specterefface the ironic danger of the perhaps, the ironic
danger of the specters spectrality? Arent we once again in the domain
of certainty; are we not, once again and quite necessarily, forcing the
ghost to become manifest/absent? We might argue, in fact, that it is
not a simple accident that, in his endorsement of this future of the
perhaps, Derrida occasionally drops the perhaps: there is no more
just category for the future than that of the perhaps (29). What
happened, here, to the perhaps? Why is this promise of the perhaps no
longer, itself, a condition of the perhaps, a condition of epistemologi-
cal doubt? Let me rephrase the question: what is implied by the fact
that, when it comes to a renewalist ethics of indecision, a decision is
144 The Passing of Postmodernism
no longer necessary? After all, the suggestion (as we just saw in a text
like Beloved and as we are seeing, again, via a look at Derridas later
work) seems to be that, when it comes to the ordeal of indecision, we
have no decision. The ordeal of indecision must be endured:
The possibilization of the impossible possible must remain
at one and the same time as undecidableand therefore as
decisiveas the future itself. What would a future be if the
decision were able to be programmed, and if risk [lala],
the uncertainty, the unstable certainty, the inassurance of
the perhaps, were it not suspended on it at the opening
of what comes, ush with the event, within it and with an
open heart? (29)
In a claim like this, has not the specter, like Beloved, once again
and, perhaps, quite necessarily obstructed us with its apparent
manifestation/absence?
What I am trying to suggest by way of a tentative conclusiona
conclusion, perhaps, of the perhapsis this: by positioning itself as a
narrative/theoretical strategy that no longer feels compelled to reject,
as dangerously impossible, the spectral promise that drives all narra-
tive acts, by dening itself as a narrative strategy that no longer insists
on any single type of narrative strategy, this emergent discourse of
renewalism slips quite necessarily, perhaps, into the same spectral trap
that lead postmodernism to its apparent demise. The very specter that
is seemingly dealt with in this shift away from a postmodern stylistic
imperative necessarily returns at the very moment it is thought to be,
nally, placed to rest. Most obviously, this specter continues to haunt
the claim that what we are witnessing at the end of postmodernism is
an improvement that manages to successfully lay to rest the spec-
trally determined imperatives of postmodernism, that manages to bring
our mourning to an end. Yet this specter of positivism must always pass
on. Certainly, postmodernism has given up the ghost. And, certainly,
it would seem that this ghost has passed on to a much more welcoming
home, a home of the gamble, a home of the perhaps; but the new
imperative to respect the specter, to embrace the dangerous irony of
the perhapsan imperative we see in this emergent ction, as well as
in the later work of theorists like Derridasuggests that the specter
is once again being denied, or passed on, that it is once again compel-
ling us in ways we cannot control. In brief, what I think we need to
note (especially now, at the swell of this new epistemological tide) is
that this spectral relationship does not cease to be a problemthat is,
145 Writing of the Ghost (Again)
a source of teleologies and/or absolutessimply because we claim to
recognize it, to accept it. It is, I am arguing, necessarily impossible to respect
the specter. This seems to be implicit in the teleological imperative that
we must respect the specter, that we must endure the ordeal of indeci-
sion. For to say this is to locate another nal answer and thus to deny
the impossibility of such a solutionthe impossibility that the specter
represents in the rst place. So, what we begin to see in this strange
moment of passing, in this strange and ongoing period of mourning,
is the fact that the specter works to produce work, if it works at all,
because it compels us to destroy it, to efface its spectrality, to disrespect
it as specter, to always and forever pass on it.
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Notes
Chapter One: The Phantom Project Returning
1. I should note that the release of the second edition of Poetics coin-
cides (to a certain extent) with Hutcheons publication of Postmodern After-
thoughts, an earlier, more condensed, version of the epilogue.
2. A fact, of course, that Hutcheon herself admits: For decades now,
diagnosticians have been pronouncing on its health, if not its demise (Politics
165).
3. For example: Neil Brooks and Josh Toths The Mourning After: Attending
the Wake of Postmodernism; Jos Lpez and Garry Potters After Postmodernism: An
Introduction to Critical Realism; Robert Rebeins Hicks, Tribes and Dirty Realists:
American Fiction After Postmodernism; and Klaus Stierstorfers Beyond Postmodern-
ism: Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture. For the most part, these texts
(along with the ones mentioned above) are discussed in detail in chapter 3.
4. Another useful example would be the fairly recent collection of essays,
God, the Gift and Postmodernism, edited by John D. Caputo. Considered in some
detail in the following chapter, this collection aims to examine the way in which
recent theoretical shifts (those of Derrida included) have reopened the pos-
sibility of discussing religion and god as the ground for ethical reasoning.
5. To be clear: while I nd these terms (i.e., emergent, dominant,
residual) useful in articulating the dynamics of shifting epistemological con-
gurations, I do not mean them in their strictest sense. That is, I do not use
them in same way Williams, as a Marxist critic, does. Rather, I use them in
a manner that is more in line with the way they are employed in Jamesons
Postmodernism or, better, Marianne DeKovens recent book, Utopia Limited: The
Sixties and the Emergence of Postmodernism. Like DeKoven, I use these terms to
describe the shift or pivot to the postmodern (18)as well as, in my case,
away from the postmodernbut I use them, as DeKoven does, without the
implications of progress from capitalism to socialism (or of any teleology) that
inhere in Williams Marxist development of [them] (18).
147
148 Notes to Chapter 1
6. That Olson wholly dissociates the postmodern from the vast period
separating Homer and the end of modernism is, perhaps, worth noting. If
such a broad period can be associated (however loosely) with the gradual
formation and eventual dominance of an enlightenment sensibility, then
the fact that Olsons postmodern is overtly opposed to such a period sug-
gests that it is far less removed from our current understanding of the term
than we might initially expect. Olsons apparent anticipation of our current
sense of the terman anticipation noted by both Jerome Mazzaro and Hans
Bertensis perhaps further exemplied in an earlier document, a letter to
Robert Creeley (dated 9 August 1951). In this letter, Olson seems to suggest
that the post-modern is the effect of a type of nally completed process of
modernization, a type of pervasive globalization: the post-modern world was
projected by two earlier facts(a) the voyages of the 15th and 16th Century
making all the earth a known quantity (thus, geographical quantity absolute);
and (b) 19th Century, the machine, leading to (1) the tripling of population
and (2) the same maximal as the geographic in communication systems and
the reproductive ones (75).
7. Olsons post-modern, although never clearly dened, appeared to
be a description of a successful fusion of poetic innovation and revolutionary
politics linked to a prophetic history (12), a form of artistic production akin
to that of the prewar avant-garde. It is conceived of as a shift away from the ratio-
nal humanism that haunted the modern movement, yet it remains, to a certain
degree (as its similarity to a modernist/heroic avant-garde suggests), complicit
with modernism, with the original Stimmung of modernism, in an electric sense
of the present as fraught with a momentous future (Anderson 12).
8. In an attempt to be accurate, I should note that this quotation
ends . . . beginning around 1875. Khler is in fact arguingand this is what
Bertens is skeptical ofthat Olson and Toynbees construction of postmodern-
ism represents an epistemic shift beginning sometime in the late-nineteenth
century. Of course, Bertens is right to suggest that the net has been cast too
wide if the beginning of postmodernism is associated with an epistemic break
that occurred in the late-nineteenth century. As weve already seen, though,
Olson seems to construct the postmodern as a break from an identiable
(even from todays perspective) modern aesthetic. And, as I suggested above,
Toynbees discussion of a period that attempted to dene itself as posthistoric
and which was subsequently succeeded by an emergent multinational period of
Western civilization might be more important than the accuracy of his termino-
logical applications. Moreover, the fact that both Olson and Toynbee conceive
of an epochal rupture in the early 1950s is of considerable more importance
than Toynbees choice of 1875 as the date of his post-Modern break.
9. The double genitive is intentional, as it is in the title of Derridas Spec-
ters of Marx. This particular specter, as I will attempt to demonstrate, belongs to
the postmodern period as a unique manifestation; however, it is also ironically,
or paradoxically, a repetition, having come (or arrived) from the outside, from
before, as a revenant. This will become clearer as we progress.
10. See also Bertens discussion of Olson in the more recent The Idea
of Postmodernism: A History. Here, Bertens considers Olsons possible connec-
149 Notes to Chapter 1
tion to Heidegger (and even his anticipation of Derrida): To free oneself
from the straightjacket of rationalistic liberal humanism, Olson proposes what
would seem to be a Heideggerian poetic practice that breaks with the west-
ern rationalist tradition and its compulsive and arrogant urge to make reality
subservient to itself (21). Nevertheless, Bertens insists that Olsons seemingly
Heideggerian theories are much less radical than those of Derrida, even if crit-
ics like William Spanos would disagree. In short, according to Bertens, Olson
maintains a very traditional poetic sensibility, repeatedly intimating that the
real speaks for itself, and is allowed to do so by the poet who merely functions
as a mediator (21). As I suggest below (as well as in the following chapters),
though, this peculiarly post-modern return of the real, or repressed, can be
read as a necessary effect of a certain persistent specter. Even the most overtly
postmodern rejection of the mimetic impulse is inevitably presented as a nally
accurate representation of reality. Still, it seems reasonable to say, along with
Bertens, that (while close) Olsons post-modern is not quite postmodern.
11. Mazzaros discussion of Olson occurs primarily in the preface to Post-
modern American Poetry. He argues here (and this is, in part, the portion that
Bertens quotes) that, for Olson and Jarrell, Without the technical language
of the structuralists, the formulation of the essential differences between mod-
ernism and postmodernism becomes: in conceiving of language as a fall from
unity, modernism seeks to restore the original state often by proposing silence
or the destruction of language; postmodernism accepts the division and uses of
language and self-destructionmuch as Descartes interpreted thinkingas the
basis of identity (Mazzaro viii). Of course, this take on Olson is not unique
to Mazzaro; as Bertens also notes, Donald Allen and George Butternick, in
their introduction to The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised, make a
similar argument, suggesting that Olsons postmodernism rebelled against a
formalist Modernism (Bertens 12).
12. Indeed, the above (or some slight variation of it) remains as the domi-
nant take on the distinction between modernism and postmodernism. Take
the basic argument of Joseph Contes Design and Debris (2002) as an example:
The postmodern artist expresses an afnity forrather than an aversion to
[as does the modernist artist]forms of disorder (8). Still, it is important
to point out that Contes postmillennial desire to stress, or locate, a source
of order, or unity (or even a type of ethics), in the postmodern penchant for
chaos is representative of a way of thinking that is identiable with this current
epistemological moment after postmodernism.
13. As Bertens explains it, Howe lamented the fact that The postmod-
ern writer must do without heroes and without heroic conicts; he can only
ctionalize the malaise of the increasingly shapeless world he lives in and
of his increasingly uid experience (13).
14. Howe seems to rely quite heavily on a very traditional, or liberalist,
notion of the subject. Consequently, his reading of mass society is heavily
inected by what we might think of as existential angst. In fact, as Thomas
Schaub argues, Howes sense of a mass society seems to be characteristic
of a type of postwar liberalism that attempted to distance itself from a pre-
war liberalism that appeared to be dangerously susceptible to totalitarian
150 Notes to Chapter 1
tendencies, tendencies that were (by the end of the war) directly linked to
communism. This neo-liberalism, Schaub suggests, positioned itself in opposi-
tion to the apparent positivism and unchecked humanism of a prewar liberal-
ism that subscribed to facile ideas of progress and history (7). However,
because it struggled to distance itself from communism (and thus totalitarian-
ism), this revisionist liberalism increasingly subscribed to distinctly conserva-
tive views. In particular, and as we see with Howe, the new liberal becomes
increasingly opposed to the masses, or mass culture. Rather than becoming a
revolutionary and liberating proletariat, mass society seemed to submit quite
happily to totalitarian regimes. The new liberal sees a need to preserve high
culture from the degradations of mass culture (17). Not surprisingly, then,
Howe celebrates individual writers who critique the apparent dissolution of the
subject via the dangerous effects of rapid modernization. Arguably, as Schaub
seems to suggest, this postwar liberalism can be said to permeate, in one way
or another, the majority of postmodern discourse. We might in fact say, if only
tentatively, that the revisionist liberalism we see in Howe persists in the high
postmodernism of writers like Pynchon and Barth (if not, also, theorists like
Rorty and Derrida). Schaubs extended discussion of Barths The End of the
Road, a text that I touch upon briey in chapter 3, seems to suggest just this
possibility. See, specically, chapter 8 in American Fiction in the Cold War.
15. Howe names writers like Bernard Malamud, J.D. Salinger, Saul Bellow,
and Ralph Ellison. For the most part, critics today would identify such writers
as late-modernistsor as writers who, in one way or another, continue a type of
modernist tradition. But we must remember that, for Howe, the postmodern,
or postwar, experience is to be resisted. Consequently, it is not surprising that
Howes postmodernists are dened by their penchant for nostalgia: They do
not usually write about postwar experience per se: they do not confront it as
much as they try to ambush it (432). In short, Howes postmodernists are not
the postmodernists of todaythat is, Barth, Burroughs, Vonnegut, and so on;
they are not, that is, dened by their endorsement of a nally POSTmodern
(or POST-human, or POST-ideological, or whatever) society.
16. It is perhaps worth noting that Howes view of the postmodern is not
entirely negative. Not only does he celebrate various works of postwar ction,
he suggests that, while the absence of clearly dened social relations results in
various aesthetic difculties, it also creates new possibilities (426).
17. Arguably, the claims concerning the death of postmodernism are not
as outwardly apocalyptic as were the claims regarding the end of modern-
ism; however, as I demonstrate in chapter 3, the arguments surrounding the
passing of postmodernism are, like those that surrounded the passing of mod-
ernism, inected by a certain sense that things have nally been, once and
for all, gured out, or solved. In other words, and as we see (if only briey) in
Hutcheons epilogue to The Politics of Postmodernism, the end of postmodernism
is marked by a certain sense of nality, of completion.
18. Of course, we might read Fielder as saying something quite different
than this. On one level, a critic like Fiedler seems to be celebrating the fact
that the end of modernismand, thus, the end of modernisms posthistoric
151 Notes to Chapter 1
claimsmarks a certain return of history; if modernism has been succeeded
than the modernist claim that history is over is no longer viable. However, it
is important to note that Fiedler, like most of the early advocates of a post-
modern period, explicitly identies postmodernism as an apocalyptic break,
as a hitherto unknown period free of the limiting and hegemonic ideologies
of a now defunct modernism. So, even if Fiedler sees the postmodern turn
as a return to history, such a view remains tied to the assumption that history
is nally at an end. Put differently, if somewhat crudely, the assumption that
we have at last corrected certain false understandings of history is implicitly
haunted by the belief that progress is now at an end. Obviously, and as we
will see, this same paradox is (necessarily, I might add) at work in the claims
regarding the end of postmodernism.
19. That is, Toynbees discussion of what we would today call modernism
highlights the way in which the recent claim regarding the end of postmodern-
ism echoes the claims surrounding the end of modernism. Toynbees post-
Modernas an epoch that claimed to be posthistoricwas ultimately and
ironically succeeded by postmodernism proper. The fact that another epoch
seems to have arrived at the end of history (or after the end of modernity) is thus
less surprising than it might seem.
20. For instance, in Literature Against Itself, Graff argues that postmodern-
ism should be seen not as a break with romantic and modernist assumptions
but rather as a logical culmination of the premises of these earlier movements,
premises not always clearly dened in discussions of these issues (32).
21. Of course, either argument can be used to explain the apparent fact
that postmodernism has become as obsoleteor, rather, as implicated in a still
incomplete and historically contingent projectas the epoch that it appar-
ently succeeded. In order to account for the fact that a POST-postmodern, or
something more than postmodernism, is possible, it would appear that we must
view the postmodern either as not truly POSTmodern or as an unsuccessful ver-
sion of a truly POSTmodern epoch. However, as I suggest below, a simplistic
dichotomy such as this is ultimately too limiting.
22. See chapter 2 for a more in-depth discussion of the often contested
relationship between poststructuralism and postmodernism.
23. We might think of Derridas 1966 paper, as well: Structure Sign and
Play in the Discourse of the Humanities. As with Ends of Man, a certain
rupture is announcedthe end of a previous mode of representation: Per-
haps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that
could be called an event, if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which
it is precisely the function of structuralor structuralistthought to reduce
or to suspect. But let me use the term event anyway, employing it with cau-
tion and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exte-
rior form of a rupture and a redoubling. . . . Nevertheless, up until the event
which I wish to mark out and dene, structureor rather the structurality of
structurealthough it has always been involved, has always been neutralized or
reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point
of presence, a xed origin (Writing and Difference 278). This rupture, this end
152 Notes to Chapter 1
of an ideology of the center, then, echoes the Foucaultian understanding of
the latest (that is, the latest in the mid-1960s) epistemic break. Still, unlike
Foucault, Derridaeven as early as Structure, Sign and Playhints at a sense
of redoubling or repetition that confounds an entirely simplistic sense of
a nal and complete rupture, or end. Of course, what Derrida calls here
redoubling is the hinge upon which my central thesis depends.
24. As I have already suggested, it is, perhaps, this way of rethinking a
postmodern anti-historical theory that makes my own thesis a product of an
episteme after postmodernism; of course, at this point, the veracity of such a
statement remains to be seen.
25. Although discussed in more detail below, this paradox may require
some further clarication. For Derrida, the specter is the future, it is always
to come, it presents itself only as that which could come or come back (39,
my emphasis). Put simply, the specter is a metaphor of the promise. And,
of course, in Specters, the specic promise under discussion is the promise
of Marxism itselfor, more broadly, the promise of any radical democracy
to come. It is important to note, though, that what makes the effect of the
specter so problematic (and yet so productive) is that its arrival as promise is
always a type of return, a coming back. A ghost, after all, is a revenant. It
is a return of what is already past/passed. But, in returning, the ghost, as in
what has passed, is never the same, just as the ghost of Hamlet is not the
King himself. Thus, what seems to be out front, the future, comes back in
advancement from the past, from the back (10). And it is in this way that
Derridas understanding of the specter is intimately tied to his understanding
of mourning and the messianic. The specter promises the future (i.e., the
messianic return), a time when the work of mourning (what is past) is over,
a time when the specter (of what is past) is nally put to rest. The promise,
then, as specter, is always a promise from/of the past, but (at the same time and
however paradoxically) it always returns anew, beckoning us toward the future.
A ghost is always, in short, a matter of Repetition and rst time (10).
26. In other words, this specter of the messianic is the promise of eman-
cipation, meaning, justice, and so on. It is the possibility of a to come that,
according to Derrida, drives (or is the very ground of possibility for) all radical
discourses. The specter that all radical discoursesand, lets say tentatively at
this point, all epistemological recongurationscan never, must never, perma-
nently exorcise, is thus, as Werner Hamacher puts it, The messianic eschatol-
ogy underlying every fundamentally critical thought, every longing, and every
one of the simplest statements (16768).
27. What I am calling an aporia, Derrida would probably call the secret
that denes an inheritance, the impossibility of its apprehension or nal
conjuring: If the readability of a legacy were given, natural, transparent,
univocal, if it did not call for and at the same time defy interpretation, we
would never have anything to inherit from it (Specters 16). The very spectral-
ity of the inheritance, its incomprehensible uniqueness, is the very condition
of its function as a legacy. And while it is impossible to conjure fullyand,
to conjure, here, suggests both to call into being and to exorcise (Specters
153 Notes to Chapter 1
48)it is the legacys power to compel us to attempt conjuration that is its
most important characteristic.
28. The rst line of the Communist Manifesto: A spectre is haunting
Europethe spectre of Communism (473).
29. See pages 4048 in Specters of Marx for a more complete discussion of
the double meaning of to conjure.
30. For Derrida, this is a very dangerous impulse. It is on this point that
Derridean ethics become most explicit. Derrida is insistent that certain specters
of Marxism need to be abandoned, while the one I have been discussing must
be inherited. Marxisms refusal to temper its own teleological assumptions is,
for Derrida, a result of a spectral compulsion that needs to be avoided in the
future: Marx continues to want to ground his critique or his exorcism of
the spectral simulacrum in an ontology. It is acritical but pre-deconstruc-
tiveontology of presence as actual reality and as objectivity. This ontology
means to deploy the possibility of dissipating the phantom, let us venture to
say again of conjuring it away as representative consciousness of the subject,
of bringing this representation back to the world of the labour, production,
and exchange, so as to reduce it to its conditions (170).
31. For this reason, as Derrida puts it, Haunting belongs to the structure
of every hegemony (37).
32. Discursive because we can understand Marxism, like deconstruction,
as a discoursethat is, as a discursive effect of a given episteme, or epistemo-
logical conguration. And, of course, while Marxism appears to be a discourse
of a modern episteme, deconstruction aligns nicely with postmodernism.
33. Such an argument, in fact, wouldnt be far removed, if it is removed
at all, from Foucaults claim that the modern episteme is dened by the birth
of the subject.
34. See Hassans The Postmodern Turn, 91.
35. As Jameson argues in Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capi-
talism, What is meant in the specically architectural context, is that where the
now more classical high-modernist space of a Corbusier or a Wright sought to
differentiate itself radically from the fallen city fabric in which it appearedits
forms thus dependant on an act of radical disjunction from its spatial context
(the great pilotis dramatizing separation from the ground and safeguarding
the novum of the new space)postmodernist buildings, on the contrary, cel-
ebrate their insertion into the heterogeneous fabric of the commercial strip
and the motel and fast-food landscape of the postsuperhighway American City
(63). Jamesons prime example of postmodern architecture is, of course, John
Portmans Bonaventure hotel. Jameson focuses on Portmans building because
of the way in which its exterior walls of reecting glass mirror the rather low-
class area in which it is located; in this way, it blends into its surroundings and
does not stand out as a type of heroic monument. For Jameson, postmodern
buildings no longer attempt, as did the masterworks and monuments of high
modernism, to insert a different, a distinct, and elevated, a new Utopian lan-
guage into the tawdry and commercial sign system of the surrounding city, but
rather they seek to speak that very language, using its lexicon and syntax (39).
154 Notes to Chapter 1
If Jamesons argumentwhich is, in reality, based on an enormous glass build-
ing that looms above a slum-like areaseems somewhat unconvincing, other
useful discussions include the entire fourth chapter of Jamesons Postmodernism
as well as Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture and Robert
Venturi et al.s Learning From Las Vegas.
36. The fact that, ultimately, postmodernism seemed to fail in this endeav-
orthat it seemed to nd itself occupying the newly dened position of elite
cultural productionis, to a certain degree, the focus of chapter 3. We might
say, at this point, though, that this apparent failure can be read as an inevitable
effect of postmodernisms spectral compulsion.
37. See Foucaults reply to the various detractors of The Order of Things
in What Is an Author?
38. The shift that Im attempting to highlightfrom a modernist ten-
dency to ontologize the specter to a postmodernist tendency to abandon
the possibility of ontology altogetheris, to a degree, noted by Bertens. For
Bertens, ontological uncertainty is absolutely central (46) to postmodernism.
The suggestion seems to be that the distinction between modernism and post-
modernism is marked by the presence or absence of an ontologizing impulse:
Whereas the Modernists sought to defend themselves against their own aware-
ness of cosmic chaos, of the impossible fragility of any center they might
perceive, the Postmodernists have accepted chaos and live in fact in a certain
intimacy with it. This Postmodernist recognition of the nal demise of all
Authority, of all higher discourse, of all centers, leads to an acceptance of chaos
and sometimes even to a mystical attunement with a chaotic universe (28).
From a spectrological perspective, Bertens take on the modernist attempt to
defend against an apparently chaotic universe seems to anticipate my claim
that modernism is dened by an ontological treatment of the spectrality of
the ghost. Moreover, the suggestion that postmodernism embraced a type of
mysticism can be reread as a description of the postmodern refusal to believe
in the possible materiality of the specter.
39. In either case, then, we must struggle necessarily to, as Derrida puts it,
distinguish between the analysis that denounces magic and the counter-magic
that it still risks being (Specters 47). More simply, in either case (modernism
or postmodernism), we can locate a certain faith in magic, or the ability to
conjure once and for all, that inevitably frustrates, while simultaneously animat-
ing, any attempt to exorcise all traces of past magics or ideological illusions. In
both epistemological recongurationsmodernism and postmodernismone
side of the spectral equation is denied. In modernism, the specters immate-
riality is denied; in postmodernism, its materiality. This impulse to reject the
spectrality of the specter is, as I have already suggested, the most essential
effect of the specter. And, as I demonstrate in chapter 3, the specter persists
after postmodernismor, rather, its ironic spectrality is once again and neces-
sarily rejected. Indeed, in the case of this reconguration after postmodernism
(which is, perhaps, best represented by the late-Derridean theory of specters
that I have employed as a guiding framework) we are confronted with anoth-
er attempt to solve the problem of the specterthis time by accepting the
155 Notes to Chapter 1
specters spectrality once and for all. This is, as we will see, the inevitable telos
of late-deconstruction, or deconstruction after postmodernism.
40. In Language as Symbolic Action, for example, Burke claims that even
something so objectively there as behavior must be observed through one
or another kind of terministic screen, that directs the attention in keeping with
its nature (Symbolic 49). The suggestion is that, because it is not possible to
account for everything at once (or, for that matter, once and for all), we are
forced to employ and embrace certain necessarily limiting discursive perspec-
tives, or terministic screens, so as to organize and/or understand reality.
What is of particular interest, though, is Burkes claim that, any such screen
necessarily directs the attention to one eld rather than another (Symbolic 50).
For this reason, Burke comes to describe these necessary screens as mystica-
tions, mystications that can become dominant (or ultimate) in their abso-
lute exclusion, or rejection, of all other possible screens, or discourses.
41. The concept of Mystication is discussed at length in Burkes A
Rhetoric of Motives. Burke points to both Hegelianism and Marxism as exam-
ples of mystications. For Burke, Marxism works to demystify Hegelianism:
instead of some generally human motive, such as the essence of mankind,
Marx stresses the specically class nature of ideologies. And the imputing of
universal or generic motives is then analyzed as a concealment of specic
motives (hence, mystication) (110). However, Burkes point is that any
dominate discourse, or terministic screen, becomes (after a process of appar-
ent demystication) a new form of mystication. Indeed, Burke goes on to
compare Marxism to the mystifying rhetoric of providence employed by Crom-
well: there is a very close parallel between both Cromwellian and Marxist
appeal to necessity; for any ultimate terms of motivation must, by their very
nature as high abstractions, omit important ingredients of motivation. The
general statement of historical motives in terms of dialectical materialism is
as mystifying as any such statement in terms of Providencefor in both, all
reference to minute administrative situations is omitted. In either language,
the bureaucratic, administrative details are spiritualized. As regards the prag-
matic operations of production and government, the treatment of conditions
in terms of necessity is as mystifying when the necessity is identied with the
inevitable laws of history as when it is identied with the will of Providence
manifesting itself through such laws (114).
42. Habermas attributes the weakening of this spirit to the neoconserva-
tive attempt to misconstrue the effects of societal modernizationthe progress
of capitalism, industrialization and individualismwith the subversive effects
of cultural modernity. According to neoconservatives like Daniel Bell, or so
Habermas suggests, the temperament of cultural modernity unleashes hedo-
nistic motives irreconcilable with the discipline of professional life in society
(Incomplete 5)that is, the protestant work ethic. The neoconservatives
blame cultural modernity for what, according to Habermas, is really (for the
most part) an effect of societal modernization: The neoconservative does not
uncover the economic and social causes for the altered attitudes towards work,
consumption, achievement and leisure (Incomplete 6). But these attitudes,
156 Notes to Chapter 1
Habermas argues, are rooted in deep seated reactions against the process of
societal modernization (Incomplete 6). Habermas, though, does not want
cultural modernity to be viewed as a simple effect of societal modernization.
Instead, he wants to reassert its own autonomous program, a program that
is antithetical to societal modernization but also troubled by its own apo-
rias. These aporias, generated by cultural modernitys attempt to successfully
recast the aims of the Enlightenment, are the very reason, or pretence, for
the variousin Habermas opinion, conservativepositions that either call
for a postmodernity, or recommend a return to some form of premodernity
or which throw modernity radically overboard (7).
43. Habermas seems to suggest that all poststructuralists are young
conservatives who claim as their own the revelations of a decentered subjec-
tivity, emancipated from the imperatives of work and usefulness (13). From
Habermas perspective, this line of theoristsa line that, in France, leads
from Bataille via Foucault to Derrida (14)works to justify an irreconcilable
anti-modernism (13). Habermas, of course, doesnt outwardly identify these
theorists as poststructuralists; however, besides Bataille, who may very well
be viewed as a precursor to poststructuralism proper, Habermas list of young
conservatives can be safely read as a list of poststructuralists.
44. See Habermas Modern and Postmodern Architecture, in which he
attempts to account for the reaction against modernist architecture, arguing
that it was at least partly due to the fact that such architecture overestimated
the possibility of actualizing the promise of a utopia that animated it in the
rst place. Quite simply, Habermas argues, it had readily allowed itself to be
overburdened (325). The idea being that any stringently actualized ideal will
ultimately fail to account for the multiplicity and diversity of possible social
congurations. According to Anderson, this argument is a recurrence of the
schema traced by the Frankfurt address, derived from the same paralysed dual-
ism set by Habermas theory of communication action: inviolable systems and
inoperative life-worlds (43).
45. It is, perhaps, important to note that The Postmodern Condition was
published (in French) in 1979, one year before Habermas Frankfurt Address,
but several years after (and apparently as a type of response to) Habermas
Legitimation Crisis. Although most tend to read the Frankfurt Address as a
response to The Postmodern Condition, Anderson argues convincingly that it
was probably written in ignorance of the latter (37).
46. See Jamesons Foreword to The Postmodern Condition, specically viii.
47. While attempting to counter Lyotards later claim (in Postmodern
Fables) that only narratives of emancipation can be considered grand narra-
tives, Anderson argues that Nothing in Lyotards original account of meta-
narratives conned them to the idea of emancipationwhich was only one
of the two modern discourses of legitimation he sought to trace (34). A
close reading of The Postmodern Condition, though, seems to validate Lyotards
claim (as one might expect, it being Lyotards work and all). Indeed, Lyotard
clearly suggests that a theme of emancipation is an integral characteristic of
a metanarrativewhether that narrative is the story of physical human eman-
157 Notes to Chapter 1
cipation, as it is in Marxism, or the history of some type of absolute spirit, as
it is in German idealism.
48. Of course, to a certain extent, Lyotard comes to recognize, and overtly
embrace, this problem. As he suggests in Rewriting Modernity, postmod-
ernism, which includes his own discussions of the term, can be dened as
an ongoing attempt to rewrite, or write beyond, modernity: If we understand
rewriting modernity in this way, like seeking out, designating and naming the
hidden facts that one imagines to be the source of the ills that ail one, i.e. as
a simple process of remembering, one cannot fail to perpetuate the crime, and
perpetuate it anew instead of putting an end to it. Far from really rewriting
it, supposing that to be possible, all one is doing is writing again, and making
real, modernity itself. The point being that writing it is always rewriting it (28).
The postmodern is thus the promise that animates the rewriting of modernity;
it is the spectral promise that such a rewriting will be nally successful. How-
ever, to believe that such a promise will be, or has been, fullledto believe
that the postmodern will, or has, arrived once and for allis to slip (back)
into the hegemonic connes of another grand narrative. In a manner that
seems to anticipate a theorist like iek, thenor, put differently, in a man-
ner that anticipates a mode of thinking after postmodernismLyotard turns
to the psychoanalytic process as a way of accounting for the always deferred
but necessarily incessant desire to nally apprehend a certain (we might say,
spectral) lure: Postmodernity is not a new age, but a rewriting of some of the
features claimed by modernity, and rst of all modernitys claim to ground its
legitimacy on the project of liberating humanity as a whole through science
and technology. But as I have said, that rewriting has been at work for a long
time now, in modernity itself (34). Or rather, as Lyotard suggests in Note on
the Meaning of Post-, it is a dangerous mistake to assume that the post-
of postmodernism . . . indicates something like a conversion: a new direction
from a previous one (76). Such thinking, Lyotard argues, is in fact a way
of forgetting or repressing the past, that is, repeating it and not surpassing
it (76). Ultimately, though (and as I suggest above), Lyotard seems to nd
himself perpetuating the very crimes he wishes to avoid. Indeed, he seems
unable to avoid repeating the myth that we can surpass, or break with, the
past; to do so, Lyotard seems to repeatedly suggest, we need merely to stop
believing that we can.
49. While discussing Lyotards more recent Postmodern Fables, Anderson
makes a similar argument. According to Anderson, Lyotards postmodern fable
ultimately fails in its attempt to evade becoming another metanarrative. In fact,
Anderson argues, Lyotards fable becomes as much a story of emancipation as
the legitimating narrative whose obituary Lyotard had set out to write (35).
50. As Lyotard puts it, A self does not amount to much, but no self is
an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and
mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person
is always located at nodal points of specic communication circuits, however
tiny these may be. Or better: one is always located at a post through which
various kinds of messages pass (Postmodern 15).
158 Notes to Chapter 1
51. Huyssen, in After the Great Divide, makes an argument similar to the
one proposed. See, specically, 13444.
52. For example, in Postmodernism, Jamesons discussion of the postmod-
ern schizoid has several interesting omissions. Initiallythat is, in Postmod-
ernism and Consumer SocietyJameson argues that the postmodern schizoid
is condemned to live an eternal present . . . , a by no means pleasant experi-
ence (137, my emphasis). By the time he publishes Postmodernism, though,
this same passage has been altered signicantly. As a portion of the rst chap-
ter of Postmodernism, his discussion of schizophrenia takes on a notably posi-
tive tonewords like condemned are removed altogether and there is no
longer a sense that postmodern schizophrenia is, necessarily, an unpleasant
experience. In fact, Jamesons virtually celebratory tone in Postmodernism has
garnered the condemnation of leftist critics like David Harvey. In reading
Jamesons account of schizophrenia[,] Harvey suggests, it is hard not to
impute euphoric qualities to the hallucinogenic rush of intoxicating experi-
ence behind the surface appearance of anxiety and neurosis. But . . . Jamesons
selective quotations from the autobiography of a schizophrenic girl eliminate
the terror that attaches to her unreality states, making it all seem like a well-
controlled LSD trip rather than a succession of states of guilt, lethargy, and
hopelessness coupled with anguish and sometimes tremendous dislocation
(35152). Ultimately, though, Harvey misses the point. By attacking the view
that the postmodern symptom of schizophrenia is a possibly positive state
of being, Harvey seems to forget that Jamesons concept of schizophrenia is
removed (via Lacan and Deleuze) from the much more negative experience
of clinical schizophrenia.
53. For instance, as Jameson argues, Utopia is a spatial matter that
might be thought to know a potential change in fortunes in so spatialized a
culture as the postmodern; but if this last is as dehistorized and dehistorizing
as I sometimes claim here, the synaptic chain that might lead the Utopian
impulse to expression becomes harder to localize. Utopian representations
knew an extraordinary revival in the 1960s (xvi).
54. This question is dealt with more completely in the third chapter. While
tracing the specter of postmodernism (as it passed from a narrative stylistic
intent on ostentatiously denying the possibility of mimesis to an emergent sty-
listic that re-embraces the possibility, or the always deferred promise, of mimesis)
I argue that the postmodern movement toward paralysis and solipsistic silence
was continually and necessarily deferred by a spectral (or utopian) impulse to
repeatedly articulate such movement as progress.
55. After all, Jamesons Postmodernism arguably marks the beginning of the
end of postmodernism as an epistemological dominant, its nal consolidation
into a conrmed canon and a dened set of cultural assumptions. Or, put
differently, Jamesons text can be said to mark the moment when postmod-
ernisms dominance becomes hegemonic and untenable. As I point out in
the following chapters, the very socioeconomic symptoms now associated with
high postmodernism (the cold war, the Reagan administration, etc.) are over
by 1989. Its fair to say, then, that by 1991 (when Jamesons text is published)
159 Notes to Chapter 2
the cultural production that was seemingly married to certain socioeconomic
manifestations had also reached a point of saturation and (thus) decline and/
or dissolution. In short, Jamesons text seems to arrive just as a new, or emer-
gent, epistemological conguration is able to appear on the horizon.
Chapter Two: Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter)
1. See, for instance, Rajans recent book, Deconstruction and the Remain-
ders of Phenomenology, in which she uncovers latent elements of phenomenol-
ogy in the deconstructive project, a project that she associates with a broad
range of poststructural (or even, structural) texts (i.e., texts that both pre-
date and run contemporaneously with Derridas more overt articulation of
deconstruction). Rajans book considers the fragments of phenomenology
that produce deconstruction and continue to disconcert both deconstruction
and its permutation into poststructuralism (23). In a manner that seems to
anticipate my own claim that poststructuralism (and, or as, deconstruction)
can be read as a postmodern discourse that is haunted by a still incomplete
project of modernity, a certain utopian desire, Rajan suggests that the project
of deconstruction betrays symptoms of a phenomenological discourse that is
still unnished. Similarly, Gasch (whom I discuss in more detail below),
seeks to reestablish a relation, however critical, between Derridas work and
structuralism and phenomenology (4).
2. As I noted in the previous chapter, Habermas resists postmodern-
ism because it gives in to the hegemony of societal modernization; it inter-
rupts, by abandoning or denying, the still incomplete project of modernity
that sustained the possibility of critique and political intervention. From this
perspective, postmodernism should be rejected because it goes too far in its
denial of modernist assumptionsthat is, the remnants of an Enlightenment
project (or, what Norris would call, post-Kantian idealism). Harvey puts it like
this: postmodernism, with its emphasis upon the ephemerality of jouissance, its
insistence upon the impenetrability of the other, its concentration on the text
rather than the work, its penchant for deconstruction bordering on nihilism,
its preference for aesthetics over ethics, takes matters too far. It takes them
beyond the point where any coherent politics are left, while that wing of it
that seeks a shameless accommodation with the market puts it rmly in the
tracks of an entrepreneurial culture that is the hallmark of reactionary neo-
conservatism (116). What is worth noting here is that critics like Habermas,
Norris, and Harvey would like us to condemn postmodernism for the very
same reason that Huyssen would have us reject poststructuralism: it is complicit
with the hegemonic processes of societal modernization. The very possibility of
these two contrary positions suggests that postmodernism, like poststructural-
ism, needs to be dened by its absolute rejection of, as well as its complete
complicity with, the project of modernity. As I suggested in the previous chap-
ter, the Enlightenment assumptions that permit, or animate, the possibility of
critique are necessarily locatable in the very discourse(s) that claim to reject
160 Notes to Chapter 2
them. At the very moment that he identies the source of poststructuralisms
teleological tendencies to be a latent complicity with modernism and, in turn,
celebrates postmodernism for its progressive ability to abandon that complicity,
Huyssen inadvertently and unknowingly relocates that same complicity within
postmodernism. In short, and as I point out below, the fact that Huyssen can
make the argument he does puts into question the grounds for a leftist rejec-
tion of postmodernism while it simultaneously reafrms the apparent connec-
tion between postmodernism and poststructuralism.
3. In a manner that anticipates Kristevas more psychoanalytically inect-
ed discussion of the genotext, Barthes Text is understood as the expression
of a serial movement of disconnections, overlappings, variations (Image 158).
The Text, as tissue of quotations (Image 146), announces the subjects reality
as the unstable focal point of a multiplicity of intersecting discursive traces. For
Barthes, like Kristeva (in her own way), the more plural the text (S/Z 10), the
more its meaning becomes contingent upon its reading, the more its writing is its
reading. Once again, then, textual criteria is reestablished; ostentatious plural-
ity and the evasion of prior categories of classicationincluding categories
of good and bad, avant-garde and classicbecomes the determining factor of
a Text: What constitutes the Text is . . . its subversive force in respect of the
old classications. How do you classify a writer like Georges Bataille? Novelist,
poet, essayist, economist, philosopher, mystic? The answer is so difcult that
literary manuals generally prefer to forget about Bataille who, in fact, wrote
texts, perhaps continuously one single text (Image 157).
4. Jameson makes a similar point while discussing Paul de Man: It is
certain that DeMans [sic] form of deconstruction can be seen as a last-minute
rescue operation and a salvaging of the aestheticeven a defense and valoriza-
tion of literary study and a privileging of specically literary languageat the
moment in which it seemed to disappear without a trace. This he rst secured
through a strategic redenition of the concept of a text, which is now restricted
to apply only to those writings that deconstruct themselves, to speak loosely
(Postmodernism 251). As with Barthes and Kristeva, de Man needs to be read
within a larger poststructural/postmodern context. Indeed, as Jamesons look
at de Man suggests, and as I attempt to demonstrate below via a discussion of
early deconstruction, poststructuralism should be read against a larger con-
text in which it offers the spectacle of an incompletely liquidated modernism
(255). As with (and however paradoxical it may sound) postmodernism, the
positions and arguments [of poststructuralism] are postmodern . . . even if the
conclusions are not (255). Consequently, no matter how much someone like
Christopher Norris would like to label some (Baudrillard, de Man, Rorty, etc.)
nihilistically postmodernwhile praising others (Derrida, Habermas, etc.) for
their perpetuation of certain Enlightenment, or modern, idealsthe fact is that
certain remainders of the critical project of modernity necessarily motivate and
thus connect all radical discourses since modernism.
5. A good number of poststructuralists do not limit themselves to dis-
cussions of modernist cultural production: Barthes (in Mythologies) talks about
everything from The World of Wrestling to The Face of Garbo; Foucault is
161 Notes to Chapter 2
quite fond of de Sade (among others); and Derrida has a strange tendency to
discuss Plato, Rousseau, and Kant. According to Huyssens logic, we would have
to call Derrida an Enlightenment philosopher when reading Of Grammatology
(or Truth in Painting) and a Classical philosopher when reading Platos Phar-
macy. After all, Derrida seems to be as critical with Rousseau in Grammatology
as he is with Lvi Strauss (the modernist). Of course, this is not to suggest
that modernist ideals do not have a tendency to return in poststructuralist
discourse, that there isnt at times a certain unmasked desire for elitist cat-
egories of aesthetic distinction in contemporary theory; these returns are,
in fact, the very thing I want to stress.
6. As I demonstrate below, a critic like Christopher Norris would whole-
heartedly agree that, unlike Derrida or Habermas, Baudrillard is unfortunately
a postmodernist. For Norris, Baudrillards denial of all post-Kantian revenants
that is, his drive to extend the aesthetics (i.e. the realm of imaginary represen-
tations) to the point of collapsing every last form of ontological distinction or
critical truth-claim (Whats Wrong 23)speaks to his postmodern, or neo-
pragmatic, attitude, an attitude that Norris repeatedly blames Richard Rorty
(as well as Stanley Fish and, to a lesser degree, Lyotard) for disseminating.
7. While most tend to read his work as a celebration, if not a full-
edged promotion, of the nihilism of postmodern hyperreality and simula-
tion, I would argue that Baudrillardlike all poststructuralists, or (as Id like
to begin considering them) postmodern deconstructionistsis motivated to
critique (which is to say, to write at all) by a certain nostalgia for the past
and, more importantly, a certain hope for a future to come. Of course, it
is not within the scope of my project to consider the spectral impulses ani-
mating every postmodern discourse, but Id like to suggest that Baudrillards
various attempts, as in the seminal Precession of Simulacra, to distinguish a
postmodern period of hyperreality from a period in which the real was still
a possibility speaks to his, somewhat Habermasian, sense of historical dete-
rioration. And while one could argue that Baudrillards work becomes more
and more aestheticor, as someone like Rorty would suggest, more and
more privately ironiceven works as late as The Illusion of the End betray a
certain condemnation of the present. For instance, while discussing the way in
which current historical events have become predetermined by the inescap-
able economy of postmodern mediation, Baudrillard asserts that, In these
conditions, such events, which are nonetheless important, have the strange
aftertaste of something that has already happened before, something unfolding
retrospectivelyan aftertaste that does not bode well for a meaningful future
(19). The question we need to ask is why Baudrillard, the most postmodern
of all postmodernists, would bother questioning the possibility of a meaning-
ful future. As Baudrillard has admitted, and contrary to popular opinion, to
point out the hyperreality of postmodern culture, the dilution of history as
event . . . , isnt to believe in nothing any more, . . . but to register this curv-
ing back of history and to try and thwart its lethal effects (Paroxysm 8). On
a certain level, then, Baudrillard should be readalong with, as we will see,
Derrida and even Rortyas a participant in what he identies in Illusion as the
162 Notes to Chapter 2
Stealth Agency: The aim of the agency was precisely to set up against this
simulation a radical desimulation or, in other words, to lift the veil on the fact
of events not taking place. And thus to make itself secret and enigmatic in their
image, to get through to a certain void, a certain non-meaning, by contrast
with the media, which are frantic to plug all the gaps (15).
8. Indeed, as I suggest below, and in line with someone like Rajan, we
might very well argue that poststructuralism can be understood more gener-
ally as a type of postmodern, and/or linguistically inected permutation of,
deconstruction.
9. Of course, we might wonder here to whom Huyssen is referring. Not
only is it unclear what postmodernists are engaged in this radical reconsid-
eration of the subject, Huyssen seems to have a very partial list of poststruc-
turalists in mind. Although he does admit that Kristeva has done some work
in terms of questioning modes of subjectivity, he seems to be unaware, or
in denial, of Foucaults various attempts to theorize modes of subject-forma-
tion. By focusing solely on What Is an Author?, Huyssen fails to address, for
example, Foucaults more sustained and subtle discussions of disciplining and
subject-formation in Discipline and Punish (which are, moreover, direct devel-
opments of Althussers theories of interpellation). As well, for one reason or
another, Huyssen does not consider Lacans work in texts like The Mirror
Stage as a useful rethinking, and re-inscription, of questions of subjectivity.
In fact, Huyssen completely fails to recognize the fact that poststructuralism
rarely, if ever, refutes the importance of subject position. Certainly, poststruc-
turalists reject the possibility of a cohesive or self-identical subject; but only
the most nave of readers would fail to notice that poststructuralists are very
much concerned with who is speaking and when. For example, Derrida (albeit,
post-1984) makes various appeals to his French-Algerian subject-position.
10. Of course, such a denition of poststructuralism (and thus decon-
struction) suggests that deconstruction somehow predates both postmodern-
ism and poststructuralism. While it is beyond the scope of this project, such
a suggestion should not be simply dismissed. As we see in the work of Rajan,
deconstruction is not limited to Derrida, postmodernism, or poststructuralism.
The questions I would ask (while deferring them for another time) are: how
do different discursive/epistemic permutations affect the manner in which
deconstruction works (if works is even the correct word)? How closely aligned
is a (basically) transhistorical deconstructive project to what we have been
calling a project of modernityor, even (for that matter), the logic of the
specter? To a degree, I suppose (and if only indirectly), these questions are
worked out in the following pages.
11. Of course, this not to say that Rortys pragmatism is the dening char-
acteristic of postmodernism; the pragmatism Rorty endorses needs to be read,
rather, as symptomatic of postmodernism generally. As we saw in the previous
chapter, postmodernism, at its peak, was dened as a complete repudiation of
bourgeois liberalism and/or humanism. That is, postmodernism is identiable,
if it is identiable at all, as a rejection of navewhich is to say, from a postmod-
ern perspective, unironicviews of the subject. Consequently, a person would
163 Notes to Chapter 2
be, to a certain extent, correct to argue that Rortys celebration of the post-
modern bourgeois liberal frustrates any attempt to align Rortys pragmatism
with postmodernism as a cultural dominant. Still, we need to remember that
Rortys postmodern bourgeois liberal is not the same thing as a prepostmod-
ern liberal humanist. Rortys liberal is celebrated because she has a distinctly
ironic understanding of the subject. On a certain level, then, Rortys terms
(i.e., bourgeois and liberal) are misleading; we might, in fact, say that Rorty
employs them simply to be difcult, to seem brazen and unsympathetic to radi-
cal or utopian rejections of current sociopolitical structures. Ultimately, then
(and this is the point I am trying to make above), Rortys take on pragmatism
and the postmodern bourgeois liberal is representative of a broad range of
postmodern discourse. At the same time, though, and as I already suggested,
there is some accuracy to the claim that Rortys liberal is, if only latently,
very much tied to a past tradition of humanism and political moderateness.
However, and as I explain more fully via a discussion of postmodern writers
(like Pynchon) in chapter 3, latent liberalism such as this can be read as an
effect of the very specter I have been examining throughout.
12. As we will see, there is a certain amount of irony here. Rorty doesnt
like the idea of mixing the private with the public, yet he views liberal ironists
(i.e., those who refuse to make public claims) as exemplars. In other words,
he seems to point implicitly toward the didactic function of ironism: liberal
ironists teach us (the public) that the best thing we can do (for the public)
is understand that private vocabularies, or modes of understanding, cannot
be applied to the public.
13. As Rorty puts it, ironists theorists like Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida, and
Foucault seem . . . invaluable in our attempt to form a private self-image, but
pretty much useless when it comes to politics (83).
14. For Rorty, the ideal liberal ironist is always a she.
15. In other words, There is no reason the ironist cannot be liberal,
but she cannot be a progressive and dynamic liberal in the sense in which
metaphysicians sometimes claim to be (CIS 91).
16. By way of clarifying my use of the term propositionaland, thus, its
specic function in Rortys discussions of Derridait might be useful to quote
from one of Rortys footnotes in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. While address-
ing the work of John D. Caputo, Rorty claims that [Caputo] is wrong in saying
that my view, or Derridas, ensures that we get no further than propositional
discourse. All that I (or, as far as I can see, Derrida) want to exclude is the
attempt to be nonpropositional (poetic, world-disclosing) and at the same time
claim that one is getting down to something primordialwhat Caputo calls
the silence from which all language springs (CIS 123, n4).
17. See, for example, chapter 3, Limited Think: How Not to Read
Derrida, in Norris Whats Wrong with Postmodernism? In this chapter, Norris
actively resists John Ellis claim, in Against Deconstruction, that deconstruction
simply reinscribes itself within the metaphysical, and binary, discourse it claims
to critique.
18. See Irene Harveys Derrida and the Economy of Diffrance.
164 Notes to Chapter 2
19. In Whats Wrong with Postmodernism?, Norris is concerned specically
with the negative claims, concerning Derrida and deconstruction, that Haber-
mas makes in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.
20. Of course, what I am attempting to do (and as should be clear from my
discussion of Lyotard in the previous chapter) is very similar. However, I think
Norris is wrong to separate deconstruction from postmodernism/poststructur-
alism. The crucial respects in which deconstruction fails to be (completely)
counter-enlightenment are similar, if not the very same, crucial respects in
which postmodernism has never been totally counter-enlightenment.
21. Take, for instance, Rortys assertion that all that supposedly deep
stuff about the primordiality of the trace in Derridas earlier work looks like a
young philosophy professor, still a bit unsure of himself, making quasi-profes-
sional noises (Response 41).
22. On various occasions, in fact, Derrida makes reference to the neces-
sity of what might be understood as a transcendental lure. For instance, in
Positions, and while discussing his claim that language is expression, Derrida
notes that The representation of language as expression is not an accidental
prejudice, but rather a kind of structural lure, what Kant would have called
a transcendental illusion (33). Put more simply, the possibility of represent-
ing language as such is an illusion, a necessary illusion. As Derrida explains in
another context, the experience of signication, in which the signier seems
to erase itself or to become transparent, in order to allow the concept to pres-
ent itself as what it is, referring to nothing other than its presence[,] . . . is
a lure, but a lure whose necessity has organized an entire structure, or an
entire epoch (22). The lure can be understood as the promise of presence;
it is what compels us to move, to deconstruct. However, the very thing that
entices us about the lure (i.e., the possibility of the transcendental signied,
of full presence) is the very thing that threatens to close off the possibility of
actualizing the lure. The lure is (determined by) the logic of differance, the
logic of supplementarity. We might in fact argue that, as lure, the supplements
economy exposes and protects us at the same time according to the play of
forces and the differences of forces. Thus, the supplement is dangerous in
that it threatens us with death. . . . Pleasure itself, without symbol or supple-
tory, that which would accord us (to) pure presence itself, if such a thing were
possible, could only be another name for death (Grammatology 155). The lure
promises, and represents the threat of, the wholly other, the aneconomical,
god. Not surprisingly, then, the possibility of differance (as, we might say, a
thematic device) is dependent upon the possibility of the lure: To recognize
writing in speech, that is to say differance and the absence of speech, is to
begin to think the lure. There is no ethics without presence of the other but
also, and consequently, without absence, dissimulation, detour, difference, writ-
ing (Grammatology 13940).
23. While it is true that, in the early and mid-1980s, Derridas work
became increasingly performative, or literary, by the time he publishes texts
like Force of Law and Specters of Marx he has, I would argue, returned to the
more argumentative/analytical style that dened his earlier work.
165 Notes to Chapter 2
24. Gasch makes a similar observation. By evoking Derridas own dis-
cussion of the invention in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Gasch high-
lights the fundamental aw in Rortys readings of a later Derrida. What
Rorty misses is that an invention cannot simply be privateit is the arrival of
something new only on condition that it is publicly recognized as such (Inven-
tions 9). As Gasch repeatedly suggests, any expression of absolute singularity
is necessarily contaminated by a very public movement toward totalization.
Moreover, the very desire to be singular, to break absolutely with what came
before is, according to Gasch, the very desire that denes the philosophical
tradition. Consequently, any claim that Derridas texts would announce the
end of philosophy, irreversibly break with the history of philosophical ideas,
and undermine all possibility of localizing his thought within, or with regard
to the course of, the history of philosophy . . . does nothing but reactivate
one of the most crucial self-determinations of philosophy since its inception
(Inventions 60).
25. See note 15 in chapter 6 of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, From
Ironist Theory to Private Allusions: Derrida.
26. Rorty makes this particular connection most overtly in his Philosophical
Papers: Vol. 2: How can Derridas trace, diffrance, and the rest of what
Gasch calls infrastructures be more than the vacuous nonexplanations char-
acteristic of a negative theology? In a footnote, and while addressing Norris,
Rorty goes on to clarify his position: Norris is quite right in saying that, on
my view, early Derrida is falling back into a kind of negative theology that
merely replaces one set of absolutes (truth, meaning, clear and distinct ideas)
with another (trace, diffrance, and other such deconstructive terms). But the
main justication for distinguishing between an earlier and a later Derrida is
that he stops doing this (113).
27. In a manner that seems to mirror (almost exactly) Derridas own
discussions of the necessary impossibility of presence, or self-identical being,
Sartre most clearly refuses the possibility of the ens causa suithat is, the
possibility of the for-itself (or consciousness) ever becoming a being in-
itself-for-itselfin the conclusion of Being and Nothingness: Everything hap-
pens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were presented in a state of
disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has
ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always indicated and
always impossible (792).
28. For more on the often denied connection between Derrida, Sartre
and/or negative theology, see also: Steve Martinots Forms in the Abyss: A Philo-
sophical Bridge Between Sartre and Derrida; Baughs French Hegel: From Surrealism
to Postmodernism and Hello, Goodbye Derrida and Sartres Legacy; Howells
Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics, Sartre and Derrida: Qui
Perd Gagne and Sartre and Negative Theology; Caputos Apostles of the
Impossible; Rajans Remainders of Phenomenology; Arthur Bradleys Thinking
the Outside: Foucault, Derrida and Negative Theology; and my own A Dif-
france of Nothing: Sartre, Derrida and the Problem of Negative Theology
(which is ultimately an extension of the above discussion).
166 Notes to Chapter 2
29. I am here basically repositioning Derridas discussion of what he sees
as the totalitarian tendency inherent in Marxism, and the way in which the
capitalist reaction to the ghost that Marxism represented encouraged Marx-
ism to view its ghost, or Utopian dream, as a material reality: But since
Marxist ontology was also struggling against the ghost in general, in the name
of living presence as material actuality, the whole Marxist process of the
totalitarian society was also responding to the same panic. We must, it seems
to me, take such a hypothesis seriously. . . . It is as if Marx and Marxism had
run away, ed from themselves, and had scared themselves. In the course of
the same chase, the same infernal pursuit (105).
30. For Caputo, the arguments of Rorty and Norris fail because they are
too polemical. While Rorty is too forceful in his attempts to identify Derrida,
along with someone like Genet, as an entirely private ironist, Norris does
not take enough precautions to keep Derrida out of the Hegel [and Kant]
column. His transcendental Derrida is too strong, too erect, too stiff (Quasi-
Transcendental 161).
31. For instance, in Apostles of the Impossible, Caputo asserts that, for
Derrida, God is neither simply present or absent, neither simply given or not,
for the name of God is the name of what is to come. God escapes the play
of being and non-being, to be or not to be . . . because God is the specter of
what is to come, the stuff of things to hope for (199).
32. This distinctionbetween the future to come and the future pres-
entis highlighted, as Jean-Michel Rabat notes, in Derridas Archive Fever. In
this text, Derrida states that he would prefer afrming the to come with the
to come of avenir rather than futur so as to point toward the coming of an
event rather than toward some future present (as qtd. in Rabat 179).
33. This paper was delivered at a 1989 conference entitled Deconstruc-
tion and the Possibility of Justice. It was later published (as Force of Law) along
with a second paper, First Name of Benjamin, which was read at a colloquium
in 1990 held under the title Nazism and The Final Solution. What is impor-
tant to note is that both papers were read (and presumably written) around
the time of the Soviet Unions dissolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As
they mark the beginning of Derridas interest in the arena of ethics, justice,
spectrality, and the messianican interest that, arguably, becomes most overt
in Specters of Marx and Politics of FriendshipI would argue that these papers
represent the rst stages of a period of mourning, a period of mourning that
marks, more broadly, the dissolution of the postmodern episteme. That is,
beginning with these two papers, Derridas work begins to speak to a period
of cultural, or epistemic, mourning, a period of mourning for a certain specter
of Marxism: the specter of the messianic, of the promise, of the utopian, of
the Enlightenment. In other words, and as I suggested in the previous chap-
ter, the fall of the last overtly utopian discourse effects the dissolution (also)
of a postmodern, or hegemonically counter-Enlightenment epoch; because
postmodernisms spectrally motivated hunt of utopian discourses begins to
seem totalitarian and dangerously utopian, a new reconguration of the
project becomes preferable; the specter that was seemingly chased away by
167 Notes to Chapter 2
postmodernism thus returns in this period of mourning to animate an epoch
that can be dened by its imperative to respect the specter so as to deal
with the specter once and for all. Obviously, then, I use mourning here to
describe a specic relationship to the specter. The term suggests a lament for
that which has passed (or is past), as well as a desire to (re)gain, or to do,
something in the future (even if it is, only, to get over who, or what, is now
past). Focusing on Blanchots use of the phrase since Marx, in The Three
Voices of Marx, Derrida indirectly expounds on this idea of mourning, which
we might understand as a type of paradoxical relationship with the ghost(s)
that haunt us: a since Marx continues to designate the place of assignation
from which we are pledged. But if there is pledge or assignation, injunction or
promise, if there has been this appeal beginning with a word that resounds
before us, the since marks a place and a time that doubtless proceeds us,
but so as to be as much in front of us as before us. Since the future, then, since
the past as absolute future, since the non-knowledge and the non-advent of an
advent, of what remains to be: to do and to decide (which is rst of all, no
doubt, the sense of the to be or not to be of Hamletand of any inheritor
who, let us say, comes to swear before a ghost) (Specters 17).
34. Of course, the same can be said of deconstruction. Deconstruction is
caught up in the structure of the promise, is haunted by the promise, because
what mobilizes it is the promise of deconstructionthat is, every work of decon-
struction is drawn, however subtly, by the promise that it will deconstruct
nally, and at last.
35. Hence, Derridas repetition throughout Specters of phrases like the
past as absolute future (Specters 17)or even, more famously, the line from
Hamlet: The time is out of joint.
36. Similarly, in Specters, Derrida argues that the effectivity or actuality of
the democratic promise, like that of the communist promise, will always keep
within it, and it must do so, this absolutely undeterminable messianic hope at
its heart, this eschatological relation to the to-come of an event and of a sin-
gularity, of an alterity that cannot be anticipated (65). Simply, the possibility
that the future to-come will nally arrive and be present, or contemporane-
ous with itself as the living present, mobilizes democracy, or communism, or
justice, or deconstruction, or whatever.
37. This is again another way of saying a messianic without messianism.
As Peter Fenves points out, for Derrida, to be without a determinate messiah
may not only be possible, it may be the condition for the possibility of mes-
sianic expectation, a dry and deserted condition, the desert itself (268).
38. Indeed, one of the reasons [Derrida keeps] a distance from all these
horizonsfrom the Kantian regulative idea or from the messianic advent, for
example, at least in their conventional interpretationis that they are, pre-
cisely, horizons (Force of Law 255).
39. The idea of touching on a particular concept (or even a particular
theoristlike Derrida) is, of course, particularly germane to the above discus-
sion. After all, to touch upon something truly or fullyas in to apprehend it
at last, to get it right absolutelyis to be decisive, without doubt. For Derrida,
168 Notes to Chapter 3
such a state is only ever an illusion, even if its impossible possibility drives us
forward in some endless and futile spiral of activity. What I am suggesting here,
though, is that it is impossible to act if we believe (as Derrida seems to teach)
that our activities can never be truly justied. We cannot sustain a state of
belief without belief. We believe absolutely (on some level) or we cannot move,
we cannot act, we cannot deconstruct. I touch upon this issue of touching
(as it relates to Derrida and the problem of indecision) much more fully in
A Certain Perhaps: Touching on the Decisiveness of Derridas Indecision.
40. Derrida states this explicitly in Specters: without this experience of the
impossible, one might as well give up on both justice and the event (65).
41. We might say, in fact, that what Derridas religion without religion
demonstrates is that, contrary to Caputos claims, an active discourse cannot
be without the dogmas of the positive religious faiths (Prayers and Tears xxi,
my emphasis). At the same time, though, I do not think that it is reasonable
to simply, if not crudely, accuse deconstruction of slipping into a type of nega-
tive theology. Derridas laborious and endless attempts (like, we might add,
Sartres) to evade the pitfalls of negative theology are, perhaps, reason enough
to rescue deconstruction from such accusations. As I intimate below, it would
appear that it is the constant struggle (however unsuccessful it might be) to
evade becoming a negative theology that distinguishes deconstruction from
any negative theology.
42. This need to frustrate a readers tendency toward absolute decisiveness
is stressed in Derridas discussion of the Nietzschean philosopher to come
the philosopher of the perhaps. See Politics of Friendship, in particular the
second chapter: Loving in Friendship: Perhapsthe Noun and the Adverb.
I discuss this reading of the Nietzschean Perhaps in chapter 3.
43. This epistemic view is, perhaps, articulated most ostentatiously in the
current revival (via Caputo, Kearney, Clayton Crockett, Jean Luc Marion, etc.)
of theological discussions. Take, for instance, Clayton Crocketts claim that
both modernity and postmodernity are religious histories (not histories of
religion), organized around an essentially religious secreta religion without
religion, or a secret without a secret (499).
Chapter Three: Writing of the Ghost (Again)
1. To avoid confusion, I will refer to the thirteen-year-old narrator as
Mark, while continuing to identify the real life (or rather, the adult)
author as Leyner; it should be pointed out, though, that it is impossible to
know (with any certainty) whether the preface is written by Mark or Leyner;
given the fact that the author of the preface refers retrospectively to the
mid-eighties (11), I have assumed that the preface is the work of the adult
Mark Leyner. However, as anyone who has read the text knows, narrative mark-
erssuch as references to the mid-eightiesare often misleading (if not
simply and unabashedly inconsistent with the text as a whole).
2. Leyners style throughout this text (as well as others) is strikingly reminis-
cent of the traditional stand-up comedian; he continually seems to be offering
169 Notes to Chapter 3
up, or suggesting, the possibility of various recognizable (because archetypal)
behaviors, motivations, and/or situations, situations with which we can all relate.
However, the principal humor in Leyners texts is produced via Leyners abil-
ity to completely and simultaneously undermine these universals by repeatedly
associating them with behaviors, motivations, and/or situations that are any-
thing but recognizable, or universal. I discuss the full import of this below.
3. See the nal section of chapter 2.
4. We might think here of any number of male or female stand-up come-
dians, from Jeff Foxworthy to Wanda Sykes and Chris Rock. Typically, a come-
dians humor, on stage or on the half-hour television sit-com based on their
comedy, preys on an audiences desire to reafrm certain group, or communal,
characteristics. The comedian will often relate mundane storiesstories that
typically begin with the line Have you ever . . . ? Designed to garner the its
funny because its true response, these stories inevitably reafrm certain ideo-
logical categorizations: the differences between men and women, the reasons
why one racial group is better or worse in bed than another, and so on. In most
cases, the humor is specically designed to produce a sense of recognition in
the audience, a sense of recognition that ultimately works to further solidify
the identity categories to which the audience members subscribe.
5. Indeed, Mark once again seems to be raising (even as his comedic,
or ironic tone, simultaneously undermines) the possibility of some type of
transcendental act of communication, a moment of pure insight.
6. We will see a similar argument played out in the discussions (discussed
below) concerning the emergence of a type of neo-realism. As various critics
have noted, the postmodern aversion to the realistic impulse can be recast as
another effect of the realist impulse. That is, postmodern metaction seems
(perhaps inadvertently) to present itself as the most realistic representation of
reality because it represents reality as unrepresentable. As Taylor insists, the aim of
postmodern aesthetic education remains reconciliation with the Real (189).
7. I discuss Burkes concepts of terministic screens and mystication at
some length in the chapter 1. See, specically, the third section: Exorcisms
without End.
8. Although I make more of this below, I think it is important to high-
light the fact that Little wishes to associate differance with a literature that
somehow avoids the traps of negative theology. Ironically (and in terms of
Little and Taylors arguments, quite signicantly), differance is, according to
critics like Rorty, the most obvious example of Derridas initial inability to
avoid the onto-theological legacy he wishes to circumvent. See the second
section of chapter 2.
9. Although we see this satirical look at postmodernism throughout
Leyners work, it is (perhaps) best exemplied in a question asked by one of
the many anonymous characters/narrators in My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist:
who are the new intellectuals who are the new aesthetes now that the old
new intellectuals and the old new aesthetes have been decimated by the self-
decimating ramications of their old new ideas? (37).
10. After all, if we simply conate modernism and postmodernism because
we can locate the same spectral impulse animating their respective aesthetics
170 Notes to Chapter 3
we run the risk of losing the ability to make any historical distinctions. As I
have suggested throughout, a certain specter is, in one way or another, always
compelling movement; if this is indeed the case, then all periods (since at
least the Enlightenment) have been, and will continue to be, if we follow
Taylor, modernist. The fact is, though, even if a certain spectral compulsion
necessarily persists, the way in which that compulsion is played out can be a
useful way of determining epochal transitions. And, indeed, the way in which
the period after modernism deals with its spectral inheritance seems to be, as
many critics tend to agree, distinctly postmodern.
11. Taylor, of course, recognizes this failure as the effect of a certain
continuation of modernism. Ultimately, then, and as we saw with critics like
Huyssen and Hutcheon in chapter 1, Taylor betrays the logocentric or uto-
pian impulse animating his own claim that this emergent period is, at last,
a truly nal break with modernism. In other words, Taylors sense of a truly
POSTmodern epoch speaks to the way in which the imperative to respect the
specter becomes, quite necessarily, another way of disrespecting the specter, of
refusing to accept both the possibility and the impossibility of a nal solution.
12. These representational objects/events, or projections, can be under-
stood as instances of, what iek understands as, the Lacanian sublime. And,
as Marek Wieczorek notes in his introduction to The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime,
iek shows how the obstacle in the life of the protagonist [in a Lynch lm]
is precisely of the order of a fantasmatic projection onto an impossible object
of desire (ix). Even more so than in Lost Highway, this sense of an inevitably
circumscribed traumatic Real is evident in Lynchs more recent lm, Mulhol-
land Dr. For a major portion of the lm, Betty Elms (played by Naomi Watts)
encounters a series of inexplicable events, characters, and objects. Eventually,
we are led to the realization that these events and objects are disruptions in
a fantasy/dream world, a world in which Betty is able to become a successful
Hollywood actress and a Nancy-Drew-like sleuth. Unable to sustain these dis-
ruptionsat one point Betty is faced with what the audience understands to be
her own dead and decomposing bodyBettys fantasy turns into a reality in
which she is no longer Betty Elms but Diane Selwyn, a down-and-out waitress
who never managed to make it in Hollywood. At this point, the inexplicable
aspects of Bettys fantasy world become logically integrated into the real-
ity of Dianes. However, even though Dianes reality seemingly reestablishes
a coherent symbolic order, the traumas we see manifest as inexplicable dis-
ruptions in the Betty fantasy take on a much more sinister (because less
fantastic) form; unable to cope with her current reality, Diane shoots herself,
becoming the decomposing body to which Betty, in the initial portion of the
lm, found herself drawn and then repulsed. Once again, then, we are given
the circular, or repetitive structure of the psychoanalytic process; only, in this
case, the impossible object of desire is represented much more obviously as
absolute closure, or death.
13. The dissolution of Mucho is, of course, echoed in Pynchons later
novel, Gravitys Rainbow. In both texts, though, the dissolution of a central
character seems to be a way of highlighting identity as construct, as nothing
other than the effect of contingent discursive forces. It is not, in other words,
171 Notes to Chapter 3
a contingent negotiation of some unrepresentable Lacanian Real or Kriste-
vean chora. Without a certain faith in the possibility of signicationwithout,
that is, the ability to believe in the discursive constructs of history and/or
timePynchons Slothrop in Gravitys Rainbow becomes, quite simply, nothing.
Nothing but the illusion of time holds him togetheror, rather, makes him
present: Temporal bandwidth is the width of your present, your now. It is
the familiar t considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in
the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your
persona. But the narrower your sense of the Now, the more tenuous you are.
It may get to where youre having trouble remembering what you were doing
ve minutes ago, or evenas Slothrop nowwhat youre doing here, at the
base of this colossal curved embankment . . . (509).
14. In Utopia Limited, and while demonstrating the way in which the post-
modern shift was actually a complex and extended pivot during the 1960s
away from distinctly modernist/utopian ideologies, DeKoven works to reg-
ister the persistence in postmodernism of modes of sixties utopian desire
(24). While I certainly agree that we can locate a persistent utopian desire
in tension with post-utopian assumptions characteristic of the most important
postmodern ction (274), I want to be careful to distinguish this tension as
distinctly spectral and, thus, as the effect of a certain inevitable and unsought-
for return. In postmodernism, I am suggesting, this return is the result of an
increasingly hegemonic, or ostentatious, application of a perverse mode of
critique. What I am trying to point out above, though, is that postmodern
cultural production often evaded such tension by consciously embracing, if
too subtly, the utopian, or logocentric, lures that an argument like DeKovens
seems to suggest are always resisted outright (though inevitably and necessarily
present) in postmodernism.
15. We might argue, in fact, that, like the later Derrida, the later Pynchon
entertains the very shift in emphasis that I have been associating with renewal-
ism generally. While a text like Mason and Dixon seems to be a direct continu-
ation of Pynchons earlier workit employs real historical events, meandering
and unxed syntax, arbitrary musical interludes, absurd and impossible char-
acters (such as singing dogs and talking clocks), and so onit is ultimately
far more invested in articulating a need for faith, or some of type of belief, in
the possibility of representational accuracy. Not only are the main characters,
Mason and Dixon, initially driven by the promise of locating the accurate value
of the solar parallax, the obvious presence of a narratorwhose own story (of
telling the story of Mason and Dixon to a group of children) frequently inter-
rupts the story properreminds us of the texts unavoidable and animating
desire to achieve a type of mimetic truth. Indeed, in a passage that is oddly
reminiscent of the passage I cited above from Leyners Tetherballs, the narra-
tor describes the possibility of ascertaining the solar parallax as the possibility
of seeing the earth accurately from the sun: thro the magick of Celestial
Trigonometry,to which you could certainly be applying yourselves,such
measurements may yet be taken,as if the Telescope, in some mysterious Wise,
were transporting us safely thro all the dangers of the awesome Gulf of Sky,
out to the object we wish to examine (96). According to the narrator, then,
172 Notes to Chapter 3
this hypothetical telescope is a Vector of Desire (96), a vector that, like his
own story of Mason and Dixon, promises the absolute and impossible appre-
hension of a particular object or event.
16. For example, while traveling with a truck driver, Trout notices a moving
van with pyramids painted on its side. The name of the company to which the
van belongs is, Trout realizes, Pyramid. Bewildered, Trout asks his traveling
companion why anybody in the business of high speed transportation [would]
name his business and trucks after buildings that havent moved an eighth of an
inch since Christ was born? Trouts companion, we are told, responds with a
certain amount of contempt: He just liked the sound of it (112). Shocked
by this afrmation of the ultimately hollow and unstable nature of signs, Trout
conceives of a new story: Its about a planet where language kept turning into
pure music, because the creatures there were so enchanted by sounds. Words
became musical notes. Sentences became melodies. They were useless as con-
veyers of information, because nobody knew or cared what meanings of words
were anymore (113). As Vonnegut would put it, Like so many Trout stories,
[this one] was about a tragic failure to communicate (58).
17. In a manner that sums up the basic critical response to Vonnegut,
Lorre Rackstraw succinctly highlights the fact that Vonneguts work can be
dened by its desire to expose the dangerous illusions fostered by narrative
order: it is worth noting that Vonnegut was one of the rst American writ-
ers to make explicit through his self-reexive ction the irony that he was
using language to explore the curious and powerful and sometimes danger-
ous nature of language itselfhow it functions as signs or symbols that can
inuence our perceptions and what we take to be real, and thus can actually
shape our system of values and ethics (53).
18. Given the image of an asshole that runs throughout the textthat
is, the image of a number of randomly intersecting lineswe might say that,
for Vonnegut, all people (like, Vonnegut might add, all phenomena) are ass-
holes, arbitrary locus points of an innumerable number of intersecting dis-
cursive strands.
19. As Josh Simpson argues in a recent article on, what he calls, the Trou-
tean Trilogy (i.e., God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, and Breakfast
of Champions), At the center of [Vonneguts] canon resides the notion that
science ction [as exemplied in the nostalgic texts of Trout] is capable of
lling humanity with false realities and empty promises for Utopian societies
that do not and, perhaps most important, cannot exist (262). Simpson also
quotes, for use as an epigraph, a line from Frank McLaughlins 1973 interview
with Vonnegut that, I think, is worth requoting here: I resent a lot of science
ction. This promising of great secrets just beyond our graspI dont think
they exist (Vonnegut as qtd. in Simpson 261).
20. At the same time, though, Trout often seems to represent Vonneguts
own latent nostalgia and humanistic sentimentality, feelings that Vonnegut feels
he must repress or efface. Reed, in fact, makes a similar point. While pointing
out that Slaughterhouse Five, like much of Vonneguts work, is a novel in which
a serious, direct statement of ethics . . . would seem didactic and false, Reed
173 Notes to Chapter 3
argues that Trouts simple, humorous, hyperbolic stories deliver the message
effectively without changing the authors narrative stance in the novel (73).
Through Trout, then, Vonnegut often appears capable of having his cake and
eating it too. Still, as we see in a text like Breakfast of Champions, Trout is
often and, perhaps, necessarily punished for his nostalgic satires. On a certain
level, then, we might read the abuses Trout suffers at his authors hands as
Vonneguts way of performing a type of postmodern self-agellation. Trout,
in other words, speaks to Vonneguts latent desire to escape the chaos he
knows he must embrace.
21. As Rackstraw points out, it is possible to read Trouts nal cries for
youth as symptomatic of the dangerous desires of a past patriarchalor, in
Derridas terms, a logo/phallogocentricorder: In the distance [Vonnegut]
hears Trout call out, in his fathers voice, make me young, make me young, make
me young! It is the voice of logical patriarchal civilization with its ecstatic
torment and mortal needif not for transcendence, at least for the power to
nd renewal and direction in the void (62).
22. The main characters in Empire of the Senseless (i.e., Thivai and Abhor)
are, after all, terrorists. There seems to be a suggestion in Ackers work that
we need to be violently shocked out of our ideological stupor, our passive
acceptance of the articial categories that determine our reality. Indeed, we
could make the obvious argument that the excessive violence and spectacle in
Ackers texts force us to recognize the arbitrariness of our existence.
23. We might say that what becomes too glaring in excessively perverse
postmodernism is the fact that, as John McGowan puts it, the description of
our condition as one of insertion within networks (or systems) of differen-
tial play is hard put to avoid transcendental claims in the process of arguing
that such is our condition (42). From this perspective, postmodernism fails
because, in its most perverse manifestations, it fails to satisfactorily negotiate, or
announce, the paradox that it cant actually do what it claims to be doing.
24. Bauman, of course, is interested in exposing the way in which the
postmodern quest for purity must ultimately view its own inevitable conclu-
sion as another form of impurity. According to Bauman, postmodernism
can only maintain its epistemological dominance if it rejects its own logical
extremethat is, a state in which we are no longer willing to embrace a
single governing ideology, postmodernism included: Postmodernity . . . lives
in a state of permanent pressure towards the dismantling of all collective inter-
ference into individual fate, towards deregulation and privatization. It tends
to fortify itself therefore against those whofollowing its inherent tendency
to disengagement, indifference and free-for-allthreaten to expose the sui-
cidal potential of the strategy by pushing its implementation to the logical
extreme. The most obnoxious impurity of the postmodern version of purity
is not revolutionaries, but those who either disregard the law or take the law
into their own handsmuggers, robbers, car-thieves and shoplifters, as well as
their alter egosthe vigilantes and the terrorists (16). In other words, and
quite paradoxically, postmodernism must avoid exorcising the spectrality of the
specterthat is, postmodernism must avoid fullling the very spectral promise
174 Notes to Chapter 3
it is motivated to fulllif it wishes to continue exorcising the spectrality of
the specter. And it is at the moment when this spectral paradox becomes
unavoidably apparent (as it is, I would argue, in the work of Acker) that the
postmodern ethic of perversity becomes a hegemonic imperative.
25. Signicantly, the narrator/protagonist is subtly different from the
author. As Catharine Calloway points out, Unlike the real Tim OBrien, the
protagonist has a nine year old daughter named Kathleen and makes a journey
to Vietnam years after the war is over (250).
26. While many would counter this claim, arguing that Beckett was a high
modernist, not a postmodernist, Becketts work does often seem (as Federman
suggests) to herald the end of modernism and thus the birth of postmodernism.
Consequently, I think Federmans claim is a fair one: we can, quite easily, identify
Becketts work and death with the alpha and the omega of postmodernism.
27. In the introduction to the issuean issue that included such writ-
ers as Jayne Anne Philips, Raymond Carver, Frederick Barthelme, and Tobias
WolffBill Buford positions this new dirty realism in direct contradistinction
to both traditional forms of realism and the metactional devices of postmod-
ernism: It is not heroic or grand: the epic ambitions of Norman Mailer or Saul
Bellow seem, in contrast, inated, strange, even false. It is not self-consciously
experimental like so much of the writingvariously described as postmodern,
postcontemporary or deconstructionistthat was published in the sixties
and seventies. The work of John Barth, William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon
seems pretentious in comparison (4). The sense we get from Buford is that
this new form of realism is a type of realism that remains inected by the les-
sons of postmodernism: This is a curious, dirty realism about the belly-side of
contemporary life, but it is realism so stylized and particularizedso insistently
informed by discomforting and sometimes elusive ironythat it makes the
more traditional realistic novels of, say, Updike and Styron seem ornate, even
baroque in comparison (4). In other words, and as I suggest below, Bufords
dirty realism can be read as an early symptom of the current shift away from
postmodernism. Indeed, works of dirty realism seem to clearly anticipate
what critics have come to refer to as neo-realism or critical realism.
28. See Tom Wolfes Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Literary Mani-
festo of the New Social Novel. Rejecting the claims of postmodernism as
decadent and elitist, Wolfe argues that only the realistic novelrealistic, that is,
in the journalistic tradition of a writer like Zolahas the ability to be socially
pertinent and captivating: It is not merely that reporting is useful in gather-
ing the petits faits vrais that create verisimilitude and make a novel gripping or
absorbing, although that side of the enterprise is worth paying attention to.
My contention is that, especially in an age like this, they are essential for the
greatest effects literature can achieve (55). Not surprisingly, Wolfe holds up
his own book, The Bonre of the Vanities, as an example of his specic brand
of neo-realism, a form of narrative that rejects postmodern strategies as overly
and unjustly privileged by academia.
29. In his introduction to Beyond Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature,
Theory, and Culture, Klaus Stierstorfer describes the situation like this: in a
175 Notes to Chapter 3
much-quoted survey Lance Olsen reported an astounding increase in occur-
rences of the term postmodern in American newspapers from 1980 through
1984 to 1987 at a ratio of 2: 116: 247. In his turn, Hans Bertens charted a his-
tory of the debate on postmodernism from its tentative beginnings in the 1950s
to its overwhelming self-condence in the early 1990s. From the later 1990s
onwards, however, this narrative of the progress of postmodernism appears to
lose direction. Although no statistical data are available, the quantity of refer-
ences to postmodernism in scholarly publications as well as in the daily press
seems to decreases, as does the heatedness of the debate (1).
30. Federman, following Lyotard, rephrases this paradox by stating that
Postmodernism attempted to speak the impossibility of speaking the unspeak-
able (Part 2 158).
31. In a recent article, Malcolm Bradbury, while quoting himself, puts it
like this: most of the major movements that have been regarded as essen-
tially anti-realist have argued that they are in effect a form of realism (15).
Bradburys point is, it would seem, that the emergent forms of realismhe
identies writers like Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellowspeak
to a realist impulse that was never completely foreign to postmodernism.
Rather than simply renewing a realist impulse, then, recent works of neo-real-
ism attempt to stress the fact that there are still a number of realities that
have escaped literary representation. Coming, for Bradbury, mainly from the
margins, neo-realism is thus an attack on the idea of literature as an exhausted
formthe idea, that is, that only pastiche and self-reexivity can represent the
reality of the present. Of course, this new realism is not a simple narrowing
back to a conventional naturalistic or reportorial realism (22); rather, it is a
late-twentieth century realism, characteristically anxious, ironic and specula-
tive (23). Put in spectrological terms, recent works of neo-realism recongure,
or renew, the aesthetic relationship with the teleological, or realist, specter
that dened postmodernism from the beginning.
32. Federman, in fact, refers to artists like Lynch, Leyner, and Acker as
the new young thugs of innovation (Part 2 167). As I suggest in the above
chapters, though, the work of Acker is probably more accurately classed as
residual, if not high, postmodernism than as what I have been calling emergent
renewalism. Indeed, as Max Shechner has argued, writers like Paul Auster
and Kathy Acker . . . are responsible for what remains of the [postmodern]
metactional remnant (33).
33. Federman, of course, is referring to the dirty realism identied by
Buford. For Federman, dirty realism is not stylistically innovative enough to
be a continuation of a distinctly postmodern project. However, I would argue
that dirty realism and the new works of innovation privileged by Federman are
not as distinct as Federman would like to believe; both share a very similar
relationship with the specter I have been discussing. As I demonstrate below,
narrative strategies after postmodernism are best dened by their willingness
to ironically embrace a certain spectrological promise. The identication of
aesthetic production that moves beyond postmodernism has far less to do with
the identication of a specic stylistic (metactional, realist, or otherwise) than
176 Notes to Chapter 3
it does with identication of a very specic relationship with the specter of a
still incomplete project of modernity.
34. See my extended discussion of Lyotard in chapter 1.
35. As Ihab Hassan argues in Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Beyond,
the absurdity of the politically-correct campus is a direct result of this oddly
inverted dogmatism: For some time now theory and ideology in American
universities have produced an oppressive orthodoxy, the orthodoxy of P.C. or
political correctness. Conceived rst in the name of pluralism, multi-cultural-
ism, social justice, theory and ideology have created a climate which threatens
now pluralism itself, threatens free speech and intellectual liberty (Fresh
Air 136). This stiing climate is, as Hassan seems to be arguing, the result
of the postmodern pretence of exuberance in fragments, the avoidance of
nostalgiaor, rather, the feigned avoidance of it (136).
36. We should, perhaps, note that Leypoldt ultimately suggests that this
shift from postmodern metaction to forms of realism does not signal an
ideological or epistemological paradigm shift (26). Instead, Leypoldt argues,
this shift is symptomatic of a change in audiences aesthetic preferences
(26), a change that is due to a general sense of boredom with postmodern
aesthetic production. I would argue, though, that it is difcult (if not impos-
sible) to identify a major shift in aesthetic taste without (at least suggesting)
a larger ideological, or epistemological, upheaval.
37. As an example, McLaughlin points out the way in which a writer
like Barthwhile seemingly immersing himself in the luxury of language
(59)repeatedly articulates a deep concern for the social world. Citing Barths
most recent work, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night, McLaughlin argues that
Barth seems to be doing more obviously here what hes always been doing:
writing ction about ction, but ction thats placed in the social world (59).
However, I would argue that this subtle shift in emphasis is more important
than McLaughlin is willing to admit. While Barths late work might be sim-
ply more overt in terms of its social claims, the fact that his early work was
far more focused on the repudiation of logocentric attitudes than his more
recent workwhich, as Thomas Carmichael has suggested, in a manner that
anticipates McLaughlins own claims, emphasizes an inevitable return to the
discourse of the realistic enterprise (32930)speaks to the very spectrologi-
cal shift I have been attempting to expose.
38. It is worth noting that Hayles and Gannon see the apparent death of
postmodernism as effecting a type of aesthetic mood swing, a shift from post-
modernism to an aesthetics of ambient emergence. While far more interested
in developing technologies than my own, Hayles and Gannons discussion of
a new form of aesthetic production highlights a distinctly renewalist desire
to open up possibilities in the wake of postmodernism. While a full exegesis
of Hayles and Gannons complex understanding of ambient emergence is
beyond the scope of my discussion, sufce it to say that ambient emergence
is dened by the work of artists, like Mark Z. Danielewski, who are generally
more interested in building than in critique, more oriented to discovery and
innovation than to paranoia and suspicion (Hayles and Gannon 136).
177 Notes to Chapter 3
39. Take, for instance, the episode in which Lisa becomes a vegetar-
ian: Lisa the Vegetarian. On the surface, the episode appears to privilege
the more marginal position of vegetarianism, while mocking the ideological
assumptions that meat eaters typically employ in defense of their lifestyle. The
scene in which Bart, Homer, Marge, and Maggie dance around the house
singing you dont win friends with salad seems to be an outward condem-
nation of the absurd societal imperative to eat meat. This condemnation is
even more overtly articulated when, at school, Lisas class is subjected to an
educational lm on the importance of eating meat; along with a sequence
in which the narrator tells the child protagonist of the lm that the killing
oor at his local abattoir is nothing more than a poorly named area where
steel grating allows material to sluice through so it can be collected and
exported, the educational lm includes a picture of a food chain in which
humans are at the natural center of all worldly consumption (arrows, in fact,
absurdly point from a human to all manner of animals and goods, including
a single boot). However, the satire of the episode, like most Simpsons episodes,
quickly becomes dual-edged. Indeed, Lisas quest for an accepting vegetarian
community grows increasingly bizarre; at one point, she is led by Apu, the
token Hindu and convenience store owner, through a secret passage in the
Quickie Mart to an edenic place where Paul McCartney resides as the guru
of all vegetarians. Culminating in an impromptu jam session between Apu
and McCartney, this scene allows us to reapproach the episode in a manner
that gives the anti-vegetarian song and dance performed by Lisas family a
subtly different tone. In other words, and as we see with most of Lisas leftist
and radical ideals, the impulse behind vegetarianism is presented as symp-
tomatic of an often ighty and unpractical form of idealism. The episode
thus seems to condemn the ideology driving the production and consumption
of meat products as outmoded while simultaneously reafrming the sugges-
tion that there are perfectly acceptable reasons why you dont win friends
with salad.
40. For a detailed discussion of Jonathan Franzens often vocal rejection
of postmodernism, see Robert Rebeins excellent article, Turncoat: Why Jona-
than Franzen Finally Said No to Po-Mo.
41. The obvious example is, of course, John Cage. However, Cages incred-
ibly esoteric music hardly indicates a postmodern imperative animating popu-
lar culture. Still, a popular musician like Beck or even a rapper like Eminem
can be identied as distinctly postmodern. Eminems incessant irony as well
his use of alter egos (i.e., Eminem and Slim Shady) suggests a certain
impulse to be responsibly postmodern. Likewise, Becks (perhaps more aca-
demic) use of pastiche speaks to popular cultures need to be self-reexive
and overtly parodic. Take, for instance, the list of samples, or quotes, that
make up the song Devils Haircut on Becks 1996 album, Odelay: Devils
Haircut contains a sample from Out of Sight (James Brown) published by
Fort Knox Music BMI, performed by Them, courtesy of Decco Record Co.:
a sample from Soul Drums (Bernard Purdie) published by Tenryk Music
BMI, performed by Pretty Purdie, courtesy of Sony Music; and elements from
178 Notes to Chapter 3
I Can Only Give You Everything (Philip Coulter/Thomas Scott) published
by Carbert Music ASCAP.
42. At the same time, the dialogue that the ctional actors deliver is
actually dialogue from past Seinfeld episodes.
43. Tew is, at this point, referencing Bhaskars Plato Etc.: The Problems of
Philosophy and Their Resolution.
44. Anticipating the claims of a critic like Leypoldt, Winfried Fluck notes
that experimental postmodernism had radicalized its linguistic playfulness
and especially its experiments in dereferentialization to such a degree that it
became monotonous, and, what is worse and eventually the kiss of death for
any avant-garde movement, predictable (65). What I am suggesting, though,
is that this sense of monotony speaks to a period of postmodern hegemony,
a period in which any narrative style that refuses to be self-referential or anti-
foundationalist is ostracized as sentimentally dangerous or ideologically com-
plicit. This becomes, as Sanford Pinsker puts it, in a manner that coincides
with the anti-theory/anti-postmodern assertions of Shechner, a form of New
Puritanism (61). Still, like Shechner, Pinsker is too obsessed with berating
academia for its acceptance of theoretical double-speak and postmodern
pluralism to be particularly useful. Indeed, Pinskers position is outwardly
conservative and reactionary. He goes so far as to label recent works of neo-
realism redskin literature, as if (what he calls) palefaces are too sterile and
theory-obsessed to be associated with good literature. This rather backdated
and bizarrely essentialist use of racial categories is symptomatic of the way in
which Pinskers and, for that matter, Shechners understanding of neo-realism
is tainted by an outright distaste for, and misunderstanding of, postmodern
theory and literature.
45. Such a list is, of course, tentative, and a careful examination of each
author would be necessary before we could identify their individual works
as denitively renewalist. However, apart from Tarantino and Erdrich and
the authors that I have already discussed above, the writers that make up the
remainder of this list have been identied elsewhere as (in one manner or
another) complicit with a certain shift away from postmodernism: in Writing
Fiction in the 90s, Malcolm Bradbury identies Toni Morrison, along with
Alice Walker, as moving beyond postmodern aesthetic imperatives; Alfred Hor-
nung makes similar claims in POSTMODERN-POSTMORTEM: Death and the
Death of the Novel; in Mood Swings (discussed above) Hayles and Gannon
claim that Danielewskis work participates in a mood swing from postmod-
ernism to, what they identify as, an aesthetic of ambient emergence; Don
DeLillo is mentioned by Winfried Fluck (in an article discussed below) as a
writer that, while stylistically postmodern, is engaged in a type of writing that
can be categorized along with the work of Raymond Carver; and Christopher
Den Tandt makes analogous claims about DeLillo, while extending his analysis
to the work of Kingston, in his Pragmatic Commitments: Postmodern Realism
in Don DeLillo, Maxine Hong Kingston and James Ellroy.
46. Of course, postmodernism never resulted in a state of paralysis. This is,
I am arguing, the very failure to which renewalist forms of narrative respond.
179 Notes to Chapter 3
Because it strove to nally reject the ideal of mythic indecision (or, put dif-
ferently, the material possibility of the specter) postmodernism necessarily and
paradoxically strove toward such a state of indecision. What the persistence of
postmodernism demonstrates, though, is that the rejection of either pole of
indecision is impossible. Had postmodernism been successful in its aesthetic
endeavor, it would have ceased to move; it would have become absolutely
silent. The failure of postmodernism to carry through on its various threats
to commit suicide is thus symptomatic of the impossibility of a discourse that
is uncontaminated by the irony of indecisionwhich is to say, the spectrality
of the specter.
47. To a degree, then, the initial portion of Kaufmans lm seems to echo
and, perhaps, mock the extreme solipsism of high postmodernism. Indeed,
Kaufmans continual inability to get his plot moving directly mirrors a text
like Barths ostentatiously metactional Title. Like Kaufman, the writer of/in
Title (i.e., the tenth story in Lost in the Funhouse) is paralyzed by his awareness
of the futility of writing: I think she comes. The story of our life. This is the
nal test. Try to ll in the blank. Only hope is to ll the blank. Efface what
cant be faced or else ll the blank. With words or more words, otherwise Ill
ll in the blank with this noun here in my prepositional object. Yes, she already
said that. And I think. What now. Everythings been said already, over and over;
Im as sick of this as you are; theres nothing to say. Say nothing (102).
48. The suggestion seems to be that a text evades artistic failure by con-
tinually emphasizing its inevitable failure as a meaningful text. Speaking of
Borges short allegory, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Barth points
out that Menard writes a remarkable and original work of literature, the
implicit theme of which is the difculty, perhaps the unnecessity, of writing
original works of literature. His artistic victory, if you like, is that he confronts
an intellectual dead end and employs it to accomplish new human work (69
70). According to Barth, then, the literature of exhaustion is, quite simply, an
original articulation of exhaustion or narrative futility. Ultimately, though, this
becomes another aesthetic dead end. Like, we might say, de Manian decon-
struction, the literature of exhaustion incessantly works to expose the same
ironically nite truth again and again: the innite inexhaustibility of apparently
exhausted works of art and modes of aesthetic production. As Barth suggests,
it is a matter of every moment throwing out the bath water without for a
moment losing the baby (70).
49. Of course, Hutcheon succinctly addresses this problem in her Poetics.
Hutcheon, though, argues that, because it was, for the most part, willing to
admit that no narrative can be a natural master narrative, postmodernism
was able to successfully challenge narratives that do presume master status,
without necessarily assuming that status for itself (13). While I agree with
Hutcheon that postmodern metaction, at least initially, seemed to negoti-
ate this paradox, I would argue that its eventual dominance as an aesthetic
imperative exposed such a negotiation as impossible (which it is). As I sug-
gested in chapter 1, even Hutcheons claim that postmodernism can evade
assuming the status of a master narrative necessarily positions it as a master
180 Notes to Chapter 3
narrativethat is, as a form of narrative that can nally evade becoming a
metanarrative.
50. Given Barths status as one of the quintessential postmodern writers,
the fact that he seems to question what I have identied as a distinctly post-
modern move toward aesthetic silence is somewhat problematic. Shouldnt a
postmodernist celebrate an ambition like Becketts? There are, I think, two ways
to look at this dilemma. On the one hand, Barths early work, including The
Literature of Exhaustion, articulates the very failure I have been attempting
to describe throughout. What we see in Barths work, and as I demonstrate
in more detail below, is a type of ethical imperative to articulate the illusory
nature of such an imperative. Even for a postmodernist (and this is, perhaps,
the most obvious symptom of a postmodern failure), the state of paralysis
to which the work of Beckett points seems irresponsible. The postmodernist
is compelled to continually voice the utopian ideal of such silence. As we saw
with Vonnegut, this is a compulsion to articulate a type of ethics of perversity.
Not unlike Vonnegut, Barth identies the felt ultimacies of our time as a
cause for celebration, a reason to write: By exhaustion I dont mean anything
so tired as the subject of physical, moral, or intellectual decadence, only the
used-upness of certain forms or the felt exhaustion of certain possibilitiesby
no means a cause for despair (Exhaustion 64). On the other hand, though,
Barths awareness of the problematic paradox animating postmodernismits
strange ability to continue speaking toward silenceanticipates the subtle shift we
see in his later work. As I pointed out in an earlier note, critics like Thomas
Carmichael have identied a certain return of the Real in Barths later work.
Suggesting a connection between Barth and the iekean art of the ridicu-
lous sublime, such criticism highlights the way in which a late-Barth comes to
embrace a form of literature, which he continues to call postmodernism, that is
uncannily similar to the forms of renewalist narrative I have been attempting to
categorize. By the time Barth publishes The Literature of Replenishment he
has begun to outwardly anticipate a type of literature that will somehow rise
above the quarrel between realism and irrealism, formalism and contentism
(203). Calling for a type of ideal aesthetic unitya type of unity that seems to
echo the linking of the disciplines that Habermas views as the aim of a proj-
ect of modernityBarth seems to rewrite his earlier claims regarding what
constitutes postmodernism. In fact, he seems to nd in his earlier criticism
and ction suggestions that this was what he was intending all along. And, I
would argue, he is quite right to do so. As Carmichael argues, What Barths
1967 prescription nally urges is a synthesis of narrative self-consciousness and
the conventions of realistic representation, and if we substitute modernism for
the former and premodernism for the latter, we have a clear anticipation of
the program that Barth advances for postmodernism in his 1980 essay, The
Literature of Replenishment, with the signicant difference that in the later
essay this synthesis is no longer couched in the rhetoric of a heroic avant-garde
(330). Put differently, the later Barth, like the later Derrida, is very much
engaged in a certain shift away from the postmodern episteme he helped to
dene. Like Derrida, the later Barth, like the literature of renewalism gener-
181 Notes to Chapter 3
ally, can be understood as simply shifting his emphasis, pointing to something
that was necessarily present (albeit ignored, or denied) all along. With Der-
rida, the shift is most obvious in his outward acceptance of the necessity of the
quasi-transcendental; in Barth, we see it in his much more overt insistence that
postmodernism necessarily had to have it both ways (Revisited 42).
51. We might think of this paradox, as a critic like Chris Conti does, as an
effect of a type of double-directed discourse. Following Bahktin, Conti seems
to suggest that the confessional mode assumed by a narrator like Andrews is
symptomatic of the structure of a double-directed discourse [that] betrays
the need for an audience preciselyand paradoxicallyat the moment the
narrators independence from others is declared (542). The sense we get
from Conti is that Andrews afrmation of nihilism and/or suicide is always
and necessarily caught up in the very thing it aims to refute: the need for,
or possibility of, validation: Todd seeks to justify more than parlor nihilism,
though this might be all that remains of his ideology in the end; he seeks,
rather, to justify suicide as an authentic choice and a positive act. In short, he
wants to display suicidal nihilism as an afrmation of life (541). As with the
ethics of perversity we see advocated so blatantly in the work of Vonnegut
and Acker, Andrews need to assure himself, and his readers, that an authentic
or positive act is an ideological illusion that becomes the very reason for his
endlessly deferred suicide. In other words, Andrews narrative (which can be
read as an effect of his hesitation, or doubt) speaks to the impossibility of
being certainly right about the impossibility of being certainly right. Andrews
narrative, like Andrews himself, persists because it/he is necessarily caught up
in the paradox of indecision.
52. I should note that I am, here, referring to the original 1956 version
of The Floating Opera, the version Barth altered so as to satisfy his publishers.
Barth eventually published a restored version of the text in 1967, but in
that particular version Andrews does not experience the moment of paralysis
discussed above. While the 1967 version is apparently the novel Barth wanted
published, I nd the idea of Andrews paralysis too signicant to ignore (espe-
cially as the theme of paralysis is central in Barths second noveli.e., The End
of the Road). For this reason, I am basing my discussion on the 1956 version,
not the 1967 one.
53. This structure is, to a certain degree, repeated in The End of the Road
and Giles Goat-Boy. In The End of the Roadthe counterpart to The Floating
Operathe main character, Jacob Horner, is also subject to moments of abso-
lute paralysis: I left the ticket window and took a seat on one of the benches
in the middle of the concourse to make up my mind. And it was there that I
simply ran out of motives, as a car runs out of gas. . . . There was no reason
to do anything (74). After sitting immobile for an entire night, Horner is
approached by a doctor who runs an immobilation farm; and, after undergo-
ing mythotherapya process in which he is encouraged to believe in, and
restructure, the ctional stories that dene his existenceHorner begins a
strange relationship with a seemingly liberated couple. Another confession-
al, Horners story, like Andrews, ultimately becomes an attempt to validate
182 Notes to Chapter 3
the claim that no claim or decision can be deemed valid. The text itself thus
becomes a contingent act of mythotherapy, a narrative that is animated by a
spectral desire to invalidate all reasons for being, or acting, or deciding, or
whatever. The existence of Horners narrative, though, ultimately speaks to a
latent faith in the teleological claim that intentional myth making is the only
ethical thing we can decide to do. This same inverted code of ethics seems
to be the basic conceit of a text like Giles Goat-Boy. Playing with the idea of a
prophesized messiahthat is, the GILESGiles Goat-Boy continually teases the
reader with the possibility that George, the Goat-Boy, will fulll his destiny
and become the Grand Tutor. Of course, in typical postmodern fashion, the
messianic promise is denied as a dangerous illusion; Georges efforts, after
all, to tutor inevitably end up causing more harm than good. By the end,
when George seems to have nally become Grand Tutor (although a certain
ambiguity continues to frustrate our ability to make claims about his messianic
status), we realize that the entire narrative has been told years after the events
described by a disillusioned and skeptical George. Still claiming to be Grand
Tutor, George suggests that he has ultimately failed, that his lessons only
resulted in two dogmatic and opposed ideologies and that he believes the nar-
rative he has just recorded is a futile attempt to explain something that cannot
be explained: And thus it isempowered as it were by impotence, driven
by want of motivesI record this posttape (756). The sense we get is that
George is the Grand Tutor, but only insofar as he understands and preaches the
impossibility of articulating the Truth, only insofar as he continually identies
his messianic role as being without meaning or purpose: I had been sought out,
in my obscurity, by journalism-majors with long memories, who asked whether
I still maintained that I was the Grand Tutor. . . . I had replied yes, I was the
Grand Tutor, for better or worse, there was no help for it; yes I knew what
studentdom was pleased to call the answer, though that termindeed the
whole propositionwas as misleading as another (and thus as satisfactory),
since what I knew neither I nor anyone could teach, not even my own
tutees (759). Like Andrews and Horner, then, George is identied as a
type of postmodern saint, an individual who has nally realized and accepted
the impossibility of a nal answer, a mimetic text, a telos. At the same time,
though, each of their narratives is spectrally animated by the promise that an
absolute and nal rejection of the promise is possible.
54. For this reason, it is not surprising that, as Arthur Saltzman notes, the
Washington Post deemed The Mezzanine the most daring and thrilling novel
since John Barths 1955 [sic] The Floating Opera (Barbara Fisher Williamson
as qtd. in Saltzman 15).
55. As Sren Pold puts it, In The Mezzanine, . . . one can also nd a thor-
ough awareness of the medium of print, and the novel can also be categorized
as belonging to Realism (141). In other words, Baker demonstrates a media
consciousness that is simultaneously postmodern and realistic (152).
56. I should note that Nancys various, and fairly recent, theories of
community, and being with, echo and run parallel to Derridas later more
overtly renewalist work. We might, then, easily identify Nancy as a theorist
of renewalism.
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193 Index
Index
193
Acker, Kathy, 22, 46, 96, 99, 10102,
173n22, 174n24, 175n2, 181n51;
Empire of the Senseless, 100, 173n22;
In Memoriam to Identity, 10001
Allen, Donald, 149n11
Allen, Woody, 75
Althusser, Louis, 38, 162n9. See also
ideological state apparatuses
ambient emergence, aesthetics of.
See under Hayles, N. Katherine
Anderson, Paul Thomas, 133
Anderson, Perry, 7, 910, 16, 26,
148n7, 156nn4445, 156n47,
157n49
Anderson, Wes, 132
anti-modernism, 14, 26, 156n43.
See also Habermas, Jrgen;
modernism; premodernism
Aristotle, 142
Arrested Development (Hurwitz), 116
art for arts sake, 38
Auster, Paul, 175n32
avant-garde, 160n3; modernism
as, 14, 29, 38, 40, 112, 148n7,
178n44; postmodernism as, 14,
28, 10809, 148n7, 180n50;
poststructuralism as, 43
Bahktin, Mikhail, 181n51
Baker, Nicholson, 34, 133, 136; The
Mezzanine, 13335, 182n55; Vox,
13536
Ballard, J.G.: Crash, 41
Banks, Russell, 132; Continental Drift,
12223
Barth, John, 22, 96, 107, 150nn14
15, 174n27, 176n37, 180n50; The
Book of Ten Nights and a Night,
176n37; The End of the Road,
150n14, 181nn5253; The Floating
Opera, 12931, 133, 181n52,
182n54; Giles Goat-Boy, 181n53;
Literature of Replenishment,
111, 180n50; Literature of
Exhaustion, 111, 128, 179n48,
180n50; Lost in the Funhouse,
179n47
Barthelme, Donald, 96; Snow White,
92
Barthelme, Frederick, 174n27
Barthes, Roland, 16, 38, 41, 43;
Text, 30, 160n3
Bataille, Georges, 26, 38, 156n43,
160n3
Baudrillard, Jean, 1, 11, 41, 45, 50,
93, 113, 128, 160n4, 16162nn67;
The Illusion of the End, 161n7;
Paroxysm, 16162n7; Simulacra and
Simulation, 41
Baugh, Bruce, 57, 165n28
Bauman, Zygmunt, 101, 173n24
Baumbach, Noah, 133
Beck: Odelay, 17778n41
Beckett, Samuel, 107, 128, 130,
174n26, 180n50
Bell, Daniel, 155
194 Index
Bellow, Saul, 150n15, 174n27,
175n31
Benjamin, Walter, 65, 69, 70
Berlin Wall, the, 107, 112, 166n33
Bertens, Hans, 910, 12, 148n6,
148n8, 14849nn1011, 149n13,
154n38, 175n29
Bhaskar, Roy, 11617, 178n43
Blanchot, Maurice, 134, 167n33
Borges, Jorge Luis, 93, 179n48
Bradbury, Malcolm, 107, 175n31,
178n45
Bradley, Arthur, 165n28
Brooks, Neil, 147n3
Buford, Bill, 2, 174n27, 175n33
Burke, Kenneth, 25, 34; Language
as Symbolic Action, 155n40; Rhetoric
of Motives, 23, 155n41; terministic
screens and/as mystications, 23,
83, 90, 155nn4041
Burroughs, William S., 150n15
Bush, George W., 2
Butternick, George, 149n11
Cage, John, 177n41
Calloway, Catherine, 105, 174n25
capitalism, 39, 107, 147n5, 155n42;
late-stage, 11, 31, 32; market/
monopoly-stage, 8; neocolonial, 2
Caputo, John D, 37, 5860, 61, 62,
147n4, 163n26, 165n28, 166nn30
31, 168n41, 168n43. See also quasi-
transcendentals
Carmichael, Thomas, 176n37,
180n50
Carver, Raymond, 107, 120, 122,
123, 132, 134, 174n27, 178n45;
Why Dont You Dance?, 121
Chandler, Raymond: The Big Sleep, 43
Chen, Tina, 104
Coen Brothers, the: The Big Lebowski,
37; The Man Who Wasnt There, 111
Cold War, the, 112, 158n55
communism, 58, 117, 150n14; as
specter of utopian ideal, 1819,
21, 107, 153n28, 167n36; Marxism
dened as, 20
conjuration, 62, 85, 86, 154n39;
and/as exorcism, 2022, 70,
13842, 15253n27, 153nn2930
Conte, Joseph, 149n12
contingent referentiality, 119. See also
Stierstorfer, Klaus
Coover, Robert, 22, 96
Coppola, Francis Ford: Apocalypse
Now, 41
Coppola, Sophia, 132
Couturier, Maurice, 130
Creeley, Robert, 148
Critchley, Simon, 46, 47, 4849, 54,
63
critical realism, 117, 174n27
Crockett, Clayton, 168n43
Culler, Jonathan, 46, 49, 5556, 58,
110
Danielewski, Mark Z., 118, 132,
176n38, 178n45
David, Larry, 115; Seinfeld, 11416,
178n42; Curb Your Enthusiasm, 115
Deconstruction, 41, 42, 46, 89,
159nn12, 163n17, 164n19,
174n27; as atheism, 61; de Manian,
160n4, 178n48; Derridean, 13, 45,
49, 51, 56; as discourse, 153n32,
159n1; ethico-political pertinence
of, 6264; as haunted, 18, 56, 58,
60, 72, 13637; and/as justice,
6173; and Marxism, 4, 56, 61,
66, 72, 13637; messianic in,
612, 6668; as negative theology,
5658, 168n41; as onto-theology,
5758; as postmodern, 37, 45, 66,
153n32, 159n1, 161n7, 162n10,
164n20; after postmodernism,
45, 56, 5960, 61, 73, 136,
155n39; poststructuralism as
reconguration of, 41, 45, 159n1,
160n4, 161n7, 162n8, 162n10,
164n20; as pragmatism, 4656;
as promise, 20, 61, 67, 167n34,
167n36; as quasi-transcendental
philosophy, 58; as religion without
religion, 60, 168n41
195 Index
deep knowledge, 120
DeKoven, Marianne, 94, 147n5,
171n14
Deleuze, Gilles, 158n52
DeLillo, Don, 118, 178n45
de Man, Paul, 160n4, 179n48
democracy, 70; as promise, 20, 152,
167n36
Den Tandt, Christopher, 178n45
Derrida, Jacques, 34, 23, 25, 26,
33, 3435, 38, 4142, 45, 4673,
77, 82, 99, 102, 110, 111, 116,
129, 149n10, 150n13, 156n43,
159n1, 160n4, 161nn57,
162nn910, 163n13, 163n16,
164n19, 165nn2728, 166nn2930,
16768n39, 169n8, 173n21; arche-
writing, 5051, 53, 68; bricolage,
30; differance, 18, 43, 5153,
56, 5758, 59, 82, 8788, 9495,
164n22, 165n26, 169n8; early
versus late period; 56, 60, 61, 63,
67, 7273, 77, 80, 83, 8788, 89,
92, 94, 95, 98, 103, 106, 118, 121,
130, 134, 136, 147n4, 15455n39,
164n21, 16465nn2324, 165n26,
171n15, 18081n50, 182n56;
ethical turn, 88; indecision and
the ordeal of the undecidable,
6173, 80, 104, 105, 121, 144, 80,
121, 14244, 16768n39; justice,
19, 20, 37, 59, 6173, 152n26,
1667n33, 167n36, 168n40;
lovence, 134; the lure, 53, 83, 88,
95, 99, 164n22; messianism, 4,
1820, 32, 6062, 6668, 7073,
95, 106, 130, 136, 152nn2526,
16667n33, 167nn3638, 182n53;
mourning, theory of, 22, 107,
14445, 152n25, 1667n33; the
perhaps, 14244, 168n42; the
promise, 4, 1823, 26, 34, 58,
6173, 14245, 152nn256, 64n22,
16667n3334, 167n36; relation
without relation, 80, 103; religion
without religion, 60, 62, 67, 103,
168n41, 168n43; role of God,
18, 57, 58, 60, 6162, 7273,
147n4, 164n22, 166n31; specters,
4, 1821, 25, 35, 59, 6173, 87,
8889, 106, 118, 132, 136, 142,
143, 15253nn2527, 153nn2931,
15455n39, 166n31, 16667n33;
supplement, 51, 53, 88, 164n22;
trace, 18, 5153, 56, 82, 87, 88,
164n21, 165n26; violence, mythic
versus divine, 6973; the wager
and/or gamble, 60, 6173. See also
deconstruction
Derrida, Jacques: Archive Fever,
166n32; Differance, 57, 94;
La carte postale, 48; Ends of Man,
16, 151n23; Envois, 53, 54, Force
of Law, 60, 6173, 105, 164n23,
16667n33, 167n38; Glas, 48,
53, 65; Of Grammatology, 5253,
54, 94, 161n5, 164n22; Politics of
Friendship, 134, 14244, 166n33,
168n42; Positions, 164n22; Specters
of Marx, 1, 4, 17, 1821, 35,
37, 56, 58, 6173, 142, 148n9,
15253nn2527, 153nn2931,
1545n39, 164n24, 16667n33,
167nn3536, 168n40; Speech and
Phenomena, 94, Structure Sign
and Play, 15152n23
Descartes, Ren, 149n11
Dick, Philip K., 38
dirty realism, 2, 3, 107, 116, 122,
131, 132, 174n27, 175n33
Disneyland, 41
Eagleton, Terry, 8283
Eggers, Dave, 133
Eliot, T.S., 21
Ellis, John, 163n17
Ellison, Ralph, 150n15
Ellroy, James, 178n45
Eminem, 177n41
enlightenment, the 1, 8, 15, 47,
4951, 83, 106, 148n6, 156n42,
160nn4, 16061n5, 16667n33,
170n10; project of, 10, 23, 2426,
4445, 60, 84, 88, 102, 15960n2
196 Index
epistemes, theory of, 6, 1618,
2021, 23, 34, 59, 73. See also
modernism; postmodernism;
renewalism
Erdrich, Louise, 118
eschatology, 20, 59, 67, 152n26
Estes, Richard: Central Savings, 121
Exodus. See Moses
exorcism. See conjuration
Faulkner, William, 22
Federman, Raymond, 106, 107,
10809, 174n26, 175n30, 175
76nn3233
Fenves, Peter, 167n37
Feyerabend, Paul, 27
Fiedler, Leslie, 12, 15051n18
Fish, Stanley, 45, 161n6
Fluck, Winfried, 11922, 123, 134,
178n44, 178n45. See also deep
knowledge; surface knowledge
formalism: of modernism, 38; of
postmodernism, 123, 180n50
Foucault, Michel, 38, 47, 50, 156n43,
16061n5, 163n13; The Archeology
of Knowledge, 16; author-function,
22; discursive networks, 30;
epistemic shifts, 5, 6, 9, 12, 16,
19, 152n23, 153n33; The Order
of Things, 1617; What Is an
Author?, 154n37, 162n9
Foxworthy, Jeff, 169n4
Franzen, Jonathan, 114, 177n40
Gaddis, William, 174n27
Gannon, Todd, 113, 176n38, 178n48
Gasch, Rodolphe, 3738, 46, 49,
5155, 58, 159n1, 165n24, 165n26
Gass, William, 107, 109
Geddes, Jennifer, 3
globalization, 8, 148n6
Graff, Gerald, 13, 151n20
Granta, 2, 107
Habermas, Jrgen, 10, 32, 39, 44,
47, 51, 63, 159n2, 160n4, 161n6,
161n7, 180n50; legitimation
crisis, 2729; Legitimation Crisis,
156n45; Modern and Postmodern
Architecture, 156n44;
ModernityAn Incomplete
Project, 2427, 15556nn4243;
The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, 164n19
Hamacher, Werner, 67, 152n26
Harvey, David, 31, 39, 44, 63,
158n52, 159n2
Harvey, Irene, 50
Hassan, Ihab, 12, 15, 21, 107,
10910, 176n35
Hayles, N. Katherine, 113, 176n38,
175n45; aesthetics of ambient
emergence, 176n38
Hegel, Friedrich, 42, 46, 65, 117,
163, 166n30; Hegelianism, 16, 23,
34, 116, 155n41
Heidegger, Martin, 38, 14849n10
Hemingway, Ernest, 22, 34, 120, 121
Hess, Jared, 133
historical materialism, 18, 23
historiographic metaction, 78, 129. See
also Hutcheon, Linda; metaction
Homer, 9, 148n6
Hopper, Edward: Nighthawks, 121
Hornung, Alfred, 178n45
Howe, Irving, 1012, 14950nn1316
Howells, Christian, 57, 165n28
humanism, 4, 18, 56, 132, 163,
148n7, 149n10, 150n14, 1623n11
Hutcheon, Linda, 116, 170n11;
de-doxication, 32; The Poetics of
Postmodernism, 17980n49; The
Politics of Postmodernism, 12, 4, 14
15, 3133, 82, 98, 147n2, 150n17;
Postmodern Afterthoughts,
147n1; postmodernism versus
postmodernity, 3132
Huyssen, Andreas, 1315, 3845, 49,
15960n2, 161n5, 162n9, 170n11
ideological state apparatuses, 97
indecision, ethics of, 106, 122, 132,
138, 143. See also under Derrida,
Jacques
197 Index
individualism, 39, 112, 155n42
infrastructures, function of in
deconstruction, 5153, 56, 58,
165n26. See also Gasch, Rodolphe
Jameson, Fredric, 8, 32, 33, 113,
120; Foreword to Lyotards
The Postmodern Condition, 2728,
30, 31, 158n52; The Political
Unconscious, 30; Postmodernism,
1516, 21, 31, 3335, 147n5,
15354n35, 158nn5253, 158
59n55, 160n4; Postmodernism
and Consumer Society, 31;
return of the repressed, 4, 3132,
34; utopianism, 4, 3034, 132,
15354n35, 158n53
Jarrell, Randall, 10, 149n11
Jencks, Charles, 154n35
Johnson, Philip, 8485, 95
Johnston, John, 95
Jonze, Spike: Adaptation, 12429,
130, 13133, 136, 179n47; Being
John Malkovich, 124
Joyce, James, 38, 40, 41, 43;
Finnegans Wake, 43; Portrait of an
Artist as a Young Man, 22
Kamuf, Peggy, 71
Kaplan, Steven, 104
Kaufman, Charlie. See Jonze, Spike:
Adaptation; Being John Malkovich
Keenan, Thomas, 63
Keskinen, Mikko, 13536
Kingston, Maxine Hong, 118, 133,
178n45
Khler, Michael, 9, 148n7
Kristeva, Julia, 38, 42, 43, 160n4,
162n9; intertextuality, 30;
Revolution in Poetic Language,
3941, 160n3
Kuhn, Thomas, 27
Lacan, Jacques, 38, 42, 90, 92,
103, 158n52; Lacanian symptom,
91; The Mirror Stage, 162n9;
Lacanian Real, 171n13. See also
under iek, Slavoj
Laclau, Ernesto, 66
Le Corbusier, 21, 84
legitimation crisis. See under
Habermas, Jrgen
Letterman, David, 114
Levin, Harry, 1012
Leyner, Mark, 88, 105, 118, 132,
133, 175n32; Et Tu, Babe, 81, 87;
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist,
81, 169n9; The Tetherballs of
Bougainville, 7581, 87, 89, 91, 92,
94, 103, 134, 135, 16869nn12,
169n5, 171n15
Leypoldt, Gnter, 111, 176n36,
178n44
Liberalism, 10102, 14950n14,
16263n11
Little, William G., 8182, 8687, 88,
92, 9495, 102, 169n8
Logocentricism, 3, 10, 92, 170n11,
173n21, 176n37; deconstruction
and, 42, 5060 passim; versus logo
centrism, 8188, 90, 92, 9495,
116, 119; postmodernism as,
98102, 171n14
Lpez, Jos, 147n3
Lowell, Robert, 10
Luckhurst, Roger, 141
Lynch, David, 104, 118, 132, 175n32;
Blue Velvet, 91; Lost Highway,
8991, 94, 170n12; Mulholland Dr.,
170n12
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 16, 45, 46,
50, 51, 109, 113, 126, 128, 161n6,
164n20, 175n30; grand narratives
versus language games, 2730;
paralogism, 2829; The Postmodern
Condition, 2730, 31; 15657n47,
157n50; Postmodern Fables,
15657n47, 157n49; Rewriting
Modernity, 157n48; What Is
Postmodernism?, 28, 29
Mailer, Norman, 174n27
Malamud, Bernard, 150n15
198 Index
Mandel, Ernest, 8
Marion, Jean Luc, 168n43
Martinot, Steve, 165n28
Marx, Karl, 47, 7172; and/or
Marxism, 34, 1821, 23, 32, 33,
56, 6162, 66, 67, 72, 120, 136,
137, 152n25, 153n30, 153n32,
155n41, 157n47, 166n29, 166
67n33
mass culture, 38, 78, 87, 150n14
mass society, 11, 14950n14. See also
Howe, Irving
Mazzoro, Jerome, 10
McDermott, Ryan P., 137, 140
McGowan, John, 173n23
McLaughlin, Frank, 172n19
McLaughlin, Robert L., 11112,
11314, 116, 118, 176n37
metaction: postmodern, 97, 98,
103, 106, 11617, 12731, 175n32,
179n47, 17980n49; renewalist,
7879, 89, 103, 10506, 13637,
17576n33; versus neo-realism, 3,
10708, 11112, 11823, 174n27,
169n6, 176n36
metaphysics, 52, 58, 59, 64, 102
metarealism, 117
Milletti, Christina, 99, 100
modernism: and birth of the subject,
153n33; postmodern break with,
223, 2830, 3235, 58, 8189,
112, 118, 148nn68, 149nn11
12, 15051nn1720, 153n32,
15354n35, 154nn3839, 169
70nn1011, 174n26, 18081n50;
poststructuralism as form of,
3845, 159160n2, 160n4
modernity: as project haunting
postmodernism and
poststructuralism, 2427, 32, 39,
4445, 53, 58, 77, 78, 83, 88, 102,
117, 13132, 137, 15960nn12,
162n10, 17576n33, 18081n50.
See also Habermas, Jrgen;
Lyotard, Jean-Franois
modernization, 12, versus modernity,
15556n42; postmodern and
poststructural complicity with,
26, 3944, 84, 112, 117, 148n6,
150n14, 15960n2
Moore, Lorrie, 132
Morrison, Toni, 118, 132, 175n31,
178n45; Beloved, 75, 13742, 143;
Jazz, 137
Moses, 7273
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 132, 135, 182n56
negative theology: postmodernism
as, 82, 9596, 102, 169n8; in the
work of Sartre and Derrida, 56
58, 96, 165n26, 165n28, 168n41.
See also onto-theology
neoconservativism, 10, 26, 155n42,
156n2
neo-realism, 3, 79, 106, 10708,
11012, 11723, 134, 136, 169n6,
174nn2728, 175n31, 178n44; as
neo-(or, dirty)-realism, 3, 132
Netscape, 113
New Critics, the, 14
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 38, 47, 142,
163n13, 168n42
Norris, Christopher, 36, 44, 4546,
4955, 58, 59, 159n2, 160n4,
161n6, 163n17, 164nn1920,
165n26, 166n30
Obama, Barack, 2
OBrien, Tim, 118, 138; If I Die in
a Combat Zone, 104; In The Lake of
the Woods, 10506; The Things They
Carried, 10305, 137; 174n25
The Ofce (Gervais), 116
Olsen, Lance, 175
Olson, Charles, 910, 13, 148nn68,
14849nn1011
onto-theology: modernist project as,
21; postmodernism as, 92, 102; in
the work of Sartre and Derrida,
5758, 62
operatic realism, 109
pastiche, 85, 100, 175n31, 177
78n41
perversity: postmodernism dened
by, 89, 9294; postmodern ethics
199 Index
of, 96106 passim, 118, 128,
174n24, 18081nn5051
phenomenology: poststructuralism as
continuation of, 37, 53, 159n1
Philips, Jayne Anne, 174n27
Pinsker, Sanford, 178n44
Plato, 23, 72, 161n5
Pold, Sren, 182n55
positivism: of modernism, 81; of
postmodernism, 82, 136, 144; of
prewar liberalism, 150n14; in the
work of Derrida, 62, 71
posthistory: modernism as, 150
51n18; postmodernism as, 7, 9,
13, 16, 148n8, 151n19
post-human, the, 9, 150n15
post-ideology: deconstruction
as, 98; future to come as, 20;
postmodernism as, 13, 33, 150n15
postmodernism: as dominant
episteme, 4, 14, 19, 32, 34,
107, 112, 11314, 118, 147n5,
158n55, 16263n11; the passing
of, 16, 2223, 59, 10608, 116,
14445, 150n17; as post-modern,
910, 148nn67, 149n10; as post-
Modern, 78, 13, 148n8, 151n19;
as POSTmodern, 9, 1315, 86,
119, 130, 132, 150n15, 151n21,
170n11; versus postmodernity
(see under Hutcheon, Linda); as
residual episteme, 131, 175n32.
See also under avante garde;
deconstruction; formalism;
metaction; modernism; negative
theology; onto-theology; perversity;
positivism; posthistory; post-
ideology; solipsism; utopianism
poststructuralism, 16, 3745, 49,
5455, 5859, 156n43, 15960nn1
2, 160n4, 162nn810, 164n20
Potter, Garry, 147n3
Pound, Ezra, 21
Powers, Richard, 132
premodernism, 26, 180n50
Pynchon, Thomas, 22, 38, 87, 96,
99, 10102, 103, 150n14, 163n11,
174n27; The Crying of Lot 49,
9295; Gravitys Rainbow, 79, 94,
17071n13, Mason and Dixon,
17172n15
quasi-transcendentals, 5152, 5860,
62, 65, 67, 181n50
Rabat, Jean-Michel, 71, 166n32
Rackstraw, Lorre, 172n17, 173n21
Rajan, Tilottama, 37, 45, 159n1,
162n8, 162n10, 165n28
realism: journalistic, 174n28;
Luksian, 133; prepostmodern,
135. See also critical realism; dirty
realism; metarealism; operatic
realism
Rebein, Robert, 131, 147n3, 177n40
Reed, Peter, 97, 17273n20
Reitman, Ivan: Ghostbusters, 1
renewalism, emergent episteme
of, 4, 59, 60, 63, 80, 82, 8889,
92, 110, 118, 12224, 13233,
138, 14344, 17172n15, 175n32,
18081n50, 182n56
Robbins, Tom, 22, 101
Rock, Chris, 168n4
romanticism, 15, 151n20
Rorty, Richard, 37, 39, 45, 4852, 70,
82, 88, 95, 98, 111, 127, 150n14,
160n4, 161n6, 165n24, 166n30,
169n8; conditions of possibility,
43, 46, 48, 49, 5153, 56, 59, 70;
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,
4548, 5456, 16263nn1116;
Is Derrida a Transcendental
Philosopher?, 55, 98; liberal
irony, 4649, 53, 5557, 58, 67,
102, 16162n7, 163nn1215,
166n30; metavocabulary, 46,
59; neo-pragmatism, 45, 58;
Philosophical Papers, 165n26; as
quasi-transcendentalist, 5859, 73;
Remarks on Deconstruction and
Pragmatism, 48; Response
to Simon Critchley, 164n21;
utopianism of, 4748
Roth, Philip, 175n31
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 161n5
200 Index
Sade, Marquis de, 161n5
Salinger, J.D., 150n15
Saltzman, Arthur, 13435, 182n54
Sartre, Jean Paul, 43, 82; ens causa
sui, 57, 91, 165n27. See also under
negative theology
Schaub, Thomas, 14950n14
Seinfeld, Jerry, 115. See also under
David, Larry
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet, 19, 35,
137, 152n25, 167n33, 167n35
Shechner, Mark, 112, 116, 117,
175n32, 178n44
Simmons, Philip, 13334
Simpson, Josh, 172n19
The Simpsons (Groening), 43, 114,
177n39
solipsism: as characteristic of
postmodernism, 112, 11415, 118,
128, 135, 158n54, 179n47
Sontag, Susan, 12
Spanos, William, 149n10
spectroanalysis, 45, 23
spectrological: conditions of
postmodernism as, 33; mode of
analysis as, 46, 13, 23, 2627,
28, 3334, 59, 60, 8588, 92,
139, 154n38, 175n31, 176n37;
postmodern aporia as, 123;
postmodern failure as, 102;
transcendental lure as, 122,
17576n33
Stierstorfer, Klaus, 34, 119, 147n3,
17475n29
Strauss, Lvi, 161n5
structuralism, 37, 38, 42, 53, 58, 120,
159n1
Stuntman (Rush), 38
Styron, William, 174n27
surface knowledge, 134
Sykes, Wanda, 169n4
Tarantino, Quentin, 118, 178n45;
Pulp Fiction, 38, 41
Taylor, Mark, 104
Taylor, Mark C., 90, 92, 95, 96, 99,
102, 116, 119, 169n8; Disguring,
8188, 169n6, 16970nn1011.
See also logocentrism: versus logo
centrism
teleology, 23, 32, 34, 58, 62, 67, 101,
102, 121, 147n5
Tew, Philip, 11617
Toynbee, Arnold, 710, 13, 148n8,
151n19
Updike, John, 174n27
utopianism: in postmodernism,
8586, 94, 99, 10103, 11718,
159n54, 16667n33, 171n14,
180n50. See also under communism;
Jameson, Fredric; Rorty, Richard
Varsava, Jerry, 10102
Venturi, Robert, 154n35
Versluys, Kristiaan, 119
Victorianism, 7, 8, 15, 120
Vonnegut, Kurt, 22, 43, 96, 99,
100, 101, 103, 150n15, 172n17,
180n50, 181n51; Breakfast of
Champions, 9699, 124, 172n16,
17273nn1821; Slaughterhouse
Five, 79
Walker, Alice, 178
Wallace, David Foster, 114, 118, 132;
Innite Jest, 118
Warhol, Andy, 84; 192 One-Dollar
Bills, 85
Waynes World (Spheeris), 92
Wieczorek, Marek, 170n12
Williams, Raymond, 6, 34, 147n5
Wolfe, Tom, 2, 107, 174n28
Wolff, Tobias, 174n27
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 21, 153n35
iek, Slavoj, 89, 95, 96, 102, 104,
11617, 119, 132, 157n48; The
Art of the Ridiculous Sublime,
8993, 10203, 170n12, 180n50;
impossible Real, 9092, 117,
132; Lacanian sublime, 170n12;
The Sublime Object of Ideology, 89;
symbolic order, 9091, 95, 170n12.
See also perversity
Zola, mile, 174n28
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LITERARY CRITICISM