The Postmodern Turn On The Enlightenment

The Postmodern Turn on(:) the Enlightenment

Author(s): Amy J. Elias

Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 533-558
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208771
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AMY J. ELIAS
The Postmodern Turn on(:) the En
-T _he eighteenth-century Enlightenment

derstood as the birth time of late modern
of Reason" heralded by the 1687 publi
Newton's Principia and consolidating a
ence of nature as mathematical and mechanical. A
ferentiating the postmodern from the moder
three contemporary angles of vision concern
modernity: (1) a position, either radical or nostal
modernity from the position of a desired premo
tion that attempts to vindicate modernity aga
and (3) a position that attempts an internal (po
of key features of modernity.1 In view of this a
of the postmodern boundary in current theor
can it mean when this historical period becom
temporary fiction? Is it significant that a growi
temporary "eighteenth-century historical nove
precisely the time when debates about postmod
modernity are at their height?
Of course, Hollywood historical romance films a
gerous Liaisons, Orlando, The Last of the Mohican
splashed about in an eighteenth-century settin
attempts to uncover the "sins of modernity" are
precisely by its desire to remember (re-memb
1. See Dallmayr 18-19 for a similar breakdown concerning c
on modernity.
Contemporary Literature XXXVII, 4 0010-7484/96/0004-

? 1996 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsi
534 * CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
ment, to reconstruct it in order to iden

rors. If modernity is defined as detectio
reconstruct, and name the hidden or
films in a historical genre that purport t
century Enlightenment instead easily
historical detection and are thus particip
they supposedly review. Likewise, th
mance novel is almost by definition con
nity. Implicitly or explicitly, it searches
principle, within historical process; the
torical detection and reconstruction (s
But what about contemporary novels s
Afterlife of George Cartwright, Frances
Kurzweil's A Case of Curiosities, Lawren
tionary, J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Peter Ackro
ton, Steve Erickson's Arc d'X, Patrick Sii
a Murderer, Brian O'Doherty's The Stran
and Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover: A
the most provocative of contemporary
teenth century as their setting.3 Th
Callinicos argues is the central questi
"Was the Enlightenment a Good Thin
ernism?" 97).
The historical novels named above construct the same contin-
uum of attitudes toward the Enlightenment as does the fractured
debate within theory. However, in the best of these novels, the
eighteenth century is constructed by neither the simulated liberal-
ism of Hollywood nor the conservative nostalgia of Sir Walter
Scott, but rather is confronted by a politics of the postmodern. I
would argue that in all of these novels, the Enlightenment be-
2. This essay assumes a definition of modernity in keeping with that stated by Jiirgen
Habermas in "Modernity: An Incomplete Project" and elsewhere: modernity is a cultural
product of the Western Enlightenment that has undergone the Weberian process of "ra-
tionalization" and differentiation. For other succinct definitions of modernity, see
Dallmayr 17; and Lash, "Discourse or Figure?"
3. One might also include here Simon Schama's novel Dead Certainties (Unwarranted
Speculations), an important section of which is set between 1759 and 1771, and Malcolm
Bosse's The Vast Memory of Love. Patrick Siiskind's novel cited here is the translated ver-
sion of Das Parfum.
ELIAS ? 535
comes redefined as performative spa

rate to say performative history
"real" Enlightenment is always alrea
ation and reenactment becomes his
ment, a continual restaging and r
century Europe and the United Sta
does the eighteenth century becom
contemporary novels?
Two aspects of eighteenth-centu
what is called the "heroic model" of
tant to these novels and to answerin
that scientific method in the Age of
solely by the search for truth and th
tion of universally applicable, gene
heroic science offered transcenden
In other words, rational Man could e
covering and articulating universal t
that "Enlightenment thinkers . . . s
tion that the arts and sciences would
natural forces but also understandin
moral progress, the justice of instit
human beings" ("Modernity" 9).
Novels about the eighteenth cent
seem to rehearse theoretical debate
grow out of postmodern anxieties
mism offered by heroic science. T
need to differentiate the modern fr
merely (as some cynics would have i
lish new articles in a publish-or-p
psyche in all arenas seems compelled
past as Other in order to construct,
to confront the promise of Enligh
that might be the best definition of
rooted in a number of cultural sou
berto Eco, Linda Hutcheon, Charles J
tained, postmodernism is obsessed
experimentalism and metafiction,
and race and gender discourses, fi
ute to this obsession. Particularly in t

anxiety can create both a skewed hist
mental novel form. The postmodern
galvanize these anxieties into symbo
Europe and the United States are c
preapocalypse landscapes where col
thetics, patriarchy, and the optimism
the Western tree of knowledge; once
world in contradictory and ambiguo
explosion of irrationality, factionalism
technocracy, dehumanization, and oth
capitalist societies, the postmodern s
to the Enlightenment and questions
gifts. While these novels construct th
ways akin to theory's three construct
nity, all also rewrite the eighteenth c
question of history and makes room f
one that is somewhat defensive, some
ties to Enlightenment modernity. W
these novels as the postmodern confr
Some of these novels nostalgically at
of Enlightenment rationalism, the pla
tradicts itself, or encounters static fr
discourse; implicit in this position is a
lightened" postmodern stance and a de
ern from the modern or underscore a
the premodern past. Others of thes
support for an unfinished modern pr
call postmodernist historical novels, in
critique of modernity they imply.5 As
4. Thus these novels pose different questions

for instance, take the nineteenth century as their
lonial fictions would not see the Enlightenment a
ernist sensibilities might do so. This might imply
novels I've identified in this article are written by
See Tiffin for an extended discussion of this distinction.
5. My distinction between "postmodern" and "postmodernist" has precedence in

numerous discussions of postmodernism. I use "postmodern" here to refer to cultural/
economic postmodernism, the state of late capitalism in contemporary first world soci-
E LI AS ? 537
the historical romance tradition, these post

els incorporate a revisionary foregrounding
the modern project of historical detectio
confront their own participation in the
membering the past.6
Longing for Premodernity

In The Illusion of the End, Jean Baudrillard
an Enlightenment conception of history th
ing and was not pure simulation (7). Baudri
ritual time that opposes linear, modern
indicative of a pre-Enlightenment (or even
timent than an Enlightenment one. The
losophes battled precisely this pre-Newto
time, which took the form of Christian ca
Baudrillard's postmodern longing for his
nostalgia for a pre-Western past conceived
implicit historical perspective is echoed
John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Ca
likewise nostalgic for a premodern, pastora
nal past. In this novel, aboriginal people
Other, familiar to Western readers as the s
ing Indian" that nuanced accounts of ninete
explorers. Cartwright is an entrepreneur f
declining fortunes; his financial schemes le
company that will eventually plunder Lab
spread of disease among the Inuit peopl
slave the remaining population. The postmo
is that Cartwright writes his first-person
(presumably readers of his journal) after his
eties diagnosed by Fredric Jameson and others. I use "p

kind of literary art emerging especially in the United
incorporating the formal experimentation discussed b
Callinicos, "Reactionary Postmodernism?" 100-101; Lyo
and Cascardi 29 for a clear distinction between these
6. This is related to, but ultimately different from,
postmodernist literature as "historiographic metafiction"
in a limbo/purgatory that physically

ily estate. Cartwright ends his journal
eaten by a bear symbolizing, one su
venge for his plundering of their land
This novel attacks eighteenth-cent
World and constructs the Inuit as in
cold and potentially hostile) norther
nostalgia for a premodern past, one
solace and ontological stability to a fr
consciousness. Thus this novel is
sionings of the eighteenth century: C
of the present in his journal, and like
as historical detectives, reconstructing
tery of Cartwright's dilemma, whi
"sins" of the age. Finally, however, all
based on purely Western ethical st
digms: Cartwright is in purgatory unt
agent of justice takes the form of
wronged. Even though Steffler attem
modernity and elevate premodern v
a predictable and romanticized Other w
physics. The novel may long for pre
wood histories) remains caught within
attempts to refute.
Vindicating the Modern

In contrast to Steffler's novel, others o
historical novels recuperate the notion
a player in an eighteenth-century cult
onward included battles between the p
peasant beliefs-battles pitting reaso
isms and institutionalized superstition
Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes had
of Galileo; in 1751, Diderot could des
"as an eclectic, a skeptic and investiga
and supported the new "Republic of Le
teenth century, the heroic model of s
E LI A S 539
from some quarters (Appleby et al.

day's defenders of Enlightenment r
promulgating "postmodernism" tend
ment itself was a revolutionary and p
tacking the theories of Jean-FranS
writes, " 'Incredulity towards meta
least as old as the Enlightenment whic
narratives in the first place" (Against
in "Modernity-An Incomplete Projec
that instead of giving up modernity a
we should learn from the mistakes o
which have tried to negate modern
modernity has not yet been fulfilled"
battle in theory has been waged bet
ists defending Enlightenment metaph
ing or outmoding it.8 A Habermasian
recent historical novels: Frances Sherwood's Vindication, Allen
Kurzweil's A Case of Curiosities, and Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriere's
Dictionary.
At first glance, it might seem odd to place Sherwood's novel in
this kind of category. A novel that has provoked heated discussion
among Wollstonecraft scholars, Sherwood's Vindication presents
Wollstonecraft as a protagonist who is a thwarted philosopher, a
jilted and abused lover, a stifled revolutionary. Publicly, she at-
tempts to participate in the discourse of the philosophes but is only
exoticized in that arena; privately, she turns to male lovers who anni-
hilate her sense of self. During the course of her life, Wollstone-
craft's reason does not save her or allow her to rise above these
scarring sexual battles. The two children she bears are burdens: the
7. For other defenses of modernity and discussions of the moderity/postmodernit

debate, see Arac xv-xx; Best and Kellner 246-55, 234-36; and Honneth.
8. A full citation of references for discussions of this Habermasian/Lyotardian opp
sition would be too cumbersome here. See as examples Burger; Callinicos, Against Pos
modernism; Cascardi; Dallmayr; Habermas, "Neoconservative Culture Criticism"; Jay
Langford; Nagl; and Rorty. In Postmodernism: The New Classicism in Art and Architectur
Charles Jencks posits a different relation between postmodernism and eighteent
century aesthetics: working within the domain of architecture, Jencks defines postmod
ernism as a return to classicism, thus correlating postmodernist aesthetics with those of
past neoclassicisms.
540 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
first she throws against a wall in a f

tion, and the second kills her in ch
cide, and even at that she fails. It s
glum one: that the Age of Reason
epistemology from which there
alternative-a system that even the
think, undermine, or join. This is
Certainly the lives of intellectu
were stifled by a hegemonic patri
this novel, however, is not only tha
Wollstonecraft's documented biogra
(in the manner of a Hollywood re-m
genial to the very episteme she seem
justifies and vindicates the projec
This novel might give readers in
eighteenth-century intellectual w
idea that patriarchy is inescapable
matic and seamless, without "post
contention. If that is Sherwood's po
the novel as sympathetic to anythin
However, Sherwood's novel calls on
enment, an Age of Reason that mig
bodies and intellects. The novel ju
professed by the philosophes and
century women's lives to show that
the former. In consequence, what is
the basic tenets underlying Enligh
their real-world applications. In o
that the project of modernity has n
to the novel's narrating voice, Woll
cal writing, A Vindication of the Rig
extension of the Enlightenment bel
9. Ironically, a novel such as Sherwood's-w

cited by Publishers Weekly as one of the twen
Coetzee's Foe has been critically censored beca
by Sherwood and by Coetzee's critics such
project of modernity must be salvaged at all co
cost of literary innovation.
E LI A S 541
rights of woman. She suggested tha

be reasonable, and become reasonable
so that all of society might be happier
they would be sensualists and women
of logic, the narrating voice upholds t
cal epistemology of discourse and its d
ence. Moreover, with a causal logic
wince, Sherwood implies that Wollston
results from her childhood abuse-the
with emotional trauma and unreaso
digm of causality underlying (a gend
More playful and self-reflexive th
rence Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary
century as the seedbed of nineteenth
and the will to power that inherently
nist of the novel, John Lempriere, live
a classical scholar. Throughout the bo
activities in London: finishing his di
and unraveling the mystery of his fam
India Company. As Lempriere digs deep
father's papers, he uncovers a centur
the nine original investors in the Ea
uncovers baroque plots, treachery,
India Company's history, for he uncov
trayal of the people of Rochelle in 162
Moreover, the Company hatches a p
claim to Company shareholdings by
sane: they re-create scenes of death fr
and implicate him in the murders.
But though the plots of this novel ar
sort themselves out in the end; even t
holds Enlightenment values of causal
finally "solving the mystery" of the C
addition, readers should find the prota
pathetic character: he is a good and inn
ship, his dictionary project, and his pe
the neoclassical ethics and aesthetic
novel consistently implies that a war
portantly in the rise of monopoly cap

chaos and tragedy in Lempriere's wo
become perverted into a ruthless will
experimentation with democratic
antihumanist drive for profit; the em
has been corrupted to dehumanizing cy
novel, what causes social entropy is th
gated by the eighteenth-century phi
Likewise, in Allen Kurzweil's brilliant
it is the French Terror (Revolution)
grace offered by heroic science. In
Tournay, Claude Page had become th
lapsed cleric and a philosophe of grea
embitterment embodies the eighteen
the Church and practitioners of th
Claude leaves the Abbe's tutelage, he
Parisian pornographers, adulterers,
remains true to his project: to desig
chanical novelty ever produced. His
Gentleman-is an automaton that emb
cation of scientific learning (and ar
eighteenth-century France. The mach
man's talking head, also symbolicall
edged and unacknowledged values of
ity, Cartesian mind/body dualism, p
and universalizing hierarchies of sta
French Revolution, the "Turkish" au
words "Vive le Roi.") But this novel i
of giving up modernity and its proj
learn from the mistakes of those extr
tried to negate modernity" (Haberma
reactionary Church fundamentalism
ary fanaticism of the Terror destroy h
moral progress in this world. Interes
separates the two characteristic imp
democratic and revolutionary politica
alism of deistic philosophy and her
impulses of the age. The fact that the F
E LI A S * 543
lightenment political philosophy is ignored

ment is instead shown to run counter to th
ence, embodied most dramatically in the de
for knowledge for its own sake. Like a s
Page attempts to create, and eventually d
chine symbolically in the image of man. Th
as is Claude, because of the hysteria and
Curiously, all three novels-Vindication,
and A Case of Curiosities-imply that positio
Enlightenment artist/scholar suffers (and h
ened) at least to some degree because of the
the mindless violence of the upsurging m
craft lives in Paris during the great insurr
thy with the revolution around her; she hi
an absent aristocratic friend. The revolution
and chances of gaining access to the philoso
Lempriere is a classics scholar who seeks to
production of a Johnsonian scholarly di
scholarship is interrupted by periods of u
by a frenzied revolutionary named Farina
other quest-that of sorting out his own f
interrupted by the present-day Cabbala
also gained their power in a time of social r
in A Case of Curiosities is a secularized Frenc
cratic class and committed to esoteric lear
apprenticeship to him is complete, Claude
most beautiful and sophisticated automa
thwarted by the totalitarian repression of
Are these similarities significant? What
ized in this presentation of modernity? I
tone in these novels, a reaction against so
democracy somehow born out of a need to
modernity? To ask these questions is to
dora's box, where it may be necessary to
traditional left and neoleftist positions i
Certainly one could say, with Christophe
thetic is notoriously a realm of mystifi
a domain that has often been colonise
logues .... aesthetics is a topic wort

much on account of its intrinsic val
son of its having served so often as
political interests were obliquely o
three protagonists of these novels are
mately, they define their roles simila
thetics. (Even Wollstonecraft consi
than a "political theorist" in Sherw
these novels of a sullied "real world
tially in the French Revolution) to
worlds of philosophy and literature
ment and taste are prized) implies an
the aesthetic.10 In tension with this p
of historicity itself, the fact that if
fictional presentations of eighteent
order to defend the project of mod
thetic elitism or life in the abstract-b
science and political theory worked
real world politics and social impro
interesting in these novels is that the
tionings in their seeming defense o
of modernity in theory often argue t
will engender fatuous relativism an
these novels imply that modernity's
the possibility of aesthetic production
novels raise questions about what p
thetic is necessary in order to defend
The Immanent Critique

In a now famous formulation, Jean
that postmodernism imposes a "sev
thought of the Enlightenment, on th
tory and of a subject" (Postmodern Condi
10. Whether this investment moves in the direc

too thorny an issue to raise here. The Frankfurt
aesthetics as a potentially socially redemptive ac
and aesthetics.
E LI A S 545
ern Condition Lyotard pronounces tha

seded by postmodernism, his aesthe
locates the postmodern within modern
stitutionally and ceaselessly pregnant
human 25).11
To outline what Lyotard means by this fetal "postmodernism" is
too large a task for this discussion and also would partially cancel
Lyotard's project, since in his writing he attempts to avoid consis-
tency as the hobgoblin of reason allied with power. But it is this
second location of the postmodern within the modern that has rele-
vance to a third group of contemporary "eighteenth- century" nov-
els. The novels in a third group earn the title "postmodernist" not
because they are simply produced now, in a postmodern age, but
because they describe those elements out of the control of Cartesian
reason and present the Enlightenment as a historical referential
frame that contains within itself the Lyotardian postmodern-the
unimaginable, the unrepresentable, the unsaid.
In other words, these novels emphasize the Enlightenment as a
historical site of the Lyotardian postmodern event. To Lyotard,
representation can only oppose or be complicitous with the hier-
archizing will to power that defines modernity.12 (This is the prob-
lem with Hollywood's represented Enlightenment mentioned
earlier.) To oppose this (de)limiting activity of modern representa-
tion requires a thinking beyond, within, between representation.
It requires a "drifting" (Inhuman 74). Lyotard implies that the
postmodern "event" lies in this space between and within repre-
sentation; it is an occurrence within time-space, but one that
changes historical reference from that time forward.13 The post-
11. Lyotard continues: "neither modernity nor so-called postmodernity can be identi-
fied and defined as clearly circumscribed historical entities, of which the latter would
always come 'after' the former. Rather we have to say that the postmodern is always
implied in the modern" (Inhuman 25). For a discussion of Lyotard on modernity, see Best
and Kellner; and Lash, "Discourse or Figure?"
12. See Burger 73-93 for a succinct discussion of Lyotard's postmodernism. I am
aware that Lyotard is here rewriting the Enlightenment to some extent by identifying as
its central trait a "will to power" more characteristic of nineteenth-century European
imperialism, a trait that was incipient in Enlightenment thought.
13. See The Differend and Discours, figure for Lyotard's own descriptive discussions of
these terms. Bill Readings defines the "event" as "the fact or case that something hap-
pens, after which nothing will ever be the same again. The event disrupts any pre-
modern event-the occurrence un

occurs within modern history as
Lyotard's examples of such an even
which he claims is outside discursive laws of its time. While the
novels of the two groups discussed above predicate their project

on a representation of Enlightenment epistemology, and may b
thus vulnerable to representation's self-contradictions, the post
modernist novels of this last group all contain and foreground
the postmodern Enlightenment event-that which is un(re)pre-
sentable and is enmeshed with the modern.
Fully developed close readings of these texts are beyond the

scope of this discussion; some of these books, such as Coetzee's
Foe, have generated a substantial amount of critical commentary.
However, it is possible to identify common ways that these post-
modernist novels construct the Enlightenment as a metonym of
modernity in the sense discussed above: (1) they foreground a
"postmodern" event, an unrepresentable or unsaid space within
the rational context of the Enlightenment moment; and (2) they
symptomatically locate this event within the figural rather than the
discursive.
The foregrounding of a postmodern event within these historical

novels takes a number of forms. Each of them is centered on an
occurrence that jars with its Enlightenment context, that exceed

the parameters of Western logic and reason that heroic science
would construct as cognitive boundaries for apprehending the real.
In Arc d'X and Foe, this event is manifested in the appearance of th
Other. In Hawksmoor, Perfume, Chatterton, and The Strange Case of
Mademoiselle P., this event takes the form of the occult or the crimina
that remains unrecognized, unspoken, and/or inexplicable within
the framework of heroic science. In The Volcano Lover the event is
revolution.14
existing referential frame within which it might be represented or understood. The

eventhood of the event is the radical singularity of happening, the 'it happens' as distinct
from the sense of 'what is happening.' It leaves us without criteria and requires indetermi-
nate judgment" (xxxi).
14. Readings's discussion (56) has made me aware that identifying events in novels
somewhat distorts Lyotard's philosophy for the sake of literary application by account-
ing for an event's "meaning" by relocating it within discourse.
ELIAS ? 547
These events are located within the

plicates and to some extent inhabits
simply oppose discourse, because the
ating according to principles of opp
of discourse itself. According to B
discourse to a radical heterogenei
which cannot be rationalized or subs
sentation" (4).15 This figuration con
ern in these novels and signals th
within the modern. But what politic
in this construction of the Enlighte
In two of these novels, it is the
colonialist space that lies outside
and out of Reason's control. In his novel Foe, Coetzee retells the
Daniel Defoe story Robinson Crusoe, interjects plot lines from De-
foe's Roxana and centralizes a woman character while relegating
the Crusoe character to the background, and makes Defoe himself
(in the abbreviated patronymic "Foe") one of the central characters
of the book.16 Critics have recently focused on Friday, the black
servant of Cruso, who in Coetzee's retelling is a mute who accom-
panies the castaway Susan Barton back to England after her rescue
from the island. However, Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran
have suggested most admirably what I would argue is the crucial
interpretation of this character: Friday is the figure of the unrep-
resentable, the unspeakable, and the unsaid latent within Enlight-
enment metaphysics. Unlike The Afterlife of George Cartwright,
which unproblematically situates a knowable Other outside the
hegemonic discourse of modernity, in Foe Coetzee's Friday is that
which is, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's words, "wholly Other"
and resistant to modern Western understanding. The famous au-
thor Foe, pondering the puzzle of Friday, says to Susan, "In every
story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word un-
spoken, I believe. Till we have spoken the unspoken we have not
come to the heart of the story" (141). Foe's perspective is that of
15. See Lash, "Discourse" 313-14 for a different definition of the discursive and the
figural.
16. Coetzee spells the name of his castaway "Cruso," distinguishing his from Defoe's
Crusoe.
548 ? CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
heroic science, which assumes a know

"speaking the unspoken" is the moder
will to power at the heart of this agend
silence speak, as well as the silence sur
phasis added). However, Friday refus
side of language, symbolically mute to e
Susan Barton, whose attempts to teach
derstood as attempts to "fathom" Friday
tion. Even she realizes this: "If he was n
less not the helpless captive of my de
How did he differ from one of the w
bring back with them, in a cargo of par
indigo and skins of panthers, to show t
Americas?" (150-51). Lyotard insists th
is always a figural other and, accordin
sive is always necessarily interwoven
versa, despite the fact that the discur
sentation or full understanding rests
urality" (4-5). In Foe, Foe and Susan p
while Friday-whose communication co
marching eyes-inhabits the repressed
is the postmodern haunting, drifting
discourse.
Steve Erickson's brilliant novel Arc d'X begins with a figure that
resonates throughout the rest of the text and-since the novel
takes place in at least six different historical time dimensions-all
of history: a black slave named Evelyn burning on a pyre because
she killed the white Virginian Jacob Pollroot who owned and re-
peatedly debased her. Her ashes, figuratively, smudge young
Thomas Jefferson's fingers and choke his breathing and imagina-
tion. Evelyn's image is reborn in Sally Hemings, mistress to the
older, widower Jefferson. Sally is thrice colonized-first as a colo-
nial within former British territories, second as a black slave, third
as a black woman who is raped and then kept as mistress by her
owner.17 The Enlightenment scholar who ironically campaigns
against slaveholding and is the darling of revolutionary French
17. For discussions of women as colonized subjects, see Petersen and Rutherford.
E LI A S 549
freedom fighters, Jefferson is haunt

his reason and rhetorical triumphs:
I've invented something. As the germ of co

best and wildest and most elusive of my
halfcrazed by a love of justice .... But I k
know the flaw is of me. Just as the whit
inspiration that made it, so the same ink is
extinction. The signature is my own. I've
America.
(Erickson 46)
In this quotation, "Jefferson" posits that America is born of male

lusts, logocentric epistemology, and aesthetic idealism. But "Amer-
ica" is flawed because it is built on a lie of human independence,
defined by a man who cannot free his own slaves. "America" is, to
some extent, Sally herself. (Importantly, "America" becomes the
word that Sally, reincarnated in different futures, cannot verbal-
ize.) The tragic knowledge that Jefferson intuits is that like the
Saussurean sign, Sally and "America" are two sides of a sheet of
paper, in this case the Declaration of Independence; one goes with
the other, even though the En/light/eners have seemingly erased
her dark presence. As the unspoken, she is also unspeakable. To
Jefferson, Sally's womanhood and blackness are essential to her
dehumanization and her attraction:
It thrilled him, the possession of her. He only wished she were so black as
not to have a face at all. He only wished she was so black that his ejacula-
tion might be the only white squiggle across the void of his heart. When
he opened her, the smoke [of Evelyn's burning] rushed out of her in a
cloud and filled the room. It thrilled him, not to be a saint for once, not to
be a champion. Not to bear, for once, the responsibility of something
noble or good.
(25)
Thus to Jefferson, Sally is both the "unspeakable" (that is, horrify-

ing and sinful) side of himself and the unspeakable Sadean thrill of
transgression. But Sally is also "unspeakable" in the sense that she
owns her own voice and will not be spoken by others, like Friday
in Coetzee's novel. Her places of liberation in different historical
times (the Rue d'X in revolutionary Paris, the apocalyptic X-Day
which marks the end of linear time) a

realm of signification-marked as chi
also denials of representation. The le
colm X took on in history to deny h
discourse-appears in all of the time f
ica" in all time and all dimensions i
able blackness, and the X places wh
esque "zones" (called such in the nov
broken dream of the American lands
the spot in this novel-the spot of gr
be erased, the palimpsest of America
body, the "figure" of American histor
While in Hawksmoor, Chatterton, The St
and Perfume the event takes the form
that remains outside the organizing
each novel constructs its own figuratio
In Hawksmoor, the architect Nicholas
of churches, each consecrated by a m
occult religion. Like Sally Heming
churches transcend historical time an
pear as the site of murders in the twe
Hawksmoor, a Scotland Yard detective,
of heroic science are undermined by t
ern occultism, and Cartesian subjectivi
novel begin to blend and merge into on
not a slave of Geometricall Beauty,
Sollemn and Awefull" (6). And yet Dy
if it were not for the Enlightenment s
their commission.
Moreover, in scenes illustrating how plague sweeps London at

this time, the novel implies that the disease and the class poverty
that breeds it are the underbelly of the Royal Academy and the
eighteenth-century upper classes, and the heroic science that both
support. Dyer's occultism reverses heroic science's proffered tran-
scendence and makes of it an occult descent into the underworld;
the trips are but mirror images of one another. Hawksmoor finally
18. For discussions of this novel, see Lee 66-74 and Finney 246-49.
E LI AS * 551
does not vindicate or deny the modern, bu

ure of Dyer's churches implies that Dyer
control of Cartesian reason because it is the subconscious libidinal
impulse beneath it.
Patrick Stiskind's novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer also im-
plies that Enlightenment rationalism and the Sadean or occult im-
pulse are close relatives. The central character, Jean-Baptiste Gre-
nouille, like Dyer was an orphan of the lower classes, and like Dyer
he is associated throughout his life with evil and the supernatural
(for instance, he has no body scent). And like Dyer, Grenouille is a
kind of Enlightenment antihero. Using his olfactory gifts and the
deductive processes of scientific method, he will strive to become
the greatest perfumer of all time by isolating the scent of virgin girls,
whom he kills to possess. After killing his first victim, he erects a
system, a "catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differenti-
ated, the hierarchy ever clearer. And soon he could begin to erect
the first carefully planned structures of odor" (51). His nose is "ana-
lytical and visionary" (111), and as an apprentice at Giuseppe
Baldini's perfumery he learns the chemistry of perfumes to comple-
ment his own natural gifts of perception.
Grenouille is also a Sadean aesthete, motivated only by his own
pleasure and completely devoid of conscience. His Sadean and ra-
tional sides are complementary. His strongest desire, however, is to
have scent himself, and this is not ever to be: "And though his per-
fume might allow him to appear before the world as a god-if he
could not smell himself and thus never know who he was, to hell
with it, with the world, with himself, with his perfume" (306). After
this revelation, Grenouille kills himself by sprinkling himself with
the scent of virgins and-in a scene unmistakably echoing the myth
of Actaeon and also the ritual eating of the god-is ripped apart and
eaten by a crowd maddened by the perfume's smell. The maxim
"Know thyself"-which is at the heart of Western subjectivity-is
impossible for Grenouille and a punishable crime against Enlighten-
ment rationality. He stands outside even his own cognitive appre-
hension.19 Yet his transgression also confers upon him mythic stat-
19. See Lash and Friedman, "Introduction" for a discussion of modernity and
subjectivity.
ure, the obverse value of Cartesian r

end Grenouille enters into the realm
nality and death become the unspe
torical membrane.20
Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton and Brian O'Doherty's The Strange

Case of Mademoiselle P. deal with a less sinister occultism and crimi-
nality. In Chatterton, a portrait becomes the figure within and out-
side of history-perhaps a forgery, perhaps an icon bearing the
spirit of the poet Thomas Chatterton. Enlightenment rationalism
is opposed in the novel by the occultism of the portrait and the
romanticism of three time frames-that of Chatterton's own eigh-
teenth century, that of 1856, and that of the twentieth century. In
The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P., a young, blind, and hysterical
girl named Marie Therese Paradies becomes the figure for that
which eludes heroic science, and "occultism" takes the form of
the science of hypnosis practiced by the protagonist Dr. Franz
Anton Mesmer in eighteenth-century Vienna. "I have abandoned
the logic of science," writes Mesmer in his journal, "which can
only reflect its own assumptions and confirm its own methods. I
am convinced (though I am a scientist) that we can learn from
oracles and sybils and mountebanks, who live in a twilight that
extends beyond the present into past and future. I do not mock
seers and fortune-tellers. But these researches have their darker
side. ... I have gone beyond science in these later years" (171)
Mesmer is on the way to curing Marie Paradies of her hysterica
blindness when the girl is removed from his care by her brutal
father and returned to her dysfunctional family. Her memory
haunts Mesmer for the rest of his life, for he can only intuit, not
20. I came late upon Richard T. Gray's singular study of Das Parfum and recommend it
as a central treatment of Suiskind's novel. Gray notes the combination of the "gifted and
abominable" in Enlightenment notions of genius: "by projecting the career of Grenouille,
the abominable olfactory genius with no scent of his own, onto the historical backdrop of
the Enlightenment, Siiskind can uncover certain 'deep historical' practices and epistemi
routines inherent in the culture of the period" (492). Gray's discussion elucidates how
Grenouille is driven by "a passion for systematic knowledge"; he writes, "In Das Parfum
Siiskind ... exposes the destructive impulse inherent in Enlightenment metaphysics by
examining its operation in the domain of aesthetics" (503). This is a claim parallel to my
own about "postmodernist eighteenth-century novels," though Gray pursues this claim
in a different way.
E LI A S 553
comprehend, her affliction. Paradi

which cannot be rationalized; like th
royd's novel, she embodies the "non
outside of discourse-even representa
trait finally self-destructs. Like th
royd's novel, Marie can be observed bu
cannot articulate her own vision. To
and the portrait become figures in
Coetzee's novel, they are silent sign
monic control of reasonable discourse.
Unlike these novels in which the figured postmodern event takes

the form of the occult or criminal, in Susan Sontag's complex novel
The Volcano Lover the event is revolution. The novel specifically fig-
ures this event in the physical environment, correlating the erup-
tion of Vesuvius with the eruption of violence during the French
Terror: "The lava of the revolution was flowing, the Terror was just
reaching its climax-and in June 1794, nature rhyming with history,
Vesuvius erupted" (185). The figure of Vesuvius becomes through-
out this novel everything that stands outside Enlightenment logic
and representation-the elemental and primitive, spectacle, pas-
sion, natural catastrophe, and, most importantly, the blurring of
definitional (including gender) boundaries:
It's the mouth of a volcano. Yes, mouth; and lava tongue. A body, a mon-
strous living body, both male and female. It emits, ejects. It is also an
interior, an abyss. Something alive, that can die. Something inert that
becomes agitated, now and then. Existing only intermittently. A constant
menace. If predictable, usually not predicted. Capricious, untameable,
malodorous. Is that what's meant by the primitive?
(5-6)
The volcano and the Revolution both erupt according to their own
logic and explosive power; both are linked to passionate emotion in
the novel; and both cause physical and social spaces to overturn,
transmute, and self-destruct. As such, the volcano becomes the per-
fect figuration of the French Revolution, which Lyotard has specifi-
cally cited as an example of a historical event that evades discourse
and historical representation.
In all seven of these novels, the postmodern is defined as the
event which erupts unspeakably from

modern is figured significantly as Othe
tion. On the one hand, it would be eas
these figurations the postmodernist sen
itself as transgressor against the symbo
context, the postmodernist appropriat
stance, the Kerouacian appropriation
identified symbol-becomes suspect as
colonial domination. From a different
postmodernist figuration signals someth
seven books have in common is a nega
thetic, a portrayal of ineffectual or imp
trast to Vindication, Lempriere's Dictiona
which validate the aesthetic agains
political arena, in these seven novels t
cursive mode is elevated above the spe
of the books present artist/thinker figu
colonizing, or transgressively evil. Effec
tural forces or social institutions, as it is
in these seven novels there is no posit
course that can thwart or oppose those,
in The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P., w
a cognitive philosopher who opposes t
in the bourgeois family, the aestheti
Strongly implied throughout the book i
Marie's blindness worked not because
new and correct theory of mind, but
Marie form a sexual and spiritual bond
the girl for the scarring psychological h
sion is what is redemptive.
Similarly, it is important how the Fren
muted in these novels: while in the earlie
tion is presented as chaotic Terror that
mines the productions of aesthetic Reaso
novels the Revolution becomes a liberato
combats aristocratic aesthetic decadence.
instance, the Revolution and Napoleon
E LI A S 555
sion, disruptive but also breathing l

characteristic of the aristocratic cla
and his obsession with art collection
ences this idea: on the one hand, i
canic, passionate lover; but at the sam
noes" is the Cavaliere, who is drawn
volcano even beyond his appreciati
What is valorized, even implicitly
tion over order, life over aesthetic
one point in Arc d'X, Sally Hemings
the streets of Paris at precisely the
der siege; she seemingly must cho
otic, and perhaps dangerous freedom
domestic slavery of her position a
On the side of Reason and the repre
are slavery, drudgery, and freedom
the Terror is chaotic and terrifying
So what political consciousness is
sentation of the Enlightenment in t
els? These postmodern novels, left
violent hierarchies but seem unab
wholesale; a transgressive but not
sciousness can be the only result. W
is a suspicion of aestheticism attri
chies of value, a suspicion in keepi
of the postmodern as nonrepresenta
tion. Ironically, the very aestheticis
theoretical debates (but himself d
aligned with Enlightenment epistem
postmodern that Lyotard provides s
these "experimental" or postmoder
ask of these novels, then, a provoc
support Larry L. Langford's conte
challenge to the Enlightenment,
tated by it and exists not as an exte
the ongoing dialectic that Enlighten
self" (26)? These fictions illustrate at
modernist interrogation of Origin lea

originating source in Enlightenment e
Does the instability of theoretical def

any relation to contemporary fiction's
lightenment? What does the historica
ern eighteenth-century" novels add
viewed as a group, these contempor
theoretical approaches to the Enligh
stood as the latest phase of moderni
cally, these novels can validate or ch
mological and social values, but their
this activity but also in their implicit
their position concerning the aesthe
University of Alabama a
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The Postmodern Turn On The Enlightenment

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The Postmodern Turn on(:) the Enlightenment

Author(s): Amy J. Elias

The Postmodern Turn on(:) the En

-T _he eighteenth-century Enlightenment

Contemporary Literature XXXVII, 4 0010-7484/96/0004-

ment, to reconstruct it in order to iden

comes redefined as performative spa

ute to this obsession. Particularly in t

4. Thus these novels pose different questions

5. My distinction between "postmodern" and "postmodernist" has precedence in

the historical romance tradition, these post

Longing for Premodernity

eties diagnosed by Fredric Jameson and others. I use "p

in a limbo/purgatory that physically

Vindicating the Modern

from some quarters (Appleby et al.

7. For other defenses of modernity and discussions of the moderity/postmodernit

first she throws against a wall in a f

9. Ironically, a novel such as Sherwood's-w

rights of woman. She suggested tha

portantly in the rise of monopoly cap

lightenment political philosophy is ignored

logues .... aesthetics is a topic wort

The Immanent Critique

10. Whether this investment moves in the direc

ern Condition Lyotard pronounces tha

modern event-the occurrence un

novels of the two groups discussed above predicate their project

Fully developed close readings of these texts are beyond the

The foregrounding of a postmodern event within these historical

occurrence that jars with its Enlightenment context, that exceed

existing referential frame within which it might be represented or understood. The

These events are located within the

heroic science, which assumes a know

freedom fighters, Jefferson is haunt

I've invented something. As the germ of co

In this quotation, "Jefferson" posits that America is born of male

Thus to Jefferson, Sally is both the "unspeakable" (that is, horrify-

which marks the end of linear time) a

Moreover, in scenes illustrating how plague sweeps London at

does not vindicate or deny the modern, bu

ure, the obverse value of Cartesian r

Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton and Brian O'Doherty's The Strange

comprehend, her affliction. Paradi

Unlike these novels in which the figured postmodern event takes

event which erupts unspeakably from

sion, disruptive but also breathing l

modernist interrogation of Origin lea

Does the instability of theoretical def

Ackroyd, Peter. Chatterton. New York: Ballantine, 19

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations.

Cascardi, Anthony J. "History, Theory, (Post)Mod

Elias, Amy. "Defining Spatial History in Postmodernist Fiction." Narrative

Honneth, Axel. "An Aversion against the Universal: A Commentary on Lyo

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Trans. G. Van den

. Discours, figure. Paris: Klincksieck, 197

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