The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
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to transgress demarcated lines <strong>of</strong> thought<br />
and readmit those discourses labelled<br />
superfluous by the productivist political<br />
economy <strong>of</strong> the West. Pefanis's study is <strong>of</strong><br />
particular interest in the way it is itself a<br />
heterological text, raiding the disciplines <strong>of</strong><br />
anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy<br />
and literary theory in order to convincingly<br />
demonstrate that "generic similarities"<br />
exist among these three writers.<br />
Pefanis, like Carravetta, identifies postmodernism<br />
with a body <strong>of</strong> theory that is<br />
fundamentally critical <strong>of</strong> the totalizing<br />
strategies <strong>of</strong> Western rationality. In his view<br />
it functions as a social critique <strong>of</strong> the limits<br />
<strong>of</strong> reason, in its textual practices seeking to<br />
postpone closure, to free writing from the<br />
tyranny <strong>of</strong> production and the metaphors<br />
<strong>of</strong> economics and deliver it into a realm <strong>of</strong><br />
indeterminacy and jouissance. In celebrating<br />
the oppositional potential <strong>of</strong> postmodernism,<br />
however, he disregards the<br />
possibility that its engagement with the<br />
commodity culture it seeks to critique<br />
might facilitate the transformation <strong>of</strong> postmodernism<br />
from a potentially subversive<br />
strategy into a set <strong>of</strong> conventional gestures<br />
emptied <strong>of</strong> political effect. Ironically, by<br />
claiming that postmodernism is, "like the<br />
best examples <strong>of</strong> the modernist avantgardes,<br />
a progressive and potentially radical<br />
phenomenon," Pefanis compares it to an<br />
earlier aesthetic that has itself become<br />
engulfed by the discourse <strong>of</strong> capital.<br />
<strong>The</strong> desire to equate postmodernism with<br />
a revolutionary politics is most evident in<br />
Postmodern Genres, where, as Marjorie<br />
Perl<strong>of</strong>f points out, "contributors repeatedly<br />
use terms like violation, disruption, dislocation,<br />
decentering, contradiction, confrontation,<br />
multiplicity, and indeterminacy...!' Far<br />
from advancing their radical aspirations,<br />
however, this "conceptual agreement"<br />
among writers with otherwise widely<br />
diverging views suggests that "postmodernism"<br />
has become a stable category, a<br />
label to attach to a text possessing predetermined<br />
formal characteristics. In many <strong>of</strong><br />
the essays there is a sickening air <strong>of</strong> finality<br />
about what the genre "is," leading to earnest<br />
deliberations about whether subjects under<br />
discussion "deserve" the label. Although<br />
most contributors uneasily acknowledge<br />
the paradox <strong>of</strong> a genre predicated on the<br />
principles <strong>of</strong> disruption and multiplicity,<br />
they remain determined to have their indeterminacy<br />
and label it, too; this, unfortunately,<br />
leads to unhelpful assertions such as<br />
Henry Sayre's assessment <strong>of</strong> the work <strong>of</strong> the<br />
American artist Jonathan Bor<strong>of</strong>sky: "It is<br />
like a genre composed <strong>of</strong> all possible genres...."<br />
Followers <strong>of</strong> Bertrand Russell might<br />
lose sleep over whether such a genre<br />
includes itself, but I would ask why in such<br />
a context the term genre is used at all.<br />
Of the dozen essays collected in the volume,<br />
only Joan Retallack's "Post-Scriptum—<br />
High-Modern" deserves close attention.<br />
Retallack is not afraid to confront the thick<br />
strands connecting postmodernists to high<br />
modernists <strong>of</strong> the mid-century, recognizing<br />
the inevitable influence <strong>of</strong> the past on contemporary<br />
thought, both artistic and critical.<br />
If the other authors had shared her<br />
belief that "[t]he excitement <strong>of</strong> postmodernism<br />
is that it is in many ways a letter just<br />
beginning, a roomy category waiting to be<br />
filled," the book as a whole might have been<br />
more interesting.<br />
Generation<br />
Di Brandt<br />
Mother, not mother. Mercury P $11.95<br />
Sarah Murphy<br />
<strong>The</strong> Deconstruction <strong>of</strong> Wesley Smithson. Mercury<br />
P $12.95<br />
Reviewed by P. J. Gerbrecht<br />
Reading Canadian writers Di Brandt and<br />
Susan Murphy together is very much like<br />
reading dialogue. Both Mother, not mother<br />
and <strong>The</strong> Deconstruction <strong>of</strong> Wesley Smithson