Neil BROOKS et Josh TOTH [dir.], The Mourning After. Attending the Wake of Postmodernism, Amsterdam / New York, Rodopi (Postmodern Studies), 2007, 306 p.
ISBN 978-90-420-2162-4
SUMMARY
Have we moved beyond postmodernism? Did postmodernism lose itsoppositional value when it became a cultural dominant? While focusingon questions such as these, the articles in this collection considerthe possibility that the death of a certain version of postmodernismmarks a renewed attempt to re-negotiate and perhaps re-embrace many ofthe cultural, literary and theoretical assumptions that postmodernismseemly denied outright. Including contributions from some of theleading scholars in the field – N. Katherine Hayles, John D. Caputo,Paul Maltby, Jane Flax, among others – this collection ultimately comestogether to perform a certain work of mourning. Through theirexplorations of this current epistemological shift in narrative andtheoretical production, these articles work to “get over” postmodernismwhile simultaneously celebrating a certain postmodern inheritance, aninheritance that can offer us important avenues to understanding andaffecting contemporary culture and society.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Permissions and Illustrations
Arriving and Socializing at the Wake
Josh TOTH & Neil BROOKS: Introduction: A Wake and Renewed?
Paul MALTBY: Postmodernism in a Fundamentalist Arena
Robert MCLAUGHLIN: Postmodernism in the Age of Distracting Discourses
Jennifer GEDDES: Attending to Suffering in/at the Wake of Postmodernism
Jane FLAX: Soul Service: Foucault’s “Care of the Self” as Politics and Ethics
Viewing and Reading at the Wake
N. Katherine HAYLES & Todd GANNON: Mood Swings: The Aesthetics of Ambient Emergence
Gavin KEULKS: New York, Los Angeles, and Other Toxicities: Revisiting Postmodernism in Rushdie’s Fury and Shalimar the Clown
William G. LITTLE: Nothing to Write Home About: Impossible Reception in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
Robert REBEIN: Turncoat: Why Jonathan Franzen Finally Said “No” to Po-Mo
Clayton DION: Serving Pi(e) at the Wake of Postmodernism: Mathematics and Mysticism at the End of the 20th Century
Mourning and Praying at the Wake
Dawne MCCANCE: Derrida and the Ethics of Mourning After
Clayton CROCKETT: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Belief: Neo-Realism vs. the Real
John D. CAPUTO: The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event
Contributors