Brain Drain Blog

Archive for October, 2007

Between the pages of 155 and 268, our narrator, Powers, and Dr. Lentz struggle with their traditional masculine roles, feeling that they must care for and protect their women. Lentz feels responsible for his wife Audrey?s stroke occuring directly after their argument while?he was intentionally unreachable.?Guilt ridden?for not taking enough care, he visits her waning consciousness with daily devotion at the Center. Powers also cares for his lost and confused C. but learns that:

The more care I took, the more I turned her into the needy one. And the more I did that, the needier she became. We construed her neediness between the two of us. And that was not care on my part. That was cowardice. (240)

Together, Powers and Lentz search for some sort of answer to the masculine condition through the production and training of Helen, the beloved and experimental neural net in Galatea 2.2. Lentz, although he can?t change the past, has the desire to change the future, developing a way to back up the brain in the case of memory failure. Powers interprets and mulls this goal:

We could eliminate death. That was the long-term idea. We might freeze the temperament of our choice. Suspend it painlessly above experience. Hold it forever at twenty-two. (170)

We have yet to learn what Powers gains from the experiment, but perhaps Donna Haraway might offer a clue.

Pulling out the ol’ Norton, I brushed up on Donna Haraway?s ?A Manifesto for Cyborgs?, several quotes of which were rather pertinent to Helen. First off, ?a cyborg is a cybernetic organism? a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction? (2269). Already, in this one definition, the cyborg blurs the boundaries of human, animal?and machine as well as reality and fiction.

Since?Helen is essentially a new ?other,? her existence could be constued as?a cultural encounter similar to, for example, that of Europeans and Native Americans. It is assumed from the ideology at hand that one must dominate the other. That said, how is it possible to avoid the dominant/male and submissive/female trap that haunts the majority of historical human existence? According to Haraway, the power lies within the technology.

The cyborg has no origin story? they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. (2270-2271)

According to Haraway, Powers and Lentz are “inessential” as fathers.?Once they load the data, Helen thinks on her own. Although Powers has coded Helen with gender, it is within the power of the cyborg to blur the boundaries of such a dichotomy as the masculine and feminine. Once blurred, perhaps some revelation will be made to both about the roles of men and women in society.

While this unique?lesson of love?between man and machine has yet to be revealed , one thing is certain. Helen has already invoked much discussion about what constitutes human intelligence, blurring the distinction between true knowledge and switch flipping. Are we nothing more than weighted switches constantly back-feeding input through our neural nets, or is there something inherently human that sets us apart from a machine?

I’ll be turning pages rapidly to?find out?

Let me just say that, as my 37th year?speeds?toward the platform and is?due to arrive in a paltry?seven days, I’m not crazy about this novel’s claim about?the 35th year:

You begin to think, ‘Well, I more or less understand how things work. Do I really want to disassemble tens of thousands of semi accurate beliefs on the off chance that I might be able to bring one small receptor field into better focus?’ (111)

With a projected 50 years left, give or take a decade, that’s a long time to sit on my ass and?give up the quest. Let the disassembly continue… Full Speed Ahead!

That said, let’s move on to pages 48-153 of the novel.

CHILDHOOD REALITY V. ADULT DELUSION

One would generally assume that children would have a stronger imagination than adults, the ability to?create their own reality and imaginary friends, but that isn’t what is being said in this novel. As I mentioned in?a previous post, “something between childhood and becoming an adult shifts the understanding of language, makes it less literal, less real.” I found this idea interesting when Powers described a?book that permanently?influenced him?while he was still young?(19).?This same type of reference appears later, when Lentz and Hartrick?dupe Powers about Imp C’s ability:

A babe in the woods would have seen through this… I myself would never have bitten, had I still been a child. Yet I’d believed. I’d wanted to. (123)

Powers can no longer see the real, but why? Perhaps, as our narrator describes,?it is his adult desire to want to believe.

In childhood, facts are collected?much like?William and Peter Hartrick’s?alphabet and international flags.?Conceptual meaning hasn’t yet been assigned, as Hutcheon would point out.??Unlike the boys,?Powers?associates everything with narrative rather than fact. When speaking about their mother, Diane,?Powers says “I didn’t know the first thing about her” (136) but?”I recognized?this?woman…?from a book I read once as a novice adult” (137).?This referential knowing is not real. It stems from a concept learned elsewhere?during Powers’?early adulthood rather than from what actually stands in front of him?in the moment.

Powers recognizes the impact of narrative on his thoughts and the ways in which those thoughts then shape his reality. “Here was the home I would never have. Shaped by a book, I’d made sure I wouldn’t. I’d forced my heart’s reading matter to come true” (138). To deny himself access to Diane or?a home based on a particular?book leads me to believe that, had he read another?book (or no book), things might have turned out?differently. Like ideology, the story has the power to order Powers’?thoughts, but also to confine him within that story.

SUBJECT V. OBJECT

Confinement within the story becomes problematic for all the main characters in this novel. Diane, Lentz, C.?and even Powers?become splintered identities in terms of subject/object. As said above, Diane is a stereotype in Powers’ internal narrative. First?she is?scientist, then mother, then “she became a different woman” (136) after she put her children to bed and?sat in her living room. None of these images allow access to the real Diane, for Powers or the reader. Lentz too is seen solely as mad scientist until Powers?recognizes him as husband and father thanks to the calendar on the door. Still, he doesn’t know who Lenz truly is or why he’s such a sad,?angry man. These characters are nothing more than objects seen through the one limited?lens of the narrator.

Powers and C. are special cases in the subject/object dichotomy. Powers, when proofing his latest book, says:

My eleventh-hour triage demoralized me even more than the first writing. I felt a despair I had not felt while still the teller… What lost me, while listening to my own news account, was learning that I didn’t have the first idea who I was. Or of how I had gone so emptied.?(117)

Is Powers really so emptied and lost?within his own identity? The word?”emptied” implies that Powers was?once full.?When?he writes about himself as?the subject, he?is unaware that this identity crises exists because it doesn’t yet. It is when he no longer writes but reads, making the switch from subject to object, that he feels some sort of self identity loss. It is the mechanism?of narrative?that induces the loss, unable to capture the whole of who Powers is, even in his own attempt to portray himself.

Perhaps Powers?has stopped?disassembling his?”tens of thousands of semi accurate beliefs” at 35,?having learned?little since his relationship’s end with C.?Prior to this autobiographical fiction,?Powers becomes the subject of C’s story and she becomes the object, driving?the wedge?of death into their relationship. Powers knows?this to be true?when C. says, “It’s your story… It makes me feel worthless” (108). He begins to question:

What did the finished thing mean? That book was no more than a structured pastiche … One that by accident ate her alive… She would never again listen to a word I wrote without suspicion. (108-109)

Even after living the consequence of setting the divisive dichotomy of subject/object in motion with C., Powers inflicts that same divide within himself and feels the power and pain from both sides.

Of course,?objectification is okay when you’re Powers, the author of this novel,?portraying the narrator as the author and narrator of his own novel. Only by making this move does narrative no longer mean objectification alone. Narrative, in this manner,?becomes self-reflexivity, or has… self-reflexive Powers. (Insert “bad joke” groan here.)

PS: If C was with Powers in U., E., and B., who do you think A. is in her 22nd year?? Son of [a] B!! I can?t seem to work it out yet? but I sure do sound like a mathematician when I try.

The first 48 pages…

I found A Brief Biographical Sketch (excerpted and adapted, with the author’s permission, from Understanding Richard Powers by Joseph Dewey) helpful in understanding the extreme similarities between the author and narrator of Galetea 2.2. In essence, Powers’ life is the source of his fiction and fiction thus becomes his life. This is not unlike the photography of Nikki Lee. Each quite literally lives the art that they create and questions representations of the real. Although this is interesting in and of itself, for the purposes of this post “Powers” refers to the narrator, not the author, unless otherwise indicated.

The novel begins with the sentence, “It was like so, but wasn’t,” and screams for a sneak peek at the last page for clues. I refuse to give in. According to this book, there is no short cut to learning – even for neural nets. Let?the synaptic links painfully struggle to?materialize, one at a time.

LANGUAGE

The plot centers around teaching language, and subsequently the canonical list of Great Books, to a neural network in order to understand how the brain orders and accumulates information to learn. We didn’t get to talk much about language limitations in class, but there are so many references to it throughout the book, I find myself tracing each instance.

• In the first paragraph, Powers says of his 35th year, “We got separated in the confusion of a foreign city where the language was strange” (3).
• At U., “Work at the Center divided into areas so esoteric I could not tell their nature from their names” (5).
• At the Center, ?Talk in its public spaces sounded like a UN picnic: excited, wild, and mutually unintelligible. I loved how you could never be sure what a person did even after they explained it to you” (6).
• When meeting Lentz, Powers says, “We made interstellar contact, paralyzed by the mutual knowledge that any attempt to communicate would be culture bound. Worse than meaningless” (13).
• The Dutch, according to Powers, amount to little in the area of novel-writing due to “the fault of translation.” Lentz blames it on “the limits of that Low German dialect” (18).
• Powers “still dreamed in that language. It had ruined [him] for English” (18).
• Of a flood Powers read about in a book as a child, he says, “this was my unshakable image… The word “Holland” filled me with autumnal diluvian disaster… even after living for years… in the Dutch Mountains” (19).

These types of quotes span?just pages 3-19, but there are many more. Following the order listed above, these quotes point toward:

• general linguistic separation and confusion
• lack of concept transference within the same language
• cultural boundaries rendering speech less than meaningless
• loss of meaning in translation?from one language?to the next
• the bondage of language on thoughts and dreams
• creation of real perceptions and representation of a non-reality

If language is so fallible, how can a machine avoid these linguistic pitfalls, particularly when “taught” by similarly fallible humans? What is the key to getting it right, making language more communicable?

According to Powers:

A child’s account of the flood that ravaged Zeeland shortly before I was born turned real in my head. That’s what it means to be eight. Words haven’t yet separated from their fatal content. (19)

Something between childhood and becoming an adult shifts the understanding of language, makes it less literal, less real. A return to that childhood state, when switches quickly flip through intelligent processing, may offer better understanding of how to access reality through language. To return to the beginning, new opportunity exists in discovering how a mind learns and how to better teach that mind.

Like a child, the machine too requires “someone like Lenz to supply the occasional ‘Try again’s and ‘Good Boy!’s” (31) as it essentially makes its own decisions and deductions about what is correct and incorrect. That said, with a father figure like Lenz, will the machine suffer emotional damage, adopt his bad attitude, reject him all together? We’ll have to read on and see. Good Lord, that man is frightening!

This fires my next response…

POSTMODERN POWERS

Powers, the author, takes on the mother of all self-reflexivity in this novel. While postmodernism examines the ways in which particular forms like language, photography, film and music represent reality, Powers goes one step further and examines the very tool that both creates and interprets all form… THE SYNAPSE. As Powers, the narrator, says:

After great inference, I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what cognition was… No tougher question existed. No other, either. If we knew the world only through synapses, how could we know the synapses? (28).

In that last question, one could replace the word synapse with narrative,?and see?the bold move that?Powers, the author, is making. To examine synapse as “form” is the greatest postmodern experiment of all,?the likes of which makes my head hurt.?

(How appropriate?for this post to appear on a blog called “Brain Drain, I Think Its Sprained.”)

Like Cindy Sherman, Nikki S. Lee offers a valuable critique?of our social need?to identify and be identified in a particular way. She?broadens her scope?beyond Sherman’s examination of clich?d feminity, inserting herself, as a Korean minority,?into the setting and style of many?cultural identities.

To contextualize Nikki Lee?s work (ooh, the irony), I visited The Museum of Contemporary Photography and read?”Karma Chameleon Revisited” by D. Robert Okada and Z. Samual Podolski, The Harvard Crimson, September 28, 2001:

Lee is not stereotyping and marginalizing her subjects, but rather indicting those stereotypes, exhibiting the fluency with which we can shed and assume any of them we like. She doesn’t objectify the person, she objectifies the ideas we all have about minority identities. She shows her audience the extent to which they stereotype-and marginalize-themselves? In this way, Lee achieves two biting critiques in one fell swoop-cutting at both the stereotyped and the stereotyper. We identify others and ourselves in purely visual terms. If Nikki Lee’s “Projects” seems at first ridiculous, then, that’s the whole point. They are ridiculous, and so are we.

This passage brought me right back to Hutcheon:

The postmodern, as I have been defining it, is not a degeneration into ?hyperreality? but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it. It is not that representation now dominates or effaces the referent, but rather that it now self-consciously acknowledges its existence as representation-that is, as interpreting (indeed as creating) its referent, not as offering direct and immediate access to it. (32)

First off, the reference to?postmodern degeneration into?hyperreality is interesting. In one sense, Nikki Lee’ s work is the ultimate hyperreality, demonstrating the ways in which we put ourselves forth into society using?visual signs, signifying?the group to which we belong. The group collectively (those who both embrace or impose) determines what that visual language is and?derives meaning?from certain body posturing, clothing?and hair style. At the end of the day, one must ask, who are we when we aren’t pretzeling ourselves to fit some mold? Can one access a “true self” any longer? Has our true self been erased by representation over?time or has?individual identity always been?based on?social construct?

Considering the work of?Hutcheon and Lee, hyperreality in and of itself is a reality, if not as a representation of the real, then as a very real representation. Visual?identity is just one more form under Lee’s scrutiny?through postmodern photogrpahy, examining what tools?we use to represent?ourselves and interpret others.?Lee is shooting holes all through the meanings we think we can derive just by looking, and yet we simultaneously see that those meanings are not meaningless because we assign power to them.

Society would have us?believe that identity is?fixed within a particular race or ethnicity, but as Nikki Lee goes culture surfing, she demonstrates how maliable and yet influential visual cues?can be.?Perhaps she best passes?in yuppie, tourist, punk, and elderly?groups since race and ethnicity are not their sole defining factors, yet, when she inserts?herself into Hispanic and other ethnic settings, the lines of distiction are most de-doxified. We can see she is slightly different, and yet?there is?an uncanny?comfort level in the scene for both Lee and those who surround her. She has become, and has been accepted as, one of “them.”?As we observe her, we must ask ourselves what makes her different and?what makes her the same. Does she, or do we, decide??Is there so much destinction between “us” and “them” when the “us” becomes “them?”

Post Script

In an October?1, 2006 New York Times article, “Now in Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee,” Carol Kino says of Lee, “Even after a long face-to-face conversation, it?s hard to say for certain what Nikki S. Lee is really like.”?This could be read two ways, either Lee’s art is so relavent?that she unmistakably proves?we never really know a person, even when we?think we do,?or she’s crazy. The following passage describes Lee’s film:

Titled ?A K A Nikki S. Lee,? the film purports to be a documentary about the real Nikki, a rather plain, serious young woman who is in turn making her own documentary about her alter ego, Nikki Two, the effervescent exhibitionist who appears in the photographs. Yet as the true Ms. Lee explained in an interview in her East Village apartment, ?Nikki One is supposed to be real Nikki, and Nikki Two is supposed to be fake Nikki. But they are both fake Nikki.?

Fight Club schizophrenia anyone? I’m just saying. Still, I’m with Lee. I think we’re all crazy?and simply?masquerading as sane.

The article goes on to say “Ms. Lee also played fast and loose with the dates, just as she did with the camera date-stamps on her ?Projects? photos.” I had wondered, when I saw the Lesbian Project, if it really?spanned over the course of 6 months. This adds a whole new dimention to?Lee’s art, playing with?our assumptions?about time and?about long relationships vs. short ones. Right on.

Is?this?supposed to be therapeutic? I’m just asking.?I suppose?it’s cheaper than therapy, although I don’t recall seeing it on the ENG377 syllabus.

THE LIST

posts:
2007.09.02??Modern or Postmodern? That is the Question.
2007.09.06??So, What?s the Difference?
2007.09.07??Written WITH the Body
2007.09.09??‘I’ – Thinking
2007.09.14??Where the Story Starts
2007.09.17??Post Modo Condition
2007.09.19??Fight Club – The Movie
2007.09.20? Futurism in Fight Club?(add-on to previous post)
2007.09.25 ?Why Jameson?s Piece is Postmodern
2007.09.29? Life in Dying
2007.10.02 ?Fight Club Environmentalism
2007.10.05? Making Sense (???)
2007.10.08? Cindy Sherman
2007.10.10??Linda Hutcheon?(expertise project)
2007.10.15? Nikki Lee

comments:
2007.09.01? To Esther on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.01? To Misty on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.07? To Kim H. on Winterson
2007.09.07? To Alex on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Michael on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Christine on Winterson
2007.09.23? To Marina on Fight Club, the film
2007.09.23? To the Class Experts on Lyotard
2007.09.29? To Hannah on Fight Club, the book
2007.09.29? To Esther on Jameson
2007.10.04??To Zena on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.04??To Tammy on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.15??To Aliya on Cindy Sherman
2007.10.15? To Melissa on Hutcheon

ANALYSIS PART I: I am the One Trick Pony

As I wrestle with what postmodernism means and how it functions, I’ve discovered that I am absolutely obsessed with limits. Reading through my blog I see frustration with and examination of:?

• language as limitation on thought
• the subject’s limited ability to represent
• limits on history as merely one version of truth
• limits on context within postmodern fiction
• and limits of form?when representing the real.

Postmodernism has revealed the ways in which?I’m?confined?within the ideological?prison of my own thought,?AND it has?simultaneously?slipped me the key to freedom. Now that I?understand how?postmodernism functions, I see?it in fiction, film, magazines?and photography. It has become?relevant in my other classes and has even?jumped out at me while watching television. I love that ideology is being exploited all over the place, but still, I have one question burning deep within my soul. It’s the one?that everyone in class either fully?understands or isn’t asking.

When Lyotard says:?

“The artist and the writer , then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done” (Lyotard, 81)

I still?need to?know… What the Hell does this mean?!?!

Moving on, the following?passage from “‘I’-Thinking” shows my concern for the limits of language and subject:

I found what Winterson hasn?t written is most important. Where power?exists and determines what is ?acceptable,? or at least ?attributable,? lies in our perception of how?the masculine and feminine are defined by language. (Hello Saussure, my old friend.)?Winterson?s brilliance?demonstrates the subversive by using that very device.?The notion of the free-?thinking I??is exposed for?all its cultural baggage.

Here I refer to?Cixous’ idea that?language shapes our thoughts along problematic dichotomies such a masculine/feminine, strong/weak, etc. Winterson challenges?the reader’s?need to assign?a male or female identity?to her genderless narrator, pointing out the limitation of “thought?dichotomies”?in practice. Rereading this passage surprises me after just having just?presented on Hutcheon. While my language here isn’t quite right, the idea of the self-reflexive operation?is interesting. Both the power of language to?define, and?the limitations?as?it confines are revealed simultaneously.?Perhaps we?discussed this idea in class that day, but prior to reading Hutcheon (my hero) I didn’t think I understood. Apparently I did. Go me.

Don’t you worry. I’m not getting all high and mighty over this one small victory. I continually struggle?with other issues, particularly the end result of?mixing fact and fiction in historeographic metafiction. All?accross my?blog and strewn about comments to classmates are references to the movie The Last King of Scotland. Apologies “for bringing it up once again” generally accompany the post because I can’t seem to let it go. In “Why Jameson?s Piece is?Postmodern” it appears for the third time:

This movie is … about a very real Ugandan dictator, but his life is revealed through the perception of a fictional doctor… the main character with significant influence on very disturbing events within the film… Then, in the DVD special features, Ugandan extras said they are glad children can watch this film and finally learn about Ugandan history. (BIG) PROBLEM! This isn?t history!… Will Ugandan children know? I think not.

Here is where I get stuck between Jameson and Hutcheon. Like Jameson, I have this?engrained notion that context is important.?As I say later in the same post, I attribute my discomfort with this specific?historical fiction?to the fact that?this film will likely be?the only access?Ugandan children?have to their country’s history. Since?they have no?background?in postmodern analysis, they will surely mistake this representation?(one?portrayed through the lens of white culture) for the?real. This is?the result of Third World, culture consuming capitalism that Jameson talks about.

On the other hand, when it comes to my personal consumption of the postmodern, I want?the veil lifted?from the powerful ideology?that orders?my world. To understand that there is no one absolute truth, as far as I can see, is the only way to open the door to new ideas… without limitation (ha!). Hutcheon,?with her positive spin on the postmodern and its power to reveal, is – quite frankly- my hero, as I’ve already stated above. I’m not sure if I will ever resolve this internal conflict. I fully believe there is value?to?both sides of this coin.

From the argument above, my question becomes, what is real or contextual anyway? Hutcheon says that?”history” has?only ever?been a representation and access to?”reality” has only ever been an assumption. To follow this thought into the realm of photography, as I understate?when summing up?my “Cindy Sherman” post:

Interestingly,?using a doll as an unrealistic representation of a human being, although it seems to be a drastic difference of subject/object?from the first [human] pictured above, is no different in concept.?Sherman brilliantly exposes photographic “realism” as equally flawed in all.?

Sherman offers a quick and dirty example of Hutcheon’s self-reflexive form. Her photography is used to?demonstrate?the power of historic photo documentation and realism as it influences our perception of reality,?to?subvert?it using the very form we trust to be real, and to reveal the ways in which photography fails to grant acces to the real at all.?By subverting or turning the medium in on itself,?the limitations of ideology implode.?Sherman is at once artist/actress, subject/object,?woman/clich?.?When I see this mental back flip in action, it?makes my heart soar. I?want to scream?”THAT’S A PERFECT TEN!”

And yet… there is still The Last King of Scotland playing to children in Ugandan theaters. Thanks to Hutcheon and Sherman I’m left to wonder?whether concepts are more or less important?than the events that actually?happened. Is the insertion of a fictional narrator within an historical setting really any different than the history written by a textbook author with an eye toward patriotism? The more I grasp how little we’ve learned from a history we’ve assumed was real, perhaps this fictionalized account of a real dictator?bears less?negative impact?than the lessons learned from such a story.?I suppose the best we can do is handle?postmodernism?with care, limiting its political and capitalist consumption of culture?in the Third World… whatever that means.

PART II: Old Tricks, New Tricks

And the award for best posts to date goes to:

• “Life in Dying”
  I felt I made a new connection in Fight Club between body, as the limited modern form striving?to achieve a?real experience,?and the soul or idea of legend as postmodern form struggling to break free from the limitations of form. I spent FAR more time on this than any other post, engaging with?the narrative?as well as narrative- through- the- lens- of- theory, and?organizing these thoughts into essay form. Yeah, I was home alone for two days.
• “Making Sense (???)”
  Here I was able to follow several significant threads discussed in class, applying one aspect of a particular theory to every text. Addressing issues from?the complication of all our?narrators, to the problematic concept of gender, I was able to beat these topics into submission, taming my unruly, jumbled thoughts.

The award for best?comment to date:

• “To Zena on Butt- Wipe”
  This comment engaged with Zena’s question, recounted a class comment, brought in textual evidence, and also taught me a thing or two in writing it.?

The award for best classmate post goes to:

• Esther’s “I Can Spell Jameson, So It’s Not a Bad Start”
  This post came along right when I needed it, particularly since Esther posts early?if not on time. She summarizes the highlights of Jameson’s theory, adds visuals to demonstrate her argument of lacking historical reference in architecture against Jameson’s need for context, and poses a few questions for comment. You just can’t ask for more.

Based on my previous accomplishments, these next three goals?are what I plan to?strive?toward?for the remainder of?my blogging career:

• Increased engagement?with?comments
• I should get over my need to be original and address some class topics already. I’m always pushing so hard to move beyond what has already been discussed. The alternative would be to “go deep.” Wait, I do that.
• More humor. I used to be funny.
• More silly?pictures. That used to be fun too.
• Oddly, perhaps I need to spend LESS time banging out?these marathon?posts and more time on other class work – or just living life.

How to acheive these things? I could just relax. The problem is that I find this class so darn interesting.?Yeah. I happen to like?taking?our shiny, new information?out for a spin?through the?informal blog, particularly?where a?little misjudgment and hitting the guard rail is allowed. Sue me.

Available on Amazon*

HUTCHEON ON POSTMODERNISM: A Summary

by Michael Bastian & Kim Clune

Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Theorist Linda Hutcheon?finally offers?a clear?definition of?postmodernism?as compared to the somewhat slippery and?”indefineable” definitions offered thus far. “Postmodern representation is self consciously all of these – image, narrative, product of (and producer of) ideology” (28).? She combines several concepts which all work together in the following way:

Mimesis:
For our purposes, mimesis?is?the assumption that representation is, in some way, a duplication of “the real” and also that there is a “real” to represent.?(To trace the morphing?philosophy of mimesis since the time of ancient Greece, visit the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, University of Virginia.)

Using?this definition of mimesis, Hutcheon?then says, “Postmodernism challenges our mimetic assumptions about representation” (30). This is called dedoxification.

De-doxification:
Ideology constructs and naturalizes the way a culture presents itself to itself. To de-doxify this representation is to denaturalize the contrived reality that ideology assumes as truth. Postmodernism simultaneously inscribes and subverts the convention of narrative to this end.

An Example:
Hutcheon uses Angela Carter’s The Loves of Lady Purple?to exemplify the dedoxification of femininity.??A marionette is made to represent the image of the woman prostitute in the construct of male erotic fantasy.? We are left to question, “Had the marionette all the time parodied the living or was she, now living, to parody her own performance as a marionette?”? and, “to what extent are all representations of women the ‘simulacra of the living’?”(31).???

Historiographic Metafiction:
Ultimately, the job of postmodernism is to question?”reality” and how we come to know it.?It forces us to examine the ways in which we?ve chosen (or have been made to choose) to represent ourselves. Historiographic metafiction?dedoxifies assumptions of ideology by consciously?and self-reflexively working to?accomplish?two things:

1. bringing?historical context into the text in recognition of?history’s authority?and power, and
2. simultaneously calls into question?historical limitations

By?inserting elements of?fiction?within historical context,?”fact” is exposed as an author’s assigned meaning?or subjective interpretation of an event. Historical representation is revealed?to be?inconclusive,?one more narrative employing the same devices used?in fiction.?As we understand it,?this functions the same way through all mediums of postmodern expression whether fiction, photography or painting.

For more on Hutcheon’s?historiographic metafiction,?visit Victoria Orlowski’s explanation (last entry at the bottom)?at Emory.edu.?

THEORY IN PRACTICE

• Michaels’ Observation: Photographic Discourse as Evident in the Work of Cindy Sherman

What is happening in this photo? Let?s create a narrative. We see?this?woman’s?bathing suit floating next to her. We can assume she doesn?t have a spare. She?s naked, nude, in the skinny. The only articles of clothing she?s wearing are the goggles (spy goggles) and a mask (a spy?s mask). Sherman is mimicking the actions of a spy approaching an enemy?s territory.?This?woman?doesn?t want to be seen. The pool is lit up. At the same time she is a naked woman swimming in a pool that someone could be spying on. She?s acting the part of a spy and sexually promiscuous woman. Those are antique goggles; they help to represent the historical representation of a spy. Although this spy does not represent one historical event we can narrate one. Mixing the story of the naked woman and the spy together does not work. Who is she looking at? What is she looking at? These are all questions in creating the narrative. The black and white photograph makes it seem like this photograph is representative of a historical ?real?. The move to de-doxify the reflex we have to link black and white to old is uncovered because of the use of fiction (the naked spy-woman). Uncovering this not only brings to question the power that black and white photography has over us, but reifies the power it does because of the reflexes its bringing out of us. This is called historiographic metafiction; examining the history of representing history through the use of fiction to pivot it against.

Adendum
Male erotic fantasy led me to believe that Sherman was swimming naked; her bathing suit swimming next to her. Kim pointed out, after sharing my analysis with her, that Sherman isn?t actually naked at all. The bathing suit is just distorted by the water. I created a narrative based on an ideology that I subscribe to. I assigned her femininity, false femininity, based on the image presented. The history, male erotic fantastical history, associates woman in pool with sexually promiscuous woman. We now have three fictions with which to work from, that all work to subvert the control of the form and emphasize its control over our reflexes as cattle grazing on the fields of ideologies. – Michael

(Well, Michael’s cattle reflex anyway. – Kim, who finds this all very amusing.)

• Kim’s Observation: Fiction and History as Demonstrated?in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

Fight Club demonstrates Hutcheon’s theory well. Historical assumptions about the?subject?are called into question?alongside those of historical representation, and each are de-doxified through self-reflexive construction of this historiographic metafiction. Although one human body acts out the events of the novel,?that body is complicated by the presence of?two identities or subjects housed within it. Each has a?very different perspective and thus?drastically different representation of the same chronological events. Tyler collects?his?events and assigns meaning via his conscious state while the narrator, when he?is awake and occupying the body, assigns different meaning to the same events. In this way, perpective is limited and skewed depending upon who is in charge at the time. Additionally, because the narrator is the reader’s only source of information?about Tyler,?his?limited scope of understanding filters out?aspects of?his alter-ego.?In this way, the narrator unknowingly skews the telling of his?own history until the end when he?fully realizes that he?has become a split identity and thus the bigger picture is finally revealed to the?reader. Our ideological notions about how naturally subjectivity represents history are challenged once we realize the power the narrator has over representation as well as his limitations in revealing all sides.

Palahniuk also explores society’s historical context through capitalism. By placing ficticious characters within a backdrop specific to the 90′s, we are better able to examine various concepts and perceptions of capitalism from two perspectives than we are from one. Interestingly, neither is verifyiable truth, nor are they together, but…

(I had a train of thought to explore here,?but Michael just stole my copy of?Hutcheon and left campus.)

COLLECTIVE?THOUGHTS

We find that Hutcehon offers a logical answer to?several theoretical questions. Disputing negative generalizations of postmodern disorder, incoherence, and Jameson’s accusation of “depthlessness,”?Hutcheon says postmodernism has the specific function to?reflexively question?history by employing it’s own narrative in order to reveal the holes in such perceived truth. This specificity is new?from what we’ve seen this semester. She argues that Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, representation as a copy of a copy, and media’s neutralization of the “real” assumes that there was a “real” to begin with. She counters that??there is nothing natural about the ?real? and there never was ? even before the existence of mass media? (31).?According to?Hutcheon, we have not slipped into?a false world because we have postmodernism.

Rather than postmodernism being a departure from contextualized history, or what?Jameson calls “a ‘revolutionary’ break with the repressive ideology of?storytelling generally,” (47)?the postmodern?relies upon that very device to decenter the?ideological?notions of authenticity and subjectivity. In the moment in which the center is questioned through narrative, postmodern stories of the oppressed “other” rise to the surface, no longer surpressed by ideology and past historical influence.? Postmodernism contradicts this notion of the real and accepts that everything has always been culturally represented.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• Hutcheon says events have no meaning until certain facts are selected and meaning is assigned. Do you agree? Why?
• Since history can be fictional and fiction can reveal certain truths,?is there?a line of distinction between history and fiction at present?

OUTSIDE SOURCES
From the scholar-sphere:

• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Postmodernity.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.
• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Parody.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.

From the blog-o-sphere:?

Two posts from the Derivative Blog: Thoughts on Hutcheon?by a graduate student of English literature and culture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

• ?An Enthusiasm for Postmodernism?
• Understanding the Question of Postmodern Meaning

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In class, some postmodern themes, concepts and questions we?ve applied to fiction involve:

• the power structure of the subject/object relationship
• the question of veracity in representation and history
• the failure of language and it?s limitation on thought
• capitalism as an inextricable driving force in postmodern art

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Postmodern?photographer?Cindy Sherman demonstrates?the ways in which?these issues also infuse her medium, effectively challenging?the traditional assumption that photography is a true representation of the real. MoMa.org summarizes Sherman’s first collection,?Untitled Film Stills:

The sixty-nine solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America?the period of Sherman’s youth, and the ground-zero of our contemporary mythology.

Sherman poses herself as if she were a film star and then snaps the shutter. As the photographer, she is the subject capturing what appears to be a realistic depiction of?her object, creating a?glimpse into the life of a starlet. At the same time, she is standing in as that object, an actress acting the part of an actress. The result is a representational copy of a starlet who has never existed, the perfect simulacra,?calling?attention to?the problematic subject and object, and?the assumption?of real or historic?photographic representation accentuated by her use of black and white photography.

In reference to?Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #3 (1977. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York) MoMa.org says “the protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen.” The question then becomes, who is the protagonist? It could be?the actress being portrayed, the artist herself, or the idea of a woman preening in order to present herself a certain way. In essence, all three?possibilities require?acting and the lines blur as to where one ends and the others begin. Also,?in?Sherman’s choice of a?kitchen setting, this woman seems out of place. even in her apron. She is too glamorous?to be surrounded by typical?household items and, against the barren walls, she becomes the only?aesthetic thing of?beauty?in the room. While the surrounding items do little to help define?who she is, they do tell who she is not. Or perhaps, to read it another way,?the items do define her everyday life?while?being a celebrity is not her true self. The one?truth that holds fast for all possibilities is that it is impossible?to know who this person really is.

With?this one, Untitled Film Still #16. 1978. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the same questions are called into play. As a posed object, the camera control is in Sherman’s right hand,?revealing?more directly that she is also the subject.?Point of view shifts to the floor here, offering a more?voyeuristic?peek into the domestic life of this celebrity. She looks away, denying that she is posing for the camera when she is obviously controlling?all that?is seen. We sit at her feet looking up in awe at her?formally centered placement, perfect posture?with one leg slightly in front of the other. The casual grip of?her cigarette suggests that?her stiff feminine posturing is a forced picture of casual relaxation and she holds this pose under the watchful eye of the formally posed?man on the wall. Each are confined within the social definitions of gender during this particular era and the message is?reminiscent of Cixous’ argument that language is structured around dichotomies that allow for no areas of overlap. As the creation of this collection drew to a close, Sherman said she had run out of clich?s to represent, reminding us also of Winterson’s reference to clich?d language and it’s limitation of our thoughts.

Sherman continually explores these themes in her later photography making?a more blatant attack on the assumed “realism” in representation. In Untitled #225 (1990. Color photograph. Collection Philip and Beatrice Gersh, Beverly Hills.) this disturbing?model appears to be a well dress?aristocrat from another century wearing a great deal of make-up and a wig.?It becomes difficult to identify where the artificial parts of this woman end and the real begin. The unreal appearance of the head and the more obvious artificial breast makes one question, is this even Sherman posing??The figure?is also a mother, offering her?artificial breast to an unseen child as if to say motherhood is only one aspect of a whole woman, not her full identity. Wealth, jewels, a fine wig and clothing are not reliable identifiers either. As they are nothing more than commodities, does the woman in wearing them then become a commodity herself?

Moving away from?reference to?realism altogether, Sherman’s woman becomes fully artificial, as does she, each replaced by?the same?doll. The pornographic and exposed positioning of Untitled #255 (1992) equates the “reality” of sex mags to that of posed plastic. The lack of reality is as exposed as the model itself and yet the demand for such “recreations” of sexual events inspires vigorous?capitalist reproduction. This replacement also calls into question the authenticity of the artist’s role?in representation, drawing attention to the lack of realism that occurs when objects are selectively chosen for representation. The model looks away from the camera to?demonstrate, once again, a denial of the artificial situation.

Interestingly,?using a doll as an unrealistic representation of a human being, although it seems to be a drastic difference of subject/object?from the first pictured above, is no different in concept.?Sherman brilliantly exposes photographic?”realism”?as equally flawed in all.

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So far this?semester, our class?has covered:

• John Barth’s short story, “Lost in the Fun House”
• Jeannette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body
• and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club.?

To help define what postmodern means we have explored excerpts from:

• Simon Malpas’ book, The Postmodern (2005)
• H?l?ne Cixous? critique “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays” (1975)
• Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979)
• Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991).
• and Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics of Postmodernism (1988)

How?do I cohesively make sense of all this????Having drank fully from the fire hose for weeks on end, I wonder… Will I digest or?blow??This post?is where?I just vomit in my mouth a little.

As Malpas explains, “at the heart of identity there is a ?thinking I? that experiences, conceptualizes and interacts with the world” (Malpas, 57). Consequently, running rampant throughout postmodern fiction is the question of this subject’s reliability as an authority?representing truth.

• Barth’s narrator, Ambrose,?is at once a child and an adult, interweaving the blind?experience of?”living in the moment”?with 20/20 hindsight?and calling attention, through various narrative devices, to the limitations of the narrating subject both as child and adult, in other words, as narrator looking in at the main character and main character being himself.
• Winterson complicates her narrator by creating a nongender-specific bisexual who objectifies?the beloved, Louise, pitting the power of subject?vs. object, one against the other, both creating and destroying the linguistic barrier to?fully realizing true love.
• Palahniuk splits?his narrator’s identity into two dueling?subjects within the same body who both objectify not only Marla, but each other, creating a power triangle rather than a single identifiable?power source.

By complicating?the subject, these authors use fiction?to turn?the subject?in on itself and reveal it’s limitations. The point for the reader is that perspective and?representation are not natural ways of reaching some sort of truth, but are cultural devices?that, until postmodernism hit the stage, were accepted?as natural. The most we can hope for, as Stephen Colbert often points out, is mere “truthiness” (or “falsiness” as the following parody explains), which is called into question each time subjectivity becomes decentered by an alternate?version of the?traditional subject. (Hello, Derrida!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8]

Sexuality is also addressed in each piece, not just in terms of masculinity or femininity, but where the two overlap. According to theorist H?l?ne Cixous:

Traditionally, the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the opposition ? a culture?s values are premised on an organisation of thought in which descriptions of the feminine are determined by masculine categories of order, opposition and hierarchy. (Malpas, 72)

Lyotard says that metanarratives order the world for a particular culture and not all cultures order the world in the same way. Because of this he believes reality is not real, that it is rather ?simplicity, communicability? (75) in the name of the ?unity of experience? (72) and that the postmodern ?puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself? (81).

• Barth calls masculinity into question by addressing the subservience of women in the ’50s and how that defines the angered narrator’s role as he matures socially in contrast with what he feels differently internally.?
• Winterson’s non-specifically gendered and bisexual narrator?draws attention to the?dysfunction of defining through opposition, creating a world of confusion for the reader while, at the same time, pointing out the problem.
• Palahniuk’s split identity, one masculinized and one feminized, are?embodied within one male person which shows that neither masculinity nor femininity encompass fully what comprises the essence of a human being.

These narrators struggle with the idea?that identity is formed through the constriction of language and social mapping?according to opposing?genders. Each illustrates that society provides no useful language or ordering of our world to address these grey areas. Postmodern work obviously strives to draw attention to the gap between the grand narrative and what actually exists.

And, although there are many more threads to follow, the HUGE question of history (revered by Jameson as fact of lived experience) versus historicity (truthiness and the closest we can get to truth) is the last item I have time to duscuss. Jameson argues that the democratization of art subjects it?to the corruption of marketing and capitalism. They are inseparable?to the detriment of?world cultures and history through?depthless representation and pastiche unless we map how the depthless came to be, “in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion” (54). SOOO, the question of historical validity appears repeatedly in our fiction selections.

• Barth criticizes history by describing the role of generations of copulation in constructing social understanding of sexuality.
• Winterson explores the narrator’s serial monogamy and only in breaking the tradition does he/she find love.
• Palahniuk creates Tyler Durden who desperately wants to break free from history to redefine it from his point of view.

According to Malpas, Hutcheon?argues that parody is not dead, it is now focused to use form?to reveal a failure of form. She also finds great value studying?the unrepresentable in fiction, as?much as that?which has been represented as “history,” because both employ the same narrative devices (Malpas, 25-26). In the fiction we have read, we can see this parody in action, where our authors provide recognition of the power forms hold, and turn around to employ these forms to point out the flaws within them. We’ll talk more about this next week when we read more of Hutcheon.

Other pan drippings, grey in color, that deserve to make it into the gravy bowl are

• body/soul connections
• bodily parts in gender definition,
• disease: death in life and life in death
• and many, many more.

Sadly, the repair man is here and I have to supervise the fixing of shit.

Forget?about driving a?Prius and putting solar panels on?the roof. After a looming history of Earthly abuse,?destroying something beautiful?at?Fight Club?becomes the?impetus?for Project Mayhem’s recycling program.

Pounding that kid, I wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every?endangered panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species and every?whale or dolphin that gave up and?ran itself aground. … Don’t think of this as extinction. Think of this as downsizing. … For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet and now the world expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every used drop of motor oil. … And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was?born. (115)

Do you think this was Al Gore’s motivation?

Tyler has a plan that solves the whole darn mess. He calls it Project Mayhem. If killing is part of capitalism, which he so honestly embraces (unlike?real-life?CEOs of globalization), why not use?dead bodies to fertilize the herbs that add?fragrance to lyposuctioned collagen which, once turned into soap, not only becomes an ironic tool for cleanup, it also becomes the commodification of wealthy desires sold right back?to the rich. Further, by recycling the basic tenets of capitalism, the added “Tyler Durden Bonus” is that?profit isn’t lining corporate pockets. Instead, it is?directly distributed among?Project Mayhem’s labor force. They are?no longer an underclass but recycled and heralded by Tyler as a society free from traditionally infused marketing desires. Death, life, and finance are all redistributed and reused.

If that’s not recycling, what is?