English 624-001
Seminar in Modern Literature: Postmodern Fictions
Instr: Tatham, Cam
Office: CRT 392; 229-3504
e-mail: ctatham@uwm.edu
Office Hours: T&R; 2:45-3:30pm and by appointment
Course Information: T&R; 3:30-4:45pm; CRT 368
Course Description
Fiction constitutes a way of looking at the world. ...Realistic fiction presupposed chronological time as the medium of a plotted narrative, an irreducible individual psyche as the subject of its characterization, and, above all, the ultimate, concrete reality of things as the object and rationale of its description. In the world of post-realism, however, all of these absolutes have become absolutely problematic. The contemporary writer--the writer who is acutely in touch with the life of which he is part--is forced to start from scratch: Reality doesn't exist, time doesn't exist, personality doesn't exist. God was the omniscient author, but he died; now no one knows the plot, and since our reality lacks the sanction of a creator, there's no guarantee of the authenticity of the received version. Time is reduced to presence, the series of discontinuous moments. Time is no longer purposive, and so there is no destiny, only chance. Reality is, simply, our experience, and objectivity is, of course, an illusion. ... In view of these annihilations, it should be no surprise that literature, also, does not exist--how could it? There is only reading and writing, which are things we do, like eating and making love, to pass the time, ways of maintaining a considered boredom in the face of the abyss. Not to mention a series of overwhelming social dislocations. Ronald Sukenick, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969) Et cetera. This course will examine certain experimental fictions - let's call them 'postmodern' without becoming overly obsessed with matters of definition - written in a period beginning in the 60's and continuing to the present. We could also call some of these texts 'metafictions' - that is, texts which foreground, even insist, on their textual status. We will see how these fictions 'deterritorialize' or 'deconstruct' various assumptions about reading and writing texts of all sorts. Complementing our exploration of such fictions will be an introduction to various postmodern/poststructural theorists - e.g., Hélène Cixous, Ihab Hassan, Donna Haraway, Jean Baudrillard, bell hooks, etc. Fundamental to the course (and assumed by many of the fictions) will be a paradoxical stance advocated by Jacques Derrida in his notorious response to Jean Hyppolite's question at the Structuralist Conference held at Johns Hopkins in 1966: "I am trying, precisely, to put myself at a point so that I do not know any longer where I am going." That such attitudes, to whatever extent they may be evidenced in these fictions, may be shockingly irresponsible will be one of the more problematic issues of this course. What does 'postmodernism' have to say to and about our post-9/11 world? Is that even a legitimate question? And so on. Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness. John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
Course Requirements
Regular Attendance (no more than two cuts allowed without subsequent grade penalty), participation in class discussion.- Participation in an on-line Discussion Forum, posting at least twice weekly.
- A research project focusing on a particular author in the context of a particular theorists. The resulting paper might in itself be plausibly 'postmodern.' 20 pages (graduate students will write 25 pages).
- Discussion Leader: for one class, you will be responsible to introduce what, to you, are interesting issues for the text assigned for that day, in order to generate a subsequent discussion.
Grade: Participation = 20%; Forum = 20%; Paper = 50%; Discussion Facilitator = 10%
Required Texts
Geyh, Leebron, Levy eds, Postmodern American Fiction (PAM)
Ronald Sukenick, 98.6
Raymond Federman, Take It or Leave It
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Alex Shakar, The Savage Girl
Carole Maso, The Art Lover
Toni Morrison, Jazz
