The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism (Postmodern Studies 40)

319 Pages·2007·2.51 MB·English

by  Neil Brooks

The Mourning After
Postmodern Studies 40
Series
edited by
Theo D’haen
and
Hans Bertens
The Mourning After
Attending the Wake
of Postmodernism
Edited by
Neil Brooks and Josh Toth
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2162-4
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007
Printed in The Netherlands
To Danica and to Claire, David, and James
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Acknowledgements ix
Permissions and Illustrations xi-xii

Arriving and Socializing at the Wake

1 Introduction: A Wake and Renewed?
Josh Toth & Neil Brooks 1

2 Postmodernism in a Fundamentalist Arena
Paul Maltby 15

3 Postmodernism in the Age of Distracting
Discourses
Robert McLaughlin 53

4 Attending to Suffering in/at the Wake of
Postmodernism
Jennifer Geddes 65

5 Soul Service: Foucault’s “Care of the Self”
as Politics and Ethics
Jane Flax 79

Viewing and Reading at the Wake

6 Mood Swings: The Aesthetics of Ambient
Emergence
N. Katherine Hayles & Todd Gannon 99
7 New York, Los Angeles, and Other Toxicities:
Revisiting Postmodernism in Rushdie’s Fury
and Shalimar the Clown
Gavin Keulks 143

8 Nothing to Write Home About: Impossible
Reception in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House
of Leaves
William G. Little 169

9 Turncoat: Why Jonathan Franzen Finally Said
“No” to Po-Mo
Robert Rebein 201

10 Serving Pi(e) at the Wake of Postmodernism:
Mathematics and Mysticism at the End of the
20th Century
Clayton Dion 223

Mourning and Praying at the Wake

11 Derrida and the Ethics of Mourning After
Dawne McCance 249

12 Postmodernism and the Crisis of Belief:
Neo-Realism vs. the Real
Clayton Crockett 263

13 The Weakness of God: A Theology of the
Event
John D. Caputo 285

Contributors 303
Acknowledgements

The support and guidance of many people have made this project a
possibility. We would like to offer explicitly our sincere gratitude to
Laurel Mitchell for her excellent copy-editing and Clay Dion for his
creative input. Thomas Carmichael, Tilottama Rajan, Ramona
Lumpkin, Trish Fulton, Jef Clarke, Joseph Buttigieg, Jim Collins,
Cecily Nicholson and Stephen D’Arcy are all colleagues who have
provided us with both insight and inspiration. Many thanks need to go
out, also, to Theo D’haen, Hans Bertens and Marieke Schilling at
Rodopi for their kind encouragement and to our contributors for their
excellent papers, their goodwill and their positive feedback. Finally,
the support of our families has been constant and invaluable.