The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary
The Passing of Postmodernism addresses the increasingly prevalent assumption that a period marked by poststructuralism and metafiction has passed and that literature and film are once again engaging sincerely with issues of ethics and politics. In discussions of various twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, directors, and theorists—from Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek to Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch—Josh Toth demonstrates that a certain utopian spirit persisted within, and actually defined, the postmodern project. Just as modernism was animated by an idealistic belief that it could finally realize the utopia beckoning on the horizon, postmodernism was compelled by an equally utopian belief that it could finally reject the possibility of all such illusory ideals. Toth argues that this specter of an impossible future is and must remain both possible and impossible, a ghostly promise of what is always still to come.

Josh Toth teaches literature and critical theory at Grant MacEwan College and is coeditor (with Neil Brooks) of The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism.
1100351698
The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary
The Passing of Postmodernism addresses the increasingly prevalent assumption that a period marked by poststructuralism and metafiction has passed and that literature and film are once again engaging sincerely with issues of ethics and politics. In discussions of various twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, directors, and theorists—from Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek to Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch—Josh Toth demonstrates that a certain utopian spirit persisted within, and actually defined, the postmodern project. Just as modernism was animated by an idealistic belief that it could finally realize the utopia beckoning on the horizon, postmodernism was compelled by an equally utopian belief that it could finally reject the possibility of all such illusory ideals. Toth argues that this specter of an impossible future is and must remain both possible and impossible, a ghostly promise of what is always still to come.

Josh Toth teaches literature and critical theory at Grant MacEwan College and is coeditor (with Neil Brooks) of The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism.
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The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary

The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary

by Josh Toth
The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary

The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary

by Josh Toth

eBook

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Overview

The Passing of Postmodernism addresses the increasingly prevalent assumption that a period marked by poststructuralism and metafiction has passed and that literature and film are once again engaging sincerely with issues of ethics and politics. In discussions of various twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, directors, and theorists—from Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek to Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch—Josh Toth demonstrates that a certain utopian spirit persisted within, and actually defined, the postmodern project. Just as modernism was animated by an idealistic belief that it could finally realize the utopia beckoning on the horizon, postmodernism was compelled by an equally utopian belief that it could finally reject the possibility of all such illusory ideals. Toth argues that this specter of an impossible future is and must remain both possible and impossible, a ghostly promise of what is always still to come.

Josh Toth teaches literature and critical theory at Grant MacEwan College and is coeditor (with Neil Brooks) of The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781438430379
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Publication date: 03/24/2010
Series: SUNY series in Postmodern Culture
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 210
File size: 388 KB

About the Author

Josh Toth teaches literature and critical theory at Grant MacEwan University and is coeditor (with Neil Brooks) of The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1.The Phantom Project Returning: The Passing (On) of the Still Incomplete Project of Modernity

Introduction
Ruptures and Specters
Exorcisms Without End
The (Phantom) Project Still Incomplete

2. Spectral Circumventions (of the Specter): Poststructuralism, Derrida, and the Project Renewed

Poststructuralism and/as Postmodernism
Private Irony All the Way Down?
The Force of Derrida’s Indecision

3. Writing of the Ghost (Again): The Failure of Postmodern

Metafiction and the Narrative of Renewalism
Neither Logocentric nor Logo Centric
From an Ethics of Perversity to an Ethics of Indecision
Metafiction’s Failure and the Rise of Neo-Realism
The Project of Renewalism
A Conclusion . . . Perhaps

Notes
Works Cited
Index

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