Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology

Literature today is a very different concept from that of only a generation ago, and this difference is attributed usually to ′postmodernism′ as a powerful signifier of the radically new and challenging. Most radical of all is the possibility that the very notion of literature is rendered untenable by postmodernism. How did this possibility arise? Who are the key figures responsible for its emergence; which are the key texts of its expression? This Anthology provides ways of responding to such questions and at the same time to show that postmodern literary theory cannot be understood in terms of an archive or a method. Its defining feature is an attitude of questioning, which neither derives from a manifesto nor constitutes a movement. Postmodern literary theory hasn′t come from nowhere. Its beginnings lie in certain ideas associated with the likes of Barthes and Foucault in the 1970s, and in the disavowal of values and the questioning of literature associated with the eighteenth–century Romantics. Although postmodern literary theory does have some foundational texts and founding figures, these work to undo the very notion of ′foundations′ – including the very notion of literature itself. It is this work (rather than some archive) which Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology is designed to show. What is anthologized here, in short, are concepts, arguments, practices and debates. Students will be guided to read each chapter as a particular response to a specific problem or concept relating to the overall theme: that postmodernism is concerned with only one thing – the question of literature.

Preface. Acknowledgements. Introduction: on the Way to Genre. Part I: Genre: . 1. Genre: Phillipe Lacoue–Labarthe and Jean–Luc Nancy. 2. Communication Without Communication′: Jean–François Lyotard. 3. From One Identity to Another: Julia Kristeva. 4. Rhizome: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Part II: Ethics: . 5. Rewriting Wrong: On the Ethics of Literary Reversion: Steven Connor. 6. The Ethics of Alterity: Thomas Docherty. 7. Three Genres: Luce Irigaray. 8. Writing and the Law: Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka and Lispector: Hélène Cixous. Part III: Cyber: . 9. Watching the Detectives: Kristin Ross. 10. Feminism for the Incurably Informed: Anne Balsamo. 11. POSTcyberPUNKmodernISM: Brian McHale. 12. Miracles: Hot Air and Histories of the Improbable: Tony Thwaites. Part IV: Text: . 13: From work to Text: Roland Barthes. 14. Do Postmodern Genres Exist?: Ralph Coren. 15. The Literature of Exhaustion: John Barth. 16. Writing Against Simulacrum: The Place of Literature and Literary Theory in the Postmodern Age: Jenaro Talens. Part V: Post: . 17. Postmodern value: Catherine Burgass. 18. In Search of the Lyotard Archipelago, or: How to Live with Paradox and Learn to Like It: William Rasch. 19. Preface to Anti–Oedipus: Michel Foucault. 20. Analytic Ethics: Alec Mchoul. Part VI: Postscript: . 21. Note on the Meaning of ′Post–′: Jean–François Lyotard. 22. The Romantic Movement at the End of History: Jerome Christensen. Select Bibliography. Index.

Niall Lucy is Head of the School of Arts at Murdoch University. He is the author of Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers 1997) and Debating Derrida (1995).

′This is a timely and well–constructed anthology which carves out a distinctive niche among the many recent books on postmodermism....It finds room for a wide variety of arguments, approaches and critical viewpoints and thereby encourages readers to form their own judgement as to the implications of postmodernist thinking for literary criticism and theory.′ Chris Norris, University of Wales, Cardiff <!––end––>