The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary (S U N Y Series in Postmodern Culture)

Examines the increasingly prevalent assumption that postmodernism is over and that literature and film are once again engaging sincerely with issues of ethics and politics. 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. The Passing of Postmodernism......Page 5 Contents......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 11 Introduction......Page 13 Ruptures and Specters......Page 19 Exorcisms Without End......Page 30 The (Phantom) Project Still Incomplete......Page 35 Poststructuralism and/as Postmodernism......Page 49 Private Irony All the Way Down?......Page 57 The Force of Derrida’s Indecision......Page 73 Neither Logocentric nor Logo Centric......Page 87 From an Ethics of Perversity to an Ethics of Indecision......Page 101 Metafi ction’s Failure and the Rise of Neo-Realism......Page 118 The Project of Renewalism......Page 136 A Conclusion . . . Perhaps......Page 149 Notes......Page 159 Works Cited......Page 195 B......Page 205 D......Page 206 E......Page 207 I......Page 208 M......Page 209 P......Page 210 R......Page 211 Z......Page 212 The Phantom Project Returning: The Passing (on) Of The Still Incomplete Project Of Modernity -- Spectral Circumventions (of The Specter): Poststructuralism, Derrida And The Project Renewed -- Writing Of The Ghost (again): The Failure Of Postmodern Metafiction And The Narrative Of Renewalism. Josh Toth. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.