PostModern Culture article

[kcrosby at wppost.depaul.edu]

I just stopped by the web site of PostModern Culture, an
e-journal, and found an article about _Vineland_ by James
Berger.  Didn't read the article yet, but the abstract follows. 
Also saw another article that might be interesting on
madness & automation.

The URL for the journal is:
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/contents.all.html

Happy browsing--


James Berger, "Cultural Trauma and the 'Timeless Burst':
Pynchon's 
	Revision of Nostalgia in _Vineland_"

     ABSTRACT: This essay reevaluates the political and
     aesthetic implications of nostalgia.  It argues that
Thomas
     Pynchon's _Vineland_, a novel often criticized for its
     nostalgic portrayal of the 1960s, in fact revises
     conventional notions of nostalgia so as to render a more
     complex sense of how historical memory is transmitted.
     Crucial to this revision is Pynchon's representation of
     historical trauma.  _Vineland_ returns to the 1960s not as
     to a site of wholeness and plenitude, but rather as to a
     site of catastrophe and betrayal.  The moment of
historical
     trauma insistently returns.  And yet this same traumatic
     moment is simultaneously a moment of utopian
possibility.
     This link of catastrophe and possibility in Pynchon bears
     resemblance to Walter Benjamin's notion of "jetztzeit,"
the
     critical, possibly redemptive "time of the now" that can
     emerge at moments of crisis far removed from each other.
     In _Vineland_, however, this moment is always mediated
     through the ideological lens through which it is received.
     Thus, _Vineland_ shows us the destabilizing political and
     cultural conflicts of the 1960s explicitly through the
     perspectives of 1980s consumer culture (those "fabulous
     60s") and the political culture of Reaganism (the
dangerous
     60s).  The traumatic/utopian returns of history cannot
     escape these ideological vessels; yet neither can they be
     fully contained by them.  _Vineland_'s clear longing for
     the 1960s is neither quietist nor reactionary.  The reunion
     that ends the novel is a reunion with a traumatic past
     (that has been partly and problematically "worked
through")
     and with the sense of political possibilities that flashed
     into being at the same pivotal moments.  --JB

Phoebe Sengers, "Madness and Automation: On
Institutionalization"

     ABSTRACT: This paper examines the ways in which
totalizing
     institutions attempt to appropriate individuals, and the
     extent to which individual subjects can resist or subvert
     that appropriation.  A paradigmatic site of totalization is
     the psychiatric institution.  This institution mechanizes
     the patient; it reduces the patient to a sign.  The
     patient's identity is restructured to enable absorption
     into the workings of the psychiatric machine. Breakdown
     occurs when the machine exceeds its own logic; at the
same
     moment, the patient exceeds the institution's totalizing
     grasp.  The very move to totalization leads to blind spots
     in which the patient can learn to move.  The analysis is
     first made at the level of a specific instance of
     psychiatric institutionalization, then repeated on the
     plane of theory to show that it holds in all situations
     where institutions attempt to totalize and circumscribe
     individuals.  --PS

                          INSTRUCTIONS

HOW TO GET PMC BY GOPHER:

If you have access to a gopher client, you will find PMC's
gopher
server at:

     jefferson.village.virginia.edu

Once you've connected, choose "Publications of the
Institute" and
then choose "Postmodern Culture": you will find a menu
listing all
published issues of the journal, and within each issue, full
text
of all the issue's contents.


HOW TO GET PMC BY WORLD-WIDE WEB:

If you have access to a World-Wide Web client, you will find
the
hypermedia version of PMC at:

     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/contents.all.html

Once you've connected, you will find all back issues
arranged by
volume and issue, but also arranged by category (all the
reviews,
all the popular culture columns, all the creative works, etc.).  
Free clients for the Web are available from
FTP.NCSA.UIUC.EDU,
for Windows, Macintosh, and Unix platforms.  To use
Mosaic, you
will need a direct (ethernet-type) connection to the internet
(or
SLIP--Serial Line Internet Protocol--software and a lot of
patience).  If you would like to see a text-only version of the 
Web PMC, connect to the gopher server and choose "Lynx
session" 
from the main menu: you'll find PMC under "Publications of
the
Institute."