Hystories

[Jan Klimkowski]

Eric sez:
>Need to get a buzz of modern culture, paranoia and
>hysterical delusion (Deluze-ian?). My very fine
>senior colleague Willard McCarty has recommended
>Elaine Showalter's new book, Hystories, and having
>happily delved, I pass that recommendation on to the list.

As a (science) hack, I have to disagree.  Showalter's Hystories is   
medicine as literary/cultural criticism.  To say, as Showalter does in   
the book, that Gulf War Syndrome is a hysterical disease (ie essentially   
a late C20 manifestation of Freud's hysteria) is simply arrogance. Since   
the military have consistently, ahem, withheld data about   
chemical/biological exposure of troops, whilst imposing a drug regime   
that we know to have been medically incompetent and almost certainly   
dangerous, it's impossible to say at this stage what GWS is.  But   
Showalter knows: it's hysteria.

Indeed, Hystories reminded me of those Pynchon critics who construct   
marvellous theories about paranoid thinking in TRP's oeuvre whilst   
largely ignoring the fact that Pynchon's conspiracies (the Herero   
genocide, Thurn und Taxis, war as business etc etc) are real and   
documentable.

jan