pynchon-l-digest V2 #8706

[Dave Monroe]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Krafft, John M. <krafftjm at muohio.edu> wrote:

> I may be a little behind, following via digests and all, but did somebody ask about the post-nation-state? (The "From" line gets deleted in the digests, so sorry to have to ask.) Must reading, then, is Sascha Poehlmann's exceptionally fine, lyrical and thorough  2010 book _Pynchon's Postnational Imagination_.

... paging M. Cissell + M. Kohut:

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1204&msg=163926

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1204&msg=163929

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1204&msg=163939

Pynchon’s Postnational Imagination
Dissertation project
Sascha Pöhlmann, LMU Munich (poehlmann at lmu.de)

Abstract

The term postnationalism is most often used to denote the time after
nationalism, and more rarely to signify the time after the
nation-state; however, the possibility of a postnationalism that
actively challenges the concept of the nation has not been considered
enough by far. James Clifford stated that one should use the term
postnational in a way similar to postcolonial, which indicates that
postnationalism is not only concerned with describing the world after
the national, but with actively questioning a world which is
thoroughly nationalized in countless ways.

In my dissertation, I aim to construct such an active postnational
theory first, and then show how the postnational imagination finds
expression in two of Thomas Pynchon’s novels, Gravity’s Rainbow and
Mason & Dixon. While postnationalism certainly is not limited to the
study of literature, it is a field that has played a significant role
in the construction of the concept of nation-ness, and therefore is an
important site to contest it.

One of the main concerns of postnationalism is to attack the
legitimacy of nation-ness as a metanarrative. It enforces rigid
identities and very often relies on essentialism despite its clearly
constructed nature; it creates oppressive hierarchies and provides the
state with a discourse powerful enough to allow its individuals to
give their lives for it. The national world order and the national
world view prevail despite the countless transnational and global
flows of people, information, capital, etc. that characterize
contemporary life. Therefore, the identities and frameworks of thought
allowed by the epistemē of nation-ness are insufficient for an
understanding of global and local phenomena. What is necessary is both
an expansion of our framework of thought as well as a challenge of the
old model.

Pynchon’s novels provide plenty of material for a postnational
reading: they question the national with their explicitly global
outlook, they attack national essentialism by showing the processes of
nation-building, they rewrite nationalized histories, they uncover
nationalist discourse as a political and economical tool of power,
they challenge the narratives of capitalism and rationality which
historically form the main conditions of nation-ness, and they present
alternative worlds to the nationalized one we know. Pynchon uses the
term “parageography” in Mason & Dixon, which means superimposing
“alternative Maps of the World […] upon the more familiar ones.” This
summarizes the literary strategy of a postnational imagination to
question the ideology behind traditional (national) modes of ordering
and representing the world.

http://www.amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/postgrad_doc/abschl_literatur/abstractpoehlmann.doc

Pynchon s Postnational Imagination
Autor : Pöhlmann, Sascha /

Fachgebiet Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Aus der Reihe Americ. Stud. – A Monograph Ser.
Heft 188
Seiten/Umfang 381 S.

Erschienen 2010

Einband: Gb
ISBN: 978-3-8253-5771-9
Preis: 48.00 Euro

Pynchon’s Postnational Imagination is the first monograph to
critically analyze Thomas Pynchon’s novels with regard to issues of
nations, nationality, national identity, nationalism, and the very
idea of the national: nation-ness. It argues that Pynchon’s fiction
can best be conceptualized as postnational, that is, as working
towards dismantling the hegemony of nation-ness as a metanarrative.

The study seeks to establish a critical theory of postnationalism that
helps conceptualize this complex literary practice.It combines
established theories of nation-ness with recent attempts to think
beyond the nation, drawing on the ideas of Renan, Gellner and Anderson
as well as Habermas, Albrow, Appadurai, and Hardt and Negri in order
to offer a viable postnational theory that is as pertinent to literary
studies as to other fields. It presents various postnational
strategies,most notably that of parageography, to show in detailed
critical readings of Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) and Mason & Dixon (1997)
that Pynchon’s novels both exemplify and describe a postnational
imagination.

https://www.innovativmedia.de/winter/englisch/frame.htm