PhD Candidate, English Language and Literature
Monday, April 21
3241 Angell Hall
Daniel's Travesty, Doctorow's Satire: A Reconsideration of the Politics of Postmodern Parody
E L Doctorow's The Book of Daniel is one of the foundational texts for our dominant account of the politics of postmodern fiction's form: Linda Hutcheon's claim that postmodern fiction privileges parody as a way of drawing power away from the hegemonic discourses that constitute official history. In this paper I treat the novel instead as a pre-emptive critique of the idea that mere language-games or mere discursification have any value for the recuperation of historical possibility. I then examine how this critique yet offers grounds for optimism about non-mimetic fiction's ability to help us do that recuperation.
Drafts are available for download at the USists website:
or from Google Drive here:https://drive.google.com/a/umich.edu/file/d/0B3FAAv0dKLHXU081blFFNWoyWm8/edit?usp=sharing