The Mourning After Postmodern Studies 40 Series edited by Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens The Mourning After Attending the Wake of Postmodernism Edited by Neil Brooks and Josh Toth Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Cover design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2162-4 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands To Danica and to Claire, David, and James This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements ix Permissions and Illustrations xi-xii Arriving and Socializing at the Wake 1 Introduction: A Wake and Renewed? Josh Toth & Neil Brooks 1 2 Postmodernism in a Fundamentalist Arena Paul Maltby 15 3 Postmodernism in the Age of Distracting Discourses Robert McLaughlin 53 4 Attending to Suffering in/at the Wake of Postmodernism Jennifer Geddes 65 5 Soul Service: Foucault’s “Care of the Self” as Politics and Ethics Jane Flax 79 Viewing and Reading at the Wake 6 Mood Swings: The Aesthetics of Ambient Emergence N. Katherine Hayles & Todd Gannon 99 7 New York, Los Angeles, and Other Toxicities: Revisiting Postmodernism in Rushdie’s Fury and Shalimar the Clown Gavin Keulks 143 8 Nothing to Write Home About: Impossible Reception in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves William G. Little 169 9 Turncoat: Why Jonathan Franzen Finally Said “No” to Po-Mo Robert Rebein 201 10 Serving Pi(e) at the Wake of Postmodernism: Mathematics and Mysticism at the End of the 20th Century Clayton Dion 223 Mourning and Praying at the Wake 11 Derrida and the Ethics of Mourning After Dawne McCance 249 12 Postmodernism and the Crisis of Belief: Neo-Realism vs. the Real Clayton Crockett 263 13 The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event John D. Caputo 285 Contributors 303 Acknowledgements The support and guidance of many people have made this project a possibility. We would like to offer explicitly our sincere gratitude to Laurel Mitchell for her excellent copy-editing and Clay Dion for his creative input. Thomas Carmichael, Tilottama Rajan, Ramona Lumpkin, Trish Fulton, Jef Clarke, Joseph Buttigieg, Jim Collins, Cecily Nicholson and Stephen D’Arcy are all colleagues who have provided us with both insight and inspiration. Many thanks need to go out, also, to Theo D’haen, Hans Bertens and Marieke Schilling at Rodopi for their kind encouragement and to our contributors for their excellent papers, their goodwill and their positive feedback. Finally, the support of our families has been constant and invaluable.