Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 104A, Prof. Maslan
2 March 2011
These are some brief, highly subjective, very incomplete notes, based on my own personal opinion and our section discussions this week. Everything should be taken as provisional. The basic structure of the table follows notes from David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity.
| (examples of modernity) | Fordist modernity | Flexible postmodernity | (examples of postmodernity) |
|---|---|---|---|
| White folks in Their Eyes | hierarchy | anarchy | it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery.(Lot 49, 101) |
The Bundren family; numerous characters in Lot 49; the closed portionof Paul D.'s head (Beloved, 49) | paranoia/alienation/symptom | schizophrenia/decentering/ desire | Mucho Maas; Beloved II's monologue; Darl; Paul D's desire for freedom of desire (Beloved 191); images of bodily fragmentation in Beloved (e.g., 101, 157, 184-5, 192); Inverarity's voices |
| White folks in Their Eyes; white folks in Beloved | state power/trade unions | financial power/individualism | Tristero; shady drug companies in Lot 49 |
| The $2 obtained by hauling a load in As I Lay Dying | ethics/money commodity | aesthetics/monies of credit & account | Inverarity's real estate fortune |
| Addie Bundren; Anse's teeth | god the Father/materiality | the Holy Ghost/immateriality | Pierce Inverarity |
| Faulkner; Cash Bundren | production/originality/ authority | reproduction/pastiche/ eclecticism | Pynchon |
| White folks | interest group politics/semantics | charismatic politics/rhetoric | Baby Suggs; Allen Ginsberg |
| The U.S. Postal Service | centralization/totalization | Decentralization/deconstruction | W.A.S.T.E. |
| Janie's quest | metatheory/narrative/depth | language games/image/surface | Tristero stamps; Oedipa's quest; Sethe's evasions (e.g., Beloved 69) |
| Stanley Koteks; Cash Bundren | technical-scientific rationality | pluralistic otherness | Oedipa wondering what undergrounds apart from those she knew of communicated by the WASTE system(Lot 49, 101); Black politics in Beloved |
| What words point to in Addie's monologue | signified/industry/Protestant work ethic | signifier/temporary contract/electronic reproduction |  |