University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
COLLECTIVITY AND FORM: POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF COLLECTIVITY IN MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI, AMIRI BARAKA, AND THOMAS PYNCHON By JAMES LINER A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 James Liner 2 To Ada, whose dad has been working on this dissertation all her life 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my doctoral committee for their support, encouragement, and generous criticism throughout this project: my director, Phil Wegner; Susan Hegeman; Eric Kligerman; Barbara Mennel; and my off-campus reader, Tim Murphy. It was under Phil’s guidance that I began my serious study of the work of Fredric Jameson, while I have Tim to thank for introducing me to the thought of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri as well as the literature of Amiri Baraka, not to mention introducing me to Hardt himself. In addition to thoughtful critiques offered by my committee, this dissertation has also benefited from comments, suggestions, questions, and conversations among several of my colleagues and close friends. Thanks go to Wes Beal, Aaron Cerny, Jordan Dominy, Andrew Gordon, Vince Leitch, Regina Martin, Mike Mayne, Emily McCann, Patrick McHenry, Matt Mingus, and Christina van Houten. I owe special thanks to Aaron and Andrew, who labored with me through a first reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day and commented on a very early version of what was to become the interpretation of that novel I offer in this dissertation. If there are others whom I fail to mention, it is because my memory has faltered, not because their contributions were insignificant. I would be remiss, at the outset of a dissertation on collectivity, not to thank two collectivities at the University of Florida that immeasurably enriched the time I spent there: Graduate Assistants United and the Marxist Reading Group. Finally, for their love, patience, and unwavering support, I would like to thank the family and friends who have made my work on this project possible: Denesha Alexander, Cindy and David Dykes, Josh and Rosie Green, Jenni and Jason Holman, 4 Dawnita Liner, Jolie Liner, Nolan Liner, Dan Radford, and Steve Sexton. My parents, Peggy and Jerry Liner, have been inexhaustible sources of encouragement. Most of all, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my partner, Laura Grace Dykes, who has unflaggingly supported me through every step of this dissertation, up to and perhaps beyond the limits of human patience. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................... 7 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 8 ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................... 9 1 INTRODUCTION: A MINOR CURRENT IN POSTMODERNISM ........................... 11 2 FIGURING COLLECTIVITY: POLITICAL INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF FORM AND CONTENT ................................................................ 21 2.1 The Dialectic of Form and Content ............................................................... 23 2.2 Ideology, Contradiction, History ................................................................... 28 2.3 Political Interpretation................................................................................... 37 2.4 Figuring Collectivity—Proletariat and Multitude ............................................ 45 3 THE DIFFERENT PERSONS OF AMIRI BARAKA: COLLECTIVITY, SINGULARITY, AND BECOMING-MINOR ............................................................ 65 3.1 Minor Poetics ............................................................................................... 77 3.2 Identity and Singularity ................................................................................. 93 3.3 Different Persons—At Least Six of Them ................................................... 105 3.4 Molar and Molecular .................................................................................. 125 4 POSTMODERNISM AND THE PERSISTENCE OF UTOPIA: PERIODIZING THOMAS PYNCHON .......................................................................................... 130 4.1 Entropy, 1959–63—Early Stories, V. .......................................................... 143 4.2 Paranoia, 1966/1973—The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow ................ 163 4.3 Nostalgia, 1990/1997—Vineland, Mason & Dixon ...................................... 185 4.4 High and Late Postmodernism ................................................................... 226 4.5 Day, 2006/2009—Against the Day, Inherent Vice ...................................... 250 4.6 Pynchon and the Futures of Postmodernity................................................ 334 5 CONCLUSION: ON SINGULARITY, IDENTITY, AND ACTUALLY EXISTING POLITICS ............................................................................................................ 348 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................... 355 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ......................................................................................... 376 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 4-1 Narrative time and historical time in Inherent Vice ........................................... 343 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 2-1 Semiotic rectangle. ............................................................................................ 62 2-2 Semiotic rectangle with external syntheses. ...................................................... 62 2-3 Semiotic diagram of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. ................................................ 62 2-4 Semiotic rectangle mapped onto the three Lacanian orders. ............................. 63 2-5 Semiotic diagram of the form/content opposition. .............................................. 63 2-6 Semiotic rectangle of the form/content opposition, mapped onto Jameson’s three levels of interpretation from The Political Unconscious. ............................ 64 4-1 Delaware-wedge, map showing lines surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.. ............................................................................................. 340 4-2 Semiotic mapping of paranoia in The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. 341 4-3 Semiotic mapping of nostalgia in Vineland and Mason & Dixon. ..................... 341 4-4 Semiotic mapping of the metaphorics of day in Against the Day and Inherent Vice. ................................................................................................................ 342 8 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy COLLECTIVITY AND FORM: POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF COLLECTIVITY IN MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI, AMIRI BARAKA, AND THOMAS PYNCHON By James Liner May 2013 Chair: Phillip Wegner Major: English Collectivity and Form: Politics and Aesthetics of Collectivity in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Amiri Baraka, and Thomas Pynchon examines texts written during the period 1959–2009, a span roughly congruent with what is now called postmodernity. This dissertation reads the relation between form and content in theoretical and literary texts in an attempt to articulate conditions of possibility for collective praxis in our era. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of a “minor current” in postmodernism in order to provide a foundation for the political interpretations that follow. Next, Chapter 2 applies a unique version of formal analysis to the multitude, Hardt and Negri’s concept for collective opposition to contemporary global capitalism. Chapter 2 identifies both formal and political-historical functions of singularity (a poststructuralist conception of subjectivity), love (in a materialist, political guise), and democracy (both historical and utopian) as constituent elements of the multitude. Subsequently, the dissertation reads a literature of the multitude through the lenses developed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 argues that Baraka’s novel 6 Persons represents a novelistic experiment in collectivity, in terms of both its aesthetic form and 9 the ways in which it problematizes the relation between individual and collectivity. Significantly, subjectivity in Baraka is best conceived in terms of not individuality but Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of singularity. Finally, Chapter 4 adopts a broad historical perspective in order to periodize Pynchon’s novels. Pynchon embodies several characteristics of the postmodern, often on a grand scale. Therefore, Chapter 4 reads his corpus as a case study in postmodern contradiction. More specifically, Chapter 4 reads two strains of his work—the historical novels and the “California novels”—as representing not postmodernism but two postmodernisms: an optimistic, utopian postmodernism and a cynical, ideological postmodernism. Combining conventional historical chronology with conceptual and theoretical analysis, Chapter 4 proposes a dialectical evaluation of the possibilities for a global democracy of the multitude. Taken together, the chapters of Collectivity and Form attempt to contribute to our understanding of the conditions