The Works of Kathy Acker, Donald Barthelme and Don Delillo
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REPETITION IN POSTMODERN FICTION: THE WORKS OF KATHY ACKER, DONALD BARTHELME AND DON DELILLO By RICHARD ANTHONY DOONER, JR. 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 1993 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, Brandon Kershner, John Leavey, Elizabeth Langland, and Ofelia Schutte, for their helpful comments and willingness to read this dissertation in the middle of their own work. Without their patience and cooperation I would be at a loss, namely of a doctoral degree. The depth of my debt to my advisor, Daniel Cottom, I find inenarrable, although I am able to say that his clarity of vision has helped me not only to compose this text but to compose myself well enough to complete it. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that I have had the benefit of a vast support group of friends and family, and though I can scarcely find the words to thank them now, their encouragement made possible all of the words that comprise this text. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iv PREFACE 1 Notes 13 CHAPTER ONE "HISTORY'S OPPOSITE": KATHY ACKER'S PLAGIARISM 14 Plagiarizing Sources 20 Plagiarizing Self 28 Plagiarizing Institutions 78 Plagiarizing Myth 112 Notes 135 CHAPTER TWO "NO ONE KNOWS ENOUGH": DONALD BARTHELME AND THE FRAGMENTARY AGE 144 Fragments and Separation 158 Fragments and Re-situation 194 Fragments and Re- integration 229 Notes 254 CHAPTER THREE "IT WAS THAT COMPLEX": DON DELILLO AND POLAR EXTREMES. 264 Polar Extremes 264 The Echo Effect 273 The Knot 301 Consuming Mystery 329 Notes 3 68 BIBLIOGRAPHY 375 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 385 111 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 REPETITION IN POSTMODERN FICTION: THE WORKS OF KATHY ACKER, DONALD BARTHELME AND DON DELILLO By Richard Anthony Dooner, Jr. December, 1993 Chairman: Dr. Daniel Cottom Major Department: English This study examines the fictions of Kathy Acker, Donald Barthelme and Don DeLillo in light of the body of creative and critical practices that have come to be known as "postmodernism." It is motivated by the assumption that any alleged radical break from a dominant cultural perspective in the fictional strategies of a "new" era necessarily involves some degree of reduplication. Thus, exploring what constitutes the postmodern self through fiction unavoidably involves considering the cultural politics of repetition. This study contends that Acker, Barthelme and DeLillo realize that the seeming unity behind realistic fiction's depiction of the subject has always been a pose. Thus, they see the need to address the self and, almost simultaneously, to readdress it. The first address mimics the realistic iv novel's ploy of asserting an unequivocal self; the second re-images that self as a tenuous construct. In sum, Acker's methodology calls for her narrator's to attempt to embrace, critique, and then explode by excess the cultural roles allotted the female subject within a patriarchy. Barthelme attacks the integrity of the subject as formed within a patriarchal totality by exposing the hidden fragmented nature of the parts that compose that totality. And DeLillo attempts to unravel the syncretic narrative of social and technological progress underlying a postmodern capitalist totality by exposing how that totality actually denies the personal fulfillment that it contends to champion. PREFACE What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets For the past two decades, the polemics of postmodernism has dominated the cultural and intellectual scene. Much has been made, for example, of what exactly constitutes postmodern discourse and whether it is a continuation or radical break from modernity (these debates succeeding similar debates concerning attempts to locate and define modernity) . I do not pretend to be able to address sufficiently whether a social chcuige large enough to warrant the name of a new age has occurred. However, I am confident that enough of a change has occurred that %nriters in the last two decades have forged new strategies for intervention in the social sphere.' Yet if there is any truth behind the quotation from Eliot, defining postmodern practices will necessarily involve a retrospective analysis of the modes of knowledge and representation found in the periods generally recognized as preceding it, such as modernism £md romanticism. While one could conceivably follow this regress back indefinitely, 1 a more compelling option is to realize how any alleged radical break from a dominant culture involves some degree of repetition. In other words, defining oneself against a system inevitcibly will reproduce some qualities of that system. This inevitability is perhaps why the modernists' defiance of consxamerist culture, characterized by an insistence on the primacy of the will, led in one loathsome variant to fascism, a politics of total domination.^ And this is also why postmodern writers need to concern themselves with the cultural politics of repetition. Perhaps foremost among the issues raised because of the reduplicating power of culture, then, is the question of autonomy. Arguably, autonomy becomes a concern after a protracted transformation period in Europe during which the West came to realize "that society must form its own practices and grounds apart from any external determinants or influences" (PMAC 4) . This shift to an internal determination gave rise to two extremes of autonomy: that of the social order, in which the actions of individuals should be tied to the totality; and that of the individual, who is understood to be free only when she chooses her own ends and methods for obtaining them. The result of this shift is the rise of internecine battle grounds as a normative function of culture. For exeimple, let me paraphrase John McGowan's description of the development of what he calls "autonomous spheres." At some point, individuals find themselves poised 3 against what they see as a dominant culture and attempt to protect themselves against excessive social control. When these individuals make alliemces with those who share common interests, systems within culture develop to protect those interests, and these systems compete with each other. Finally, within these systems individuals come to compete against each other to determine the common interest, re- enacting the large scale battle in miniature.^ In other words, autonomy leads to inevitcible fragmentation, arising from the idea that there can be a common good. This process can be seen historically in the continual movements to restore cultural unity, such as romanticism and modernism. As I see it, the postmodern turn in this process of repetition is the recognition of the apparatus of the totality, the recognition of the assumptions that make social coherence dependent on fragmentation. Coupled with this awareness comes the insistence, based on the critical scrutiny likely to accompany such an awareness, that the totality, because it must be all inclusive, actually promotes continual reformation and so invites strategies that can radically alter it. In other words, postmodernism asks us to embrace a paradox, that repetition can be radically altering, in order to disrupt a paradox, that alteration can be radically the same. This paradox returns one to the (juestion of how much control individuals can exert over their destinies. In effect, the realist cornerstone of concrete reality is gone, replaced by the postmodern fragmentation of shifting Scinds. And this move is not merely one of theoretical sleight of hand. Postmodern writing's association with the demise of a stable referent for concrete reality has been hastened by sweeping tides of events—global Wcurs, for example—that call to question the stability, especially as it connotes "sanity," that allegedly underlies reality. By virtue of extensive commxinications media, we have become daily witnesses of the inhumanity of people toward one another that makes "reality" seem unreal, leading meiny to question the fabric of reality. For exeimple, after accounting one particularly gruesome news story, Philip Roth writes: And what is the moral of the story? Simply this: that the American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's meagre imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.* Roth puzzles over what elusive or non-existent moral foundations mean to the contemporary writer and suggests that literature must address an increasingly "unreal" reality if it is going to contribute to the reality of the subjects within. And, indeed, the literature of the latter half of the twentieth century seems to have made qualitative differences in the assumptions regarding the self and the real. For example, the works of Seimuel Beckett, the rise of 5 the anti-hero in the novel, and the unapologetic infiltration of the author or the absurd into seemingly realistic novels all point to the difficnilt, even questionable, synthesis of the self into daily society. In other words, in the postmodern novel, selfhood begins as an issue, not an assumption. The condition of the self as a point of contention underlies my interest in Kathy Acker, Donald Barthelme and Don DeLillo. These writers see the need to address the self and, almost simultaneously, to readdress it. The first address mimics the realistic novel's ploy of establishing a concrete reality by asserting an unequivocal self; the second disrupts the context of that alleged reality by re- imaging the self as a tenuous construct.