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Proquest Dissertations Media Images and the Subversion of Conclusive Historical Narratives in Historiographic Metafictional Depictions of the Rosenberg Executions and JFK Assassination by Christian Ledwell Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2009 © Copyright by Christian Ledwell, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-56342-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-56342-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY ( To comply with the Canadian Privacy Act the National Library of Canada has requested that the following pages be removed from this copy of the thesis: Preliminary Pages Examiners Signature Page (pii) Dalhousie Library Copyright Agreement (piii) Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) Table of Contents Abstract v Acknowledgements vi Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: "Fraud of Spectacular Dimension": Subverting Constructions of the Rosenbergs in E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel 13 Chapter Three: "The Sam Slick Show": Robert Coover's Subversion of Media Representations of the Rosenbergs 35 Chapter Four: Historiographic Metafictional Opposition to the Warren Commission Report in Don DeLillo's Libra 54 Chapter Five: "A Moral and Just Psychopathology": Hyperreality and the Therapeutic Use of Fictions in J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition 76 Chapter Six: Conclusion 92 Bibliography 100 iv Abstract This thesis examines the subversive political usage of the genre historiographic metafiction, with a focus on novels about narrative constructions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's executions and President John F. Kennedy's assassination. These events are significant to contemporary historiography because they demonstrate the increasing importance of media images in the formation of historical narratives, and because they are clear examples of the influence of political agendas on the creation of conclusive narratives by popular media and state officialdom. The thesis will explore the resonances of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard's theories of media images' detachment from objective reality with Linda Hutcheon's view of textual instability in historical composition. Historiographic metafiction criticizes the presentation of media images as texts that provide objective historical knowledge, and novels within the genre make the politically subversive argument that the state does not possess privileged access to historical truth. v Acknowledgements I would like to thank and acknowledge my supervisor, Dr. Anthony Enns, for his generosity with his time and expertise. His enthusiasm for scholarship and the respect with which he treats students made working with him a privilege. I would also like to thank Dr. David Evans and Dr. Trevor Ross for acting as readers, as their thorough and attentive revisions improved the thesis immensely. vi 1 Chapter One: Introduction Though postmodern fictions take a stance of radical skepticism towards fixed positions—be they political, historical, or moral—the postmodern genre of historiographic metafiction is a useful political tool to undermine historical narratives that are presented conclusively by mainstream media and state officialdom in order to garner popular consent for state actions. Two significant examples of this type of narrative in the later part of the twentieth-century are the state's narrative about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's roles in passing secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union and the lone gunman narrative of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Historiographic metafictions authored against official narratives of these events stress the impossibility of gaining objective historical knowledge and oppose the pro-state political motivations that lead such narratives to be presented as definitive. The Rosenbergs' trials and President Kennedy's assassination were landmarks of television's increasingly important role in disseminating narratives of historical events, and the postmodern novels discussed in this thesis subvert the use of media images as conclusive evidence in contemporary historical composition. E.L. Doctorow, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo and J.G. Ballard argue that media images are flawed representations of historical objectivity that are as malleable to the political motivations of narrative composition as written representations of history. Historiographic metafiction presents self-conscious falsehoods that stress the problematics of gaining access to any objective historical moment and draw attention to the way in which historical narratives are composed. Linda Hutcheon writes that 2 historiographic metafiction "acknowledges the paradox of the reality of the past but its textualized accessibility to us today" (114; Hutcheon's emphasis). She unpacks this statement: "We know the past (which really did exist) only through its textual remains ... There is not so much 'a loss of belief in a significant external reality' as there is a loss of faith in our ability to (unproblematically) know that reality, and therefore to be able to represent it in language" (119; Hutcheon's emphasis). Postmodern texts in this genre demonstrate that historical narratives exist in a discussion with other competing narratives of the same event, and intertextuality is used in order to create this sense of narrative plurality. Hutcheon asserts that intertextuality shows that "to re-write or to re-present the past in fiction and in history is, in both cases, to open it up to the present, to prevent it from being conclusive and teleological" (110). Historiographic metafiction calls into question claims of objectivity in nonfictional historical writing, positing that it is impossible for the subject to gain objective comprehension of any historical moment, as history is always textually mediated. However, Frederic Jameson argues against the relativism implied by historiographic metafiction's notion of the impossibility of objective historical knowledge. He writes, [The historical novel] can only 'represent' our ideas and stereotypes about that past (which thereby at once becomes 'pop history') ... [Cultural production] can no longer gaze directly on some putative real world, at some reconstruction of the past which was once itself a present; rather, as in Plato's 3 cave, it must trace our mental images of that past upon its confining walls. (25) Jameson fears that there are dangerous political implications if the individual cannot relate to history empirically—if "we are condemned to seek History by way of our pop images and simulacra of that history" (25). Contrary to Hutcheon's claim that "there are only truths in the plural, and never one Truth" (109), Jameson holds that the subject should strive to form conclusive narratives through the process of "cognitive mapping" (52), and that these maps will counter postmodernism's problematic "weakening of historicity" (6). Cognitive mapping's political efficacy stems from the individual's ability to comprehend structures of power despite the disorienting organization of decentralized post-industrial capitalism; cognitive mapping "require [s] the coordination of existential data (the empirical position of the subject) with unlived, abstract conceptions of the geographic totality" (52). Jameson argues that political movements will grow from collective action on the part of individuals who have achieved cognitive maps, and the fulfillment of cognitive mapping's aesthetic will create "a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system" (54). For Jameson, the subject is not only fully capable of coordinating historical knowledge into a meaningful pattern,
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