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Ann Arbor,MI48106 REPRESENTING TIlE ROSENBERG CASE: COOVER, DOCfOROW, AND TIlE CONSEQUENCES OFPOSTMODERNISM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THEGRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF TIlE REQUIREMENTS FOR TIlE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OFPHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES DECEMBER 1991 By Sangjun Jeong Dissertation Committee: Floyd Matson David Bertelson Reuel Denney Wimal Dissanayake George Simson David Stannard Acknowledgments During the course of this work and throughout my graduate studies I' have received generous and valuable assistance from many sources. I would like to express my thanks to those persons and institutions. Gerhard Hoffmann first introduced me to the weird and wonderful world of postmodernism. I cannot claim to have learned to love postrnodemism: but his missionary zeal to present the best possible case for postmodernism has taught me to see why others love or hate it, and to become more sympathetic towards it. Shelley Fisher Fishkin consistently encouraged me to delve into the thorny issues of postmodernism from the inception of this work in her class through its final development. Robert Crunden has always been concerned with my work and tried to tell me the best possible truth about America. His rigor and thoroughness have become a standard by which I measure my work. My committee members, David Bertelson, Reuel Denney, Wimal Dissanayake, George Simson, and David Stannard made several helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Bertelson, especially, provided me with invaluable editorial council and many detailed suggestions which have led to improvements both in style and in content. My chair, Floyd Matson, was the model of a free­ floating intellectual, who not only offered a worthy example for me to follow but was also a provocative critic of various parts of this iii work. I appreciate his unfailing good humor and unswerving confidence in my project. I was fortunate to have several friends and colleagues who tolerated my obsession with postmodernism. I am particularly grateful to Kihoon Kim, Byungyool Ban, and Haesung Hwang for their wiIIingness to hear my thoughts about postmodernism and their skepticism and criticism, which helped me to clarify those thoughts. Moonsu Shin suggested to me several books and articles every time I desperately needed them. Julie Trott provided me with meticulous and sensitive editing despite her busy academic schedule. An earlier version of this work was presented at the annual conference of the American Studies Association in 1989. The ASA and the East-West Center provided the financial support for me to attend the meeting at which I was able to tryout my ideas on a larger audience. I particularly appreciate Thomas Keenan's detailed comments, which helped to deepen my understanding of the problematics of postmodernism. The University of Texas at Austin and the East-West Center also financiaIIy supported me during my years in Texas and Hawaii. I thank these two institutions, and especiaIIy the Institute of Culture and Communication of the East­ West Center, which gave me research funds so that I could look into the primary materials of the Rosenberg case and meet E.L. Doctorow, to whom I am most grateful for allowing me his valuable time. I also appreciate the kind responses of Robert Coover and Ronald Radosh to my inquiries by letter. iv Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to Sangok Lee, my undergraduate advisor, who watched over my erratic wanderings from my undergraduate years through the military, Saudi Arabia, Texas and eventually, Hawaii, with concern and understanding. His constant encouragement and confidence in my work helped me to complete it. I thank my parents and wife for their unwavering love, patience, and support, even when nothing seemed certain during my seven years in graduate school. lowe most to my children, Duyoung and Hyeju, with whom I could not spend the time they deserved, but who nevertheless grew up proudly. Their smiles and hugs transformed into joy all the tedious and painstaking process' of writing a dissertation. v Abstract As a distinctive discourse and practice of major aspects of contemporary American culture, postmodernism is characterized above all by skepticism about our ability to represent the true state of affairs in the world. This study examines the epistemological and ontological assumptions of postmodernism, and its ethical and political implications, by investigating two modes of representing a specific historical event-vi.e. factual and fictional representations of the Rosenberg case, involving the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies in 1953. I analyze the narrativizing process whereby journalists and historians make sense of a series of past occurrences, and juxtapose and compare factual representations with two major fictional ones, Robert Coover's The Public Burning and E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel. I discuss Coover and Doctorow's narrative strategies and thematic concerns, and look into several controversies surrounding the boundary between fact and fiction. Drawing upon Hayden White's narrative theory and Richard Rorty's new pragmatism, this study argues that postmodernists are substantially correct when they claim that history and fiction are not as strictly separable as is commonly believed. It also maintains that from this claim it does not necessarily follow that postmodernism is radically relativistic or solipsistic and therefore morally chaotic and politically reactionary. vi It further contends that the recognition of fictionality and advocation of plurality in postmodernism are not inherently emancipatory or morally and politically progressive. The postmodernist interrogation of representation has a potential to be understood either way; yet ultimately it is our practice in a particular context, along with communal judgment, that makes a concept moral, immoral or amoral. This affirmation of plurality and context seems to suggest a strong moral and political potential for postmodernism, but the lack of an agent to bring about actual changes in the postmodernist outlook undermines its ethical stance. Despite its problematics, however, postmodernism seems valid in its claim that provisionality and plurality is part of the very nature of representing the past, and that we should learn to tolerate the anxiety arising out of uncertainty and indeterminacy in our knowledge of historical reality. Vll Table of Contents Acknowledgments.................................................................................................... 111 A bstract........................................................................................................................ vi Chapter l , Introduction: Representing the Postmodern.......................... 1 Chapter 2. The Postmodem Sensibility........................................................... 25 Chapter 3. From Modernism to Postmodernism: Postmodernist Fiction and the Rewriting of History..................... 63 Chapter 4. The Literature of Fact: Factual Representations of the Rosenberg Case 89 Chapter 5. "Everything Is Elusive": Doctorow's The Book of Daniel and Democracy of Perception " 127 Chapter 6. "Randomness as Design": Coover's Epistemological Exercise in The Public Burning .l5 9 . Chapter 7. Traveling in Border Country: The Blurring of the Line between Fact and Fiction 182 Chapter 8. Beyond an Archimedean Point: White, Mackie, and Rorty 218 Chapter 9. Conclusion: The Consequences of Postmodernism 249 Bibliography 265 vii i Chapter 1. Introduction: Representing the Postmodern One of the cliches of our time is that we are living in the "postmodern world." We are part of it, critics claim, whether we like it or not. Phenomenal changes have occurred in major sectors of American life since World War II. Americans have had to experience and