Retromodernist horizons: Fin-de-millenium cultural/political imaginaries and the postmodern dare
Abstract
Retromodernist Horizons: Fin-de-millenium Cultural/Political Imaginaries and the Postmodern Dare explores the emergence of the Retro at the end of the millennium. Theorizing from the millenary break--a mutation or reconversion, in which the virtual succumbs to the Retro and in which hyperreality collapses into Retro-reality--Retromodernist Horizons analyzes the virulent restoration of Modernism and its imaginary processes of "belonging," as the millennial culture circumvents the philosophical and theoretical dares posed by Poststructuralism. At the point at which the "Post" reconverts into the "Retro," Retromodernist Horizons uses the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as an operative lens for its cultural critique in mapping the milieu of the virulent Retro. Starting with the postmodern theories of Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Sarah Kofman, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Arthur Kroker, Retromodernist Horizons devises a different reading and writing style, Retrography, in which a performative poetic prose privileges the critical potential of the adjective as Adjection, and the footnote as Footing in the strategy of cultural, political, and textual Decompounding. The mapping of the milieu of the Retro takes place through two different strategies. The first one, Chronic Demons, rereads Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals through the cultural artifacts and political movements at the fin-de-millenium, as well as critically reading the works of Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, Louis Althusser, Arthur Kroker, and Michael A. Weinstein. The second strategy, Cool Horizons, maps the milieu of the Retro through the works of Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, Charles S. Peirce, Richard Rorty, Judith Butler, and Teresa de Lauretis. Both parts map the Retro in the Culturescape of the far-right militias, the 104th Congress, the Budget crisis, Welfare reform, the 10th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber Manifesto, and the Mediascape in films such as Johnny Mnemonics, Braveheart, The Brady Bunch, and Seven. The text culminates in Forget Nietzsche, which addresses the role of Nietzschian studies as it looks at the metaphor of "free spirits" in correlation with the Law of the Retro and the emergence of a horizon of Cultural Dejections.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Weinstein, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Comparative literature|Philosophy|American studies
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