Postmodernism, or the Anxiety of Master Narratives

A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction by Linda Hutcheon; The Politics of

Postmodernism by Linda Hutcheon; Terence Hawkes; Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic
of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson; Stanley Fish
Review by: Brian McHale
Diacritics, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 17-33
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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OR
POSTMODERNISM,
THE

ANXIETY

OF

MAS'I'ER

NARRATIVES
BRIANMcHALE
Linda Hutcheon. A POETICS OF POSTMODERNISM: HISTORY,
THEORY,FICTION. New York: Routledge, 1988.
. THEPOLITICSOFPOSTMODERNISM.Gen.ed. TerenceHawkes.
New Accents Ser. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Fredric Jameson. POSTMODERNISM,OR, THE CULTURALLOGIC
OF LATE CAPITALISM.Gen. ed. StanleyFish and Fredric Jameson.
Post-ContemporaryInterventionsSer. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.
Postmodernism'sPrimeDirective,accordingto some influentialaccounts,is
"Do not totalize;do not commit a masternarrative."Yet there's a catch, in
fact something like a catch-22: how is one to undertake the kind of
comprehensive, synthesizing approach that postmodernistculture seems
positively to cry out for without violating the Prime Directive againstjust
such comprehensive,synthesizing("totalizing")approaches?For thatmatter,how canone even statethePrimeDirectivewithoutviolatingit by thevery
act of invoking its totalizingforce? The books underreview here represent
in Hutcheon's case an instructive failure to overcome this catch-22 of
postmodernist discourse, and in Jameson's case an equally instructive
success-though a costly success, some may think,purchasedat the price of
violating postmodernism'sPrimeDirective. At the end of this essay, I shall
suggest how we can construeor reframeJameson's success so as to make it
less incompatiblewith the Prime Directive.
Thesebooks areby now sufficientlyfamiliarwithmanyreaders,I should
think, that I can forego a general descriptionof their contents. Jameson's
book is an elaborationandexpansionof his immenselyinfluential1984 essay
of the same name which has been reprintedin severalversionssince thenand
is reprintedagain hereas the book's openingchapter. Hutcheon'sPoetics of
Postmodernismalso has had considerableinfluence,thoughnot of the same
kind: where Jameson's 1984 essay was something of a pioneering effort,
blazing a discursivetrail,Hutcheon'sPoetics has servedmoreas an authoritative, wholly reliable roadmapof postmoder theoriesand discourses, not
least of all the discourse of postmodernistfiction. I shall treatHutcheon's
Politics as essentially integralwith herPoetics; for, despite what she herself
says about the later book supplying the political dimension supposedly
missing from the earlierone [Politics x], thatpolitical dimensionwas in fact
already conspicuous in Poetics, and the two titles might be interchanged
without eitherbook being seriously misrepresented.

diacritics / spring 1992

diacritics 22.1: 17-33

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17

Obviously, there is no question here of my exhausting the staggering range of

subject-matteraddressed by either Hutcheon or Jameson. In particular, many of
Jameson's richest topics go entirely unexplored in the present essay, especially his
suggestively linked topics of space, Utopia, and the kind of radical discontinuityand
juxtaposition"forwhich,"as he enigmaticallyputsit, "thewordcollage is still only a very
feeble name"[CulturalLogic 31].

LindaHutcheon'sis an ambitiousprojecton two fronts: she first undertakesto identify

a specificallypostmodernistpracticeof fiction-writingandto persuadeus to regarda wide
rangeof contemporaryworksas belonging to it; secondly, she proposesto integratethis
practiceof fiction-writing(andothercognate postmodernistaestheticpractices,such as
artphotography)with poststructuralisttheorizingaboutrepresentation,subject,gender,
the intricationof discourse and power-in short, the full repertoireof poststructuralist
theoretical topoi. This integrationis already implicit in her somewhat idiosyncratic
definition of the "poetics"of postmodernismas "a flexible conceptualstructurewhich
could at once constituteandcontainpostmoder cultureandour discoursesboth aboutit
andadjacentto it" [Poetics ix]. A poetics, in Hutcheon'ssense, wouldbe "anopen, everchanging structureby which to order both our cultural knowledge and our critical
procedures"[Poetics 14]; it would "containand constitute the common denominators
amongourvariousways of writingandthinkingaboutourwriting"[Poetics 144]. Inother
words,Hutcheonaspiresto includewithinthe scope of herpoetics boththeaesthetictexts
of postmoder cultureand the discourseswhich are, like her own, "about"or "adjacent
to" postmodernism. In fact, her projectwould efface or elide the differencebetween an
"object" discourse, such as the discourse of postmodernist fiction, and theoretical
metalanguage.
There is a sense in which the very scope of Hutcheon's ambition is actually
symptomaticof a certaintypically postmodemistanxiety. This is the anxiety of other
discourses, the discoursesthatmightcompetewith one's own for authorityandattention
in the field of postmoder studies. The measureof this anxiety is Hutcheon'sattemptto
anticipateand if possible preemptand master("constituteandcontain")the competition
by reducing it to the status of object of her discourse-for this is what eliding the
differencebetweenobject-languageandmetalanguageamountsto in practice. Of course
all criticalortheoreticaldiscourse,of whateverperiod,insertsitself intoa contextof other
criticaldiscourses,enteringintodialogueandcompetition(explicitor implicit)withother
criticismat the very momentandby the veryact of engagingwithits object. The dialogue
of discoursesis complicatedforpostmodernists,however,andthe anxietyheightened,by
the taboo(whatI call the PrimeDirective)on assertionsof mastery.How is one to master
the competitionwithoutappearingmasterful?
For there is a specter hauntingthe discourse aboutpostmodernism,and that is the
specter of master narratives. As everyone surely knows by now, it was Lyotardwho
placedthisanxietyon thepostmoder agendawith his characterizationof postmodernism
as incredulitytoward all totalizing master narratives(or "metanarratives";
Lyotard's
grands rdcits). Hutcheon'sentireprojectis fueled and animated,but also inhibited,by
heranxietyof masternarratives-that is, by herdesirenot to be thoughtto have invoked,
endorsed, or relied upon one or other totalizing master narrativein her account of
postmodernistpoetics. Whateverits other aims, her discourse is above all designed to
anticipateand deflect accusationsof metanarrativityfrom any quarter.
In part,no doubt,Hutcheon'sanxiety is to be ascribedto a heightenedsensitivity to
ironic paradox, in particularthe paradox that the discourses of anti-totalization-the
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discoursesof Lacan,Derrida,Foucault,Baudrillard,of radicalfeminismandAlthusserian

Marxism-tend themselves to totalize;these are, says Hutcheon,"themasterfuldenials
of mastery,the cohesive attackson cohesion, the essentializing challenges to essences,
thatcharacterizepostmoderntheory"[Poetics20]. She writes,"Foucault'santi-totalizing
and anti-essentializingimpulses appear to lead to the paradox of the transhistorical
essentializingof the non-essentializable:power. (Some would say that'ideology' has the
same functionin the work of Althusser,as does 'simulacrum'in thatof Baudrillardand
'ecriture'in thatof Derrida)"[Poetics 198]. She continuesfurtheron, "Onecould argue
thatclass is to Marxismwhatgenderis to feminism,powerto Foucault,writingto Derrida,
the Name of the Fatherto Lacan: that is, despite the anti-totalizingaim of all of these
decentered (postmodern)theories, there is still an essentializing center aroundwhich
totalitiescan be constructed"[Poetics 214]. Hutcheonseems particularlygratifiedto be
able to turn the tables on Lyotard himself and accuse him of having produced "an
obviously meta-narrativetheory of postmodernism's incredulity to meta-narrative"
[Poetics 198]. Lyotardhas madelife difficultfor us all, andone is temptedto sympathize
with Hutcheon's evident satisfactionat having accomplished this easy reversal;but it
does her no good, for she is still left with the seemingly intractableproblem of how to
proceed. Knowing what she knows aboutthe ironictrapslying in wait for totalizersand
anti-totalizersalike, how is she to give a usefully coherentandcomprehensiveaccountof
postmodernistaesthetic practice without somehow or other invoking, or seeming to
invoke, some largermetanarrativeframework? On the other hand, how is she to avoid
becoming paralyzedby her own incredulitytowardmasternarratives?
Hutcheonseeks to deflect chargesof metanarrativeby undertakingevasive actionof
variouskinds. Her basic strategyis one thathas become familiarthroughoutthe human
sciences in recent decades: she proposes groundingher discourse in thatof an adjacent
field, therebyacquiringa borrowedlegitimacyfor herown discoursewhile deflectingthe
blame for metanarrativeonto the other field (or hoping to, anyway). In this case, the
adjacentfield is architecture.Hutcheonfranklymodels herdiscourseof postmodernism
in general,andpostmodernistliteraryfiction in particular,on thediscourseofpostmodern
architecture.She appealsto a consensus among architecturecritics and theorists(Paolo
Portoghesi,CharlesJencks, and others)aboutwhat constitutespostmodernismin architecture;architecture,she asserts, is "the one art form in which the label seems to refer,
uncontested,to a generallyagreeduponcorpusof works"[Poetics22]. So thereis actually
a double appeal here: to an adjacentdiscourse,but also to an "agreedupon corpus,"a
canon ratherthana (meta)narrative.From this corpusof works architecturaldiscourse
deduces generalcriteriaof postmoderism, andit is these criteriathatHutcheonborrows,
translatingtheminto their"literary"equivalents. The relevantcriteriaare serious ironic
parody(thinkof Philip Johnson's parodyof Gothic Revival style in the glass pinnacles
of PPG Place); historical reference, or "the presence of the past" (think of all those
droppedkeystones andotherNeoclassical ornamentsthathave become standardfeatures
of postmodernistbuildings);and above all "doublecoding,"Jencks's term for the way
postmodernistarchitecturesimultaneouslyaddresses,throughdifferent, superimposed
codes, both populartaste and the informedresponsesof architecturecognoscenti.
Translatingthese architecturalcriteriainto more generalaestheticcategoriesyields,
firstof all, thecharacteristicstanceof postmodernistartworkstowardtheirculture,which
Hutcheoncapturesin the oxymoronof "complicitiouscritique"[see Poetics 201-21 and
Politics passim]. Unlike the oppositional art of high modernism, postmodernistart
frankly acknowledges its complicity with the dominantculture, but at the same time
mounts a critiqueof it from within. Applied specifically to prose fiction, the criteriaof
architecturalpostmodernismyield thegenreHutcheoncalls"historiographic
metafiction."
This is the self-reflexive postmodernistform of historicalnovel, which aspires to give
some account of historicalreality while at the same time questioning everything that
diacritics / spring 1992

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19

traditionalhistoriographyand the traditional(realist)historicalnovel took for grantedrepresentationand the transparencyof language,the unitarysubject,unmediatedaccess
to the historicalreferentitself, and so on. So perfectlydoes historiographicmetafiction
meet the criteriaof serious ironicparody,historicalreference,and double coding, thatif
the genrehad not existed Hutcheonwould have had to invent it. But she has only had to
identify it, therebymakingfreshly available for inspectiona set of correlationsamong
texts-ranging fromFowles's TheFrench Lieutenant'sWoman,Eco's TheName of the
Rose, and Doctorow's Ragtime to Cortazar'sLibro de Manuel, Coover's The Public
Burning,and Berger's G.-whose common denominatorshad until now passed largely
unnoticed.
But if Hutcheon's appeal to the architecturalmodel succeeds in enabling her to
constructa productivenew genrecategory,it neverthelessfails to do whatit was designed
to do. For in shieldingherfrom accusationsof metanarrativeon one flank, her appealto
architecturaldiscourseonly exposes herto criticismon otherflanks. Firstof all, thereis
no easy refuge fromaccusationsof metanarrativein appealingto an "agreeduponcorpus
of works," for a canon always implies a legitimating story, and vice-versa. This is
particularlyclear in the case of Jencks, whose account of the canon of postmodern
architectureexplicitly takes the form of a legitimatingstory about the crisis of modern
architectureand the postmodernbreakthrough[see McHale, "Telling Postmodernist
Stories" 551-52]. Secondly, it is typical of this sort of maneuver that the adjacent
discourse to which one appeals to ground one's own is always presumed to be
unproblematical,free of dissensionand internalcontradictionin proportionas one's own
discourse is conflicted. Thus, Hutcheonassures us that in architecturaldiscourse (by
contrast,we infer,with the literary-criticaldiscourseof postmodernism)the postmodern
label goes "uncontested,"and the postmoder canon is "generallyagreed upon." This,
of course, is to mystify architecturaldiscourse [see van Alphen 824-25, 827]. Even
Hutcheonis compelled to admitthatnot everyone identifiespostmodernistarchitecture
the same way: Jameson,for one, uses the termto referto buildingsthatJenckswouldcall
"late-modernist"[Poetics 33].1 But supposingwe could dismissJamesonon the grounds
that he is reallyjust a literaryinterloperon architects'turf, that still leaves us with the
strikingdis-sensus among the architectsand architecturecritics themselves. The harder
we look for consensusaboutpostmodernismin architecturaldiscourse,the more elusive
it becomes, until we are forced to conclude with Dana Polan that "the discourse of
architectsthemselvesoffersanagonisticfieldwhereeachfigurejudgeshispostmodernism
againsttheothers"["PostmodernismandCulturalAnalysis Today"46]. Indeed,it seems
astonishing that anyone would assume the architecturalfield to be otherwise than
agonistic,and of course no one would who did not need to postulatea serene,untroubled
alternativeto the agonistic discourseof her own field.
Hutcheon'sanxiety of masternarrativesgenerally,and in particularher recourseto
a normalized,idealizedmodelof architecturalpostmodernismas a meansof circumventing this anxiety, has two majornegative consequences. First, her reliance on borrowed
architecturalcriteriafreezes her into a rathernarrow,exclusive postmodernism. By her
account,the category"postmodernistfiction"is coextensivewith the category"historiographic metafiction": whatever does not belong to the latter category does not, by
definition, belong to the former. "Historiographicmetafiction" exhausts the field.
Granted,any categorythatcan accommodatetexts as variousas CarlosFuentes's Terra
1. On Jameson's anomalous identification of John Portman's Bonaventure Hotel as
postmodern,whereJencks and others would regard it as typically late-modernist,see Shumway,
in Kellner 192-97. But see also Matei Calinescu's
"Jameson/HermeneuticslPostmodernism,"
accountof the incoherenceof Jenck's constructionof late-modernism,"Modernism,LateModernism, Postmodernism,"in Zadworna-Fjellestadand Bjork52-61.

20

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Nostra, MaxineHongKingston'sWomanWarrior,D. M. Thomas'sTheWhiteHotel, and

WilliamKennedy'sAlbanytrilogyis a capaciousone. Granted,too, any hypothesisabout
postmodernismthataspiresto any degreeof coherencewill have to exclude at least some
of the many heterogeneous items that have, casually or unthinkingly,been labelled
"postmoderist" by someone or other,at some time or other(such as the "K-mart"neorealism of RaymondCarverandFrederickBarthelme,or the yuppie-angstfiction of Jay
McInerneyandBretEastonEllis). Nevertheless,Hutcheon'sratherstringentexclusivity,
her preferencefor a compact, closely policed category of postmodernistfiction, would
seem strangelyat odds with her programmaticavoidanceof "totalization."
Certainof herexclusionsareexplicit, andexplicitlyjustified. Thus,Hutcheoninsists
ratherstrenuouslyon the exclusion frompostmodernistfiction of kinds of writingwhich
are"metafictional"withoutalso being "historiographic"-the nouveaunouveauroman,
North American"surfiction"[Poetics 40, 52, 202-03, 221]. But at the same time she
seems uneasilyawarethatsuch non-historiographicvarietiesof metafictiondo, afterall,
have a good claim to being considered postmodernist;the very strenuousnessof her
exclusion perhapsreflects, back-handedly,the cogency of thatclaim. In fact, Hutcheon
ends up in Politics having to give groundon this front under pressure from feminist
discourse, though perhaps without fully realizing she has done so. If, as the feminist
slogan runs,the personalis the political,thenfictions thataddresspersonalhistory(one's
own or someone else's) in the same questioning way that historiographicmetafiction
addresses public history also deserve to be included in the postmodernistcategory
metafictions(orautobiographicmetafictions)
[Politics160-68]. Butif suchhistoriographic
as MichaelOndaatje'sRunningin theFamily, MaxineHong Kingston'sWomanWarrior
andChinaMen,orChristaWolf's Patternsof Childhoodqualify,thenwhy not the frankly
autobiographical"surfictions"of Ron Sukenick,ClarenceMajor,RaymondFederman,
B. S. Johnson,or KathyAcker,whichsubmitthe authors'life storiesto the displacements
and defamiliarizationsof metafictional form? Here too-in Major's metafictional
reflections on race and gender, Acker's graffiti-styledispatchesfrom the frontlinesof
sexual warfare,Federman'ssous ratureretellingsof how he survivedtheHolocaust-the
personal is the political.
Otherexclusions are tacit; indeed, the most strikingof these would pass unnoticed
were it not for certainanomalousinclusionsthatalertus to what has been silently edited
out of the picture. When, for instance,Hutcheoncasually includes MargaretAtwood's
TheHandmaid'sTale [Poetics 59, 139]andRussell Hoban'sRiddleyWalker[Politics 58]
among her examples of historiographicmetafiction,one is startledinto refocussing on
what exactly has been excluded from her account. For these texts are not historicalor
historiographicat all in any normallyacceptedsense of these terms,unless we choose to
think of them (as Hutcheon evidently does) as histories of the future;for they are, of
course, science fictions, or better,"metasciencefictions"[see Ebert92-93], and drawon
familiartopoi of science fiction genre writing: TheHandmaid's Tale on the dystopian
topos and Riddley Walkeron thatof nuclearholocaustand its aftermath.Whereothers,
not least of all Jameson,have regardedthe interactionor convergenceof science fiction
and "serious" fiction as in some way characteristicof postmodernism,2Hutcheon's
discourseis all but blind to science fiction's presencein the field of postmodemculture,
let alone equippedto makeany kindof coherentsense of it. A case in point is herreading
of John Fowles's A Maggot, which "on a formallevel," she says, "holdsin tension"the
conventionsof historicalfiction and science fiction [Poetics47]. Having said thatmuch,
2. Apartfrom Jameson and Ebert,see Mathieson;Porush; McHale, PostmodernistFiction
59-71; Pfeil, "Potholdersand Subincisions"; and, most recently, the November 1991 issue of
Science-Fiction Studies, devoted to the convergence of postmodernismand science fiction, with
relevantpapers by Roger Luckhurst,David Porush, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay,and others.

diacritics / spring 1992

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21

however, she finds nothing more to add about what science fiction conventions might
contributeto this "tension." In fact, the presence of science fiction is, in my view,
absolutelycentralto the effect of A Maggot, functioningas a kind of secondary"code"
throughwhich the text literalizesand reflects on variousdimensionsof "alienness"and
"alienation"(the English upper-and under-classesbelong, we aretold, to "twoeternally
alien species" [Fowles 342], and certainlywhat we witness of the encountersbetween
them in this novel might as well be of the ThirdKind).
Even moreseriousthanits consequencesfor the range of herpostmodernismare the
negativeconsequencesthatHutcheon'sanxietyof metanarrativeshas had for the content
of her interpretations.Hutcheon'stheoreticaldiscourseis, to hercredit,amply substantiatedand illustratedwith readingsof specific texts, some of them vest-pocketaffairsof
one or two sentences, others (for example, Rushdie's Midnight's Childrenand D. M.
Thomas'sTheWhiteHotel [Poetics 161-64 and 165-77 respectively],orAngela Carter's
"BlackVenus"[Politics 145-50]) fully developedinterpretativeessays. Whatstrikesone
sooner or lateris the sameness of many of these readings. Can all of these very diverse
novels, one begins to wonder,really mean so nearly the same thing?
The reasonfor this "cookie-cutter"samenessof Hutcheon'sinterpretationsis not far
hasplaced many
to seek. Fearof being caughtendorsingsome "totalizingmetanarrative"
sanctionedinterpretativegambitsoff-limits;in fact,theonly absolutelysafe interpretative
move left to her, it would seem, is thatof attributingto the novels before her the same
"incredulitytowardmetanarratives"thatanimatesand obsesses her own discourse. In
other words, Hutcheontends to projecther own anxietyof metanarrativesonto the texts
she reads, so thatthey all end up being aboutmoreor less the same thing, namely,about
skepticism towards or refusal of master narratives: master narrativesof scientific
progress (Gravity'sRainbow),of nationalManifest Destiny (TerraNostra, The Public
Burning,or Shame),of empire(Coetzee'sFoe), of genderidentity(ChristaWolf, Angela
Carter,or TheWhiteHotel), andso on. Heller,Pynchon,Midnight'sChildren,TheName
of theRose, The WhiteHotel, the self-reflexive photographyof Duane Michaels-all of
these, according to Hutcheon, display a similar "urge to foreground, by means of
contradiction,the paradoxof the desire for and the suspicionof narrativemastery-and
master narratives"[Politics 64]. It can hardly surprise us, then, to find how often
Hutcheon resorts to the rhetoric of the catalogue in marshallingher postmodernist
examples, for in a list of titles (of which there are so many instances throughoutboth
Poetics and Politics), all the items are functionallyinterchangeable.This is the implicit
message of Hutcheon's lists: all postmodernistnovels are interchangeable,all of them,
at some level, mean the same thing.
And what they mean is "irresolution.""Irresolution"is a key topos of Hutcheon's
discourse, at all levels. Postmodernism,Hutcheonreiterates,"problematizes"issues of
reference,subjectivity,gender,power,and so on-it does not resolve them. "Thereis no
dialectic in the postmodern,"she tells us at the outset, but rather"a deliberaterefusal to
resolve contradictions"[Poetics x]. All properly postmodernistnovels (that is, all
historiographicmetafictions)are,on heraccount,not only formally"irresolute"texts but
texts about irresolution;she goes so far as to call them "politicallyunmarked"(in the
linguists' sense of the neutralor "default"termin a binaryopposition)[Poetics 205-06].
"Unresolvedtensions,""unresolveddialectic,""paradox,""contradiction,""politically
unmarked": these are the kinds of terms Hutcheon returns to again and again to
characterizepostmodernistart. They equallywell characterizeherown discoursewhich,
in defensive flight from the specter of metanarrative,itself refuses to "resolve" on a
position, remaining"politicallyunmarked"even underpressure.
That pressureto resolve has come especially from feminist discourse. In Poetics,
of feminism,as
Hutcheondistancespostmodemismfrom the "totalizingmetanarrative"
from all other totalizations;by her account postmodernism'srelation to feminist dis22

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courseis, like its relationto all otherideologies,one of irresolution,

or
contradiction,
for
Poetics
But
she
seems
not
to
have
been
satisfied
[see,
69,71].
paradox
example,
fully
withthisirresoluteconclusion,andinPoliticsreopensnegotiations
withfeminism,with
a view to reconcilingpostmoderistartisticpracticewithfeministculturalpolitics-but
onceagainwithnodefiniteconclusion.WhatforHutcheonis postmodernism's
peculiar
strength,namelyits refusalto mountanunequivocal
critique,is fromthefeministpoint
of view its besettingweakness;while feminism'sstrength,its "totalizing"claim to
corrective)analysis of patriarchy,is from the
possess a "true"(demystificatory,
of
and
view,
postmodernist
point
apparentlyHutcheon's,its greatestshortcoming.
"'Feminismis a politics,"'Hutcheonis forcedto conclude. "Postmodernism
is not"
[Politics 169].

Thisreturnsus toHutcheon'sfundamental
dilemma,thecatch-22I mentionedatthe
outset:howtototalizewithoutappearing
todoso? Hutcheon
wouldbehappiest,itseems,
if she could have a postmodernism
which refusedall masternarratives,yet could
somehowbe reconciledwithfeminism.Shetriesto finessetheproblemby effacingthe
hierarchical
distinctionbetweentheoryandaestheticpractice,so thatall discoursesare
on a parandnonecanclaim"mastery"
overtheothers.Thiscallsintoquestionallkinds
of claimstoexplanatory
masterfulness,
includingthoseadvancedbyMarxistdiscourses,
butalso,unfortunately,
thoseadvancedby feminism.It alsoraisesa questionaboutthe
positioningof Hutcheon'sown discourse. Thereis no privilegedposition"outside"
fromwhich,Hutcheontells us over andover, Marxistdiscoursecan
postmodernism
viewof thewhole. Butwhere,then,is thepositionfrom
pretendto havea commanding
whichHutcheon'sdiscoursecommands
itsviewof thepostmodernist
wholethatincludes
Marxism?
2

FredricJamesondeclareshimselftobeanunreconstructed
totalizer."It
Unembarrassed,
hasnotescapedanyone'sattention,"
he writes,"thatmy approachto postmodernism
is
a 'totalizing'one. Theinteresting
questiontodayis... notwhyI adoptthisperspective,
but why so manypeopleare scandalized(or have learnedto be scandalized)by it"
[CulturalLogic 400]. Far from feeling called upon to defend himself from accusations

of totalization,
he takestheoffensiveagainstthoseforwhomtotalization
is "evidently
... one of the mostsordidresidualvices to be eradicated
fromthepopulisthealthand
fitnessof thenew era"[CulturalLogic331]. ExhibitA of this"current
doxa"of antitotalization
LindaHutcheon[332].Jameson'sastringent
characterizais, unsurprisingly,
tionof the"aestheticsof thisnew 'theoretical
discourse"'(andit is revealingof theline
he is takingthathe shouldcallit an"aesthetics")
clearlybearson Hutcheon'scase. The
new theoreticaldiscourse,in his account,avoidspropositionsand the appearance
of
making"primarystatements"or having"positivecontent." It strives to become
so that no discourseeven more
sufficientlynegative,critical,and demystificatory
negativeandcriticalcouldcomealongtodemystifyitinitsturn[391-92]."Thisis clearly
a demandingaestheticindeed,"Jamesonwrites,"one in whichthe theoristwalks a
theslightestlapseprecipitating
thesentencesinquestionintotheoldfashioned
tightrope,
[392];or, one mightadd,intototalizationor master
(system,ontology,metaphysics)"
narrative.
Jamesondoes,in fact,seemslightlyembarrassed
athavingassociatedhimselfin the
a termwhich,henowadmits,mayhavebeen
pastwiththeconceptof "masternarrative,"
"incautious"
to use [xi]. He is presumably
reactinghereto left critiqueslike the one
mountedby WarrenMontag,whohasarguedthatMarxismis improperly
characterized
as a masternarrative,
thatit is notandneverhasbeena masternarrative(despitewhat
diacritics I spring 1992

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23

certainmisguidedMarxistsmay believe); but then again, neitherhas anythingelse ever

been one.3 Despite his hedging, it is clear enough that a master narrativedoes indeed
underwriteJameson's discourse,namely the masternarrativeof the sequence of modes
of productionand their correspondingculturalpractices (a question-beggingformulation-mine, not Jameson's). Postmodernismis construedin the light of this master
narrativeas the story's latestepisode: it is, as Jameson'stitle itself tells us, the "cultural
logic" of the late-capitalistmode of production.
Jameson actually concurs with Hutcheonthat "theory"is on a par with aesthetic
"practice"in the postmodernperiodas a consequenceof the "explosion"of the cultural
sphere, which now seems to embraceeverything[see CulturalLogic xxi, 48]. Consequently, chapterson aestheticpracticesin the narrowersense (video, film, architecture,
the New Novel, gallery installations)alternatein Jameson's book with chapterson the
theoreticaldiscourses of New Historicismand deconstruction,even one on the market
itself (which, accordingto Jameson,has in ourtimebecomea culturalproduct,thoughnot
any less of a reality). But where Hutcheon,arguingfrom this supposed "levelling"of
theory and practice, draws the triumphantconclusion that Marxist theory such as
Jameson'sown is left no coign of vantageanywhere"above"or "outside"thepostmodern
culturalsphere(of course,as we have seen, thisalso deprivesherown theoryof any such
vantage point), Jameson himself fails to see things this way. This is where being
underwrittenby a masternarrativecomes in handy,strategicallyspeaking;for Jameson
can breakout of the dilemma into which Hutcheonhas backedherself by reservingfor
Marxistdiscoursejust such a privilegedviewing position above the ruck of postmodern
culture.
If Hutcheonwere rightaboutthe consequencesof endorsinga masternarrative,then
Jameson'sconstructionof postmodernismoughtto be narrowerand moreexclusive than
herown. Butthereverseis true,andit is Jameson'sthatis incontestablythe morecatholic
of the two postmodenisms. No doubtit would be unfairto tax Hutcheonwith covering
a narrowerrange of artisticmedia-only prose fiction, photography,and film, where
Jamesontoucheson all theseandpoetry,painting,video, architecture,andinstallationssince herexplicitbriefis morenarrowlydefinedthanJameson's. Buteven in theareamost
centralto hertheory,the novel, the reachof Jameson'sconstructexceeds hers. Jameson,
too, gives pride of place to historiographicmetafiction in the range of postmodernist
fiction [see Cultural Logic 21-25, 367-73]. But where, for example, Hutcheon
instransigentlyexcludes the New Novel, Jamesonis able to find room for it or at least to
construe it in postmodernistterms. Thus the fiction of Claude Simon can be seen as
postmodernist,accordingto Jameson'saccount,for the way it pastichesbothFaulknerian
modernismand the poetics of the nouveau roman [CulturalLogic 131-35].
Similarly,wherescience fiction is simply inaccessibleto Hutcheon'stheoryand has
at best a marginal presence, Jameson has made science fiction in some ways the
centerpiece of his constructionof postmoderism. Pivotal passages describe science
fiction texts by PhilipK. Dick [279-86] andJ. G. Ballard[154-56, 177-79], andthereare
briefermentionsof UrsulaLeGuin,SamuelDelany,andothers. Most strikingof all is the
importanceJamesonattachesto the newest wave of science fiction, so called cyberpunk,
to which he alludes on the firstpage of CulturalLogic, going on in an endnoteto "regret
the absence from this book of a chapteron cyberpunk,henceforth,for many of us, the
supremeliteraryexpressionif not of postmodernism,thenof late capitalismitself' [419].
Justas Hutcheonwouldhavehadto inventhistoriographicmetafictionif it hadn'talready
existed, so Jameson would have had to invent cyberpunk.
3. "Thereis not now nor has there ever been a metanarrative.... Theoryexists everywhere
in a practical state. Marxism,whateverthe conceptualizationsit has offered of its own practice,
has neverfunctionedas a metanarrative.In its practical existence, it speaks of nothingotherthan
a strugglefor which there is no outside" [95-96].

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How exactly does science fiction fit intoJameson'spictureof postmoderism? It fits

in throughthe "dialecticalandstructuralrelationship"thatit entertainswith the historical
novel [284]. As in the period when a modem sense of history was newly emergentand
the historicalnovel served to captureand channelthathistoricalsense, so in our period
when thesense of historyis enfeebledorblocked,science fictionsucceedsthroughviolent
dislocation in reviving our capacityto "live time historically"[284]. Jamesonhas said:
Somethinglikesciencefiction can occasionallybe lookedat as a wayof breaking
throughto historyin a new way;achievinga distinctivehistoricalconsciousness
by wayofthefuture ratherthanthepast; and becomingconscious of ourpresent
as the past of some unexpectedfuture, rather than as thefuture of a heroic
national past (the traditional historical novel of Lukacs). ["Regarding
Postmodernism"60]
ElsewhereJamesonhas arguedexplicitly thatin the twentiethcenturythe science fiction
genre has taken over some of the responsibilitiesfor making history available to our
imaginationsthat in the previous centuryhad been the province of the realist historical
novel. He writes,
Themomentin which the historical novel as a genre ceases to befunctional is
also the momentof the emergence of [science fiction], with thefirst novels of
Jules Verne. We are therefore entitled to complete Lukdcs' account of the
historicalnovel withthe counter-panelof its oppositenumber,the emergenceof
the new genre of [science fiction] as aform which now registers some nascent
sense of thefuture,and does so in thespace on whicha sense of thepast hadonce
been inscribed. ["Progressversus Utopia" 150]
Science fiction, to paraphrasehim, is our century's functional equivalent of the nineteenth-centuryhistorical novel. In this respect, Jameson has made better sense of
Hutcheon's glancing allusions to postmodernistscience fiction novels, or "metascience
fictions," such as Fowles' A Maggot, Hoban's Riddley Walker, or Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale,thanHutcheonherselfhasbeenableto do. Historiographicmetafiction,
accordingto Hutcheon'saccount,exposes the malleabilityof the past from the point of
view of the present: thatis, it remindsus thatthepastis accessible to us only as discourse
(documents, archives) and that it is only relatively knowable and always subject to
ideological construction,misprision,and appropriation.Complementaryto this writing
practiceis one thatexposes the malleabilityof thepresentfromthe point of view of some
futureor alternative,parallelorpossible world: metasciencefiction. Thusthe anomalous
science fiction examples in Hutcheon's discourse belong there more than she knows,
given theirrole of mirror-imageof postmoderist historiographicmetafiction.4
Jameson's interpretationsof postmodernisttexts-of which there are many in
CulturalLogic-ought to be reductive,much more so than Hutcheon's, since Jameson
4. This analysis of the relationshipbetweensciencefiction and historiographicmetafiction
has been impressivelycorroboratedby the publication in 1991, afterthe appearance of Cultural
Logic, of The DifferenceEngine, a collaborativenovel by two cyberpunkwriters, WilliamGibson
andBruce Sterling. A generic hybrid,simultaneouslya historiographicmetafiction(a literal "revision" of High Victoriansociety and culture)and sciencefiction (an alternate-worldstory on the
model of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle), The Difference Engine demonstratesthat
inpostmodernculturehistoricalfictionand sciencefiction are not onlyfunctionallyequivalentbut
can be made to occupy the same textual space. It will be interestingto see whethertheir work is
merely a sport (though a particularly revealing one) or whether it gives rise to a following of
imitatorsor even to a hybridsub-genre.

diacritics / spring 1992

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25

approachesall texts as allegorical representations(or, as he prefers to say, "cognitive

mappings")of a single ultimatereferent,namely the mode of production. In the case of
postmodernism,this means thatall texts will somehow reflect, represent,or "map"the
relations of productionunderlate capitalism. Yet again, however, the reverse of what
might have been expected is actuallythe case: Hutcheon's interpretationsimpressone
as the more reductive, ironically because she programmaticallyrefuses any ultimate
referent(such as "latecapitalism")or masternarrative(such as "the sequence of modes
of production"),so that,as we have seen, all her readingsend up merely reenactingthat
refusal. Jameson'sreadings,on the otherhand,constantlysurprisethroughthe flexible,
unpredictable,paradoxical,andoccultrelationshipstheyestablishbetweentextsandtheir
ultimatereferent.
A case in pointwouldbeHutcheon'sandJameson'srespectivereadings
of Doctorow's
Jameson
cites
Hutcheon's
with
but
then
admiration,
Ragtime.
reading
goes on to suggest
thatit imposesa spuriousandanachronisticthematiccoherenceonthetext-he says,"this
is whatthe novel wouldhave meanthadit not beena postmodernartifact"[CulturalLogic
22]-when what is needed is a descriptionthatwould do justice to the text's weird (and
typicallypostmodemist)heterogeneity.Itscharacters-some historical,othersintertextual,
and still others fictional-are "incommensurableand, as it were, of incomparable
substances,like oil andwater"[22]. He concludes,"Whatsucha descriptionwould want
to register, is the paradoxthat a seemingly realistic novel like Ragtime is in reality a
nonrepresentationalworkthatcombinesfantasysignifiersfroma varietyof ideologemes
in a kind of hologram"[CulturalLogic 23]. LaterJamesonreturnsto this topic in more
abstractterms,outlining(somewhatobscurely)a theoryof the ontologicalheterogeneity,
or "reality-pluralism,"of historiographicmetafictionand comparingit to the effects of
cable-TV channel switching [CulturalLogic 372-73].
What is most interestingaboutJameson'salternativeproposalfor readingRagtime,
and for reading historiographicmetafiction generally, is that it so nearly reproduces
Hutcheon'sown proposalfor an analysis in termsof what she calls (borrowingthe term
fromNelson Goodman)"routesof reference,"ratherthanreferencetoutcourt. Hutcheon
proposes "a multi-termmodel" of reference to accommodatethe "multipleand overdetermined"referentialityof historiographicmetafiction [Poetics 154]. She distinguishesamongfive "kinds"or"directions"of reference:intratextualreference,intertextual
reference, self-reference,textualizedextratextualreference (thatis, textually mediated
reference to historicalreality), and "hermeneutic"reference (referenceto the reader's
discursivesituation,for exampleby meansof the second personpronoun)[Poetics 1546]. Since combinationsof some or all of these are likely to appearin any given work of
historiographicmetafiction,processing postmodernreferenceis less a matterof identifying some staticrelationbetweentext andreferentthanof tracinga"route"amongthese
variousreferentialdirections [Poetics 156]. Attractivethough this model is, Hutcheon
disappointsby never letting us see it in action, opting instead,as Jamesonobserves, for
thematiccoherencein her readings-thematic coherenceof a particularlyreductiveand
repetitive,cookie-cutterkind,as we have seen. It is as if Hutcheonhad left it to Jameson
to apply her multi-term model of reference in practice, which he has done, with
considerablesuccess, in his own readingof Ragtimeand elsewhere in CulturalLogic.
Is the superiorityof Jameson's readings to be explained wholly in terms of his
superior talents as an interpreter? I think not, for whatever Jameson's skills as an
interpreter(though they may be formidable), what differentiateshis readings from
Hutcheon'sis above all his dialecticalapproach.WhereHutcheon'sapproachis, as she
never tires of telling us, programmaticallyundialectical,so that her readings end up
collapsing all her texts into the same oxymoronic structureof "complicitouscritique,"
Jameson'sdialecticalmethodequipshim to distinguishflexibly and fruitfullyamongthe
variously"complicit"and"critical"momentsin thesame text. Jamesoncites as his model
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.
i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...

?iii_:

__

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i i

::
i

Marx himself, who urgedon us the difficult task of understandingcapitalismas "atone

andthe same time the best thingthathas ever happenedto the humanrace,andthe worst"
[CulturalLogic 47]. Read in this light-dialectically-postmodernist texts appearas
both "peculiarnew forms of realism"and distractionsand diversionsfrom or mystifications of reality [CulturalLogic 47]. Hutcheonwould probablyassent to thatproposition
easily enough, but she would likely interpretit to mean that one cannot distinguish
between or resolve the conflictingclaims of realismand mystification. ForJameson,on
the other hand, this propositionauthorizesexplorationof the diverse ways one and the
same text can alternatelyobscureand reflect reality.
3
If thereare difficulties with Jameson'sdialecticalpracticeof readingin CulturalLogic,
they arise when he chooses to weight a reading on one side or the other, tipping the
dialectical balance towardeither complicity or critique. Jamesonhimself situates the
problem in the tendency of postmodernistworks (the case in point being Warhol's
"DiamondDust Shoes") to be much more complicit than critical [CulturalLogic 9]. I
think this misidentifies the problem, which seems rather to be located in a certain
arbitrarinessor indeterminacy in Jameson's dialectical reading practice itself. If
postmodernist texts are, like all cultural products in all periods, from a dialectical
perspectiveboth complicitwith the dominantcultureandcriticalof or resistantto it, then
whatarethe groundsformakingthecomplicitmomentsstandsynecdochicallyforthe text
as a whole in one case (for example,"DiamondDust Shoes"),while choosing to have the
criticalmomentsdo so in anothercase? What,in otherwords,arethe criteriafor deciding
whethera text is predominantlycomplicit or predominantlycritical?
The problemarisesacutelyin the case of Jameson'ssomewhatnotoriousanalysis of
Bob Perelman's poem "China,"which appears again here, unchanged since its first
appearancein the 1984 "CulturalLogic" essay. Jameson,of course, treatsthis poem as
symptomaticof postmodernistschizophrenia,while Perelmanandhis fellow "Language
poets"tendratherto understandtheirprojectas diagnostic-if notexactlypartof thecure,
thenat least not partof the disease [see Hartley]. How are we to go aboutdistinguishing
symptoms of postmodernismfrom diagnoses of it when confrontingartworksas enigmaticas Perelman'spoem? Farfromclarifyinghis criteria,Jamesononly makesmatters
more obscurewhen elsewherehe treatsas diagnosticthose same featuresthathe seemed
to regardas merely symptomaticin Perelman's"China." For instance, much of what
Jamesonsays aboutthe doublemovementof ClaudeSimon's prose [CulturalLogic 13537, 140-42], whereinthe readerconstructsan imaginaryobject to justify the persistence
of a subjectposition but then, in the next moment,experiencesthe collapse of representationintothe opacityof materialsigns (wordson thepage), mightjustas accuratelyapply
to "China";but in Simon's case Jameson attaches to this restless ebb and flow of
representationnone of the stigma of schizophreniathathe does in the case of Perelman.
Similarly,Jamesonreadsthe video artwork"AlienNATION,"by Rankus,Manning,
andLatham,in much the same way thathe does "China,"namely as a text thatconceals
a generative"secret." In the case of "AlienNATION,"the secret from which the whole
text is said to spring is its covert or coded reference to the double murderof George
Moscone and Harvey Milk [CulturalLogic 93]; in the case of "China,"it is the text's
disguisedstatusas an objettrouvde(captionsto a "found"bookof photographs)[Cultural
Logic 30]. But in the case of "AlienNATION,"Jameson triumphantlyproduces this
"secret"as thoughit justified or motivatedthe extremediscontinuityand fragmentation
of the text, while in his account of "China"one detects a note almost of resentment,as
thoughhe felt cheatedor conned by the text's occultationof its own origin. Or could it
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be that Jameson is actually reactingagainst the revelationof the text's having been, to
some degree, "mechanically"produced-generated from a fixed procedureor recipe
(which might be formulatedin some such terms as, "Supply new captions for a preexisting sequenceof photographsin theorderin which you find them")ratherthanarising
spontaneously"in"the poet as self-expression?s
In his accountof HansHaacke'sconceptual-artinstallations,which seem to reachout
anddrawwithinthemselvesthevery museuminstitutionswhich surroundthem,Jameson
allows himself to entertainthe possibility of what he calls a "homeopathic"strategyof
postmodernistculturalpolitics [CulturalLogic 158,409]. This strategyinvolves using
the means of postmodernismagainst postmodernismitself, which is, Jameson says
elsewhere, "toundopostmodernismhomeopathicallyby the methodsof postmodemism:
to work at dissolving the pastiche by using all the instrumentsof pastiche itself, to
reconquersome genuine historicalsense by using the instrumentsof what I have called
substitutesfor history"["RegardingPostmodernism"59]. But if Haacke's installations
can be construedas homeopathicpostmodernism-postmodernism mobilized against
itself-then why not "Language"poetry? If Haacke's work qualifies as "cognitive
mapping,"on what groundsdoes Perelman'sfail to qualify? The same sort of argument
could be mountedin the case of Jameson'swell-knowninterpretationof JohnPortman's
Westin Bonaventurehotel in Los Angeles, and his only slightly less famous"reading"of
FrankGehry's home in SantaMonica. Why is the latterbuildingcreditedwith being, at
leastpotentially,aninstrumentof "cognitivemapping,"butnotthe former?Forone thing,
Gehry's house is said to resist photography,in a context of discourse of and about
architecturein which "photography"functionsas the persistenceof modernistrepresentation and representability[CulturalLogic 122-25]. But presumablythe disorienting
Westin Bonaventureinterioralso resists photography-certainly the photographthat
Jameson prints here gives us very little of the sense of the place that Jameson's prose
managesto capture;so why is it notjust as admirable,orjust as potentiallyuseful, as the
Gehry house?
Finally,thereis thepuzzle of Jameson'sscatteredremarksthroughoutCulturalLogic
on cyberpunk,the "new wave" science fiction of the Eighties. Science fiction in general
occupies, as we already know, a pivotal position in Jameson's construction of
postmodernism,and cyberpunk,he has said, merits a chapterof its own. What, then,
explains his ratherferociouscondemnationof cyberpunk,so strangelyat odds with what
he says elsewhere about other science fiction texts (Dick's or Ballard's)? Having
identifiedcyberpunkattheoutsetas "thesupremeliteraryexpression... of postmodemism,"
Jameson goes on, surprisingly,to denounce it for its complicity with the late-capitalist
world-system,its functionas, at best, "sheercompensation... a way of talkingyourself
into it andmaking,morethana virtue,a genuinepleasureandjouissanceout of necessity,
turningresignationinto excitement"[CulturalLogic 321]. In cyberpunk,says Jameson,
we encounterthe symptomsof"an ultimatehistoricistbreakdown"in which "a formerly
futurologicalscience fiction ... turnsinto mere 'realism' and an outrightrepresentation
of the present"[CulturalLogic 286].
I find this denunciationthoroughlypuzzlingas well as inconsistent. Jamesonseems
willfully to disregardthe ways in which cyberpunkhas not only taken up the tools of
5. Ifthis is indeedthe source ofJameson's apparentresentment,thennot only do we have here
a case of the persistence of Romanticaesthetic ideology where we mightleast expect tofind it, but
we also have another disparity between the position Jameson adopts here and one he adopts
elsewhere in CulturalLogic. For in the same chapterin which he discusses Simon,Jameson also
warmlycommendsGeorges Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi (calling it "themost strikingliterary
monumentproduced by an experimentalwriter after the end of the nouveau roman")-a text
generated,like "China,"thoughon a muchgranderscale, bymechanicalprocedures(see Cultural
Logic 148-49).

diacritics / spring 1992

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29

"cognitive mapping"which are its legacy from the science fiction tradition,but has
sharpenedthose tools and polished them to a high sheen. If I were to make a case for
cyberpunk, I would begin by documenting the tools for "cognitive mapping" that
cyberpunkhas at its disposal: its inset "microworlds"and "paraspaces"(for example,
Gibson's "cyberspacematrix"),and its representationsof architecturalspace, urban
space, planetary space, and the space of communicationstechnology (for example,
Sterling's "Net"). I would continue by arguingthat cyberpunkis not only negatively
Utopian in Jameson's sense-it instructivelydemonstratesthe limits to our capacity to
imaginethe future-but even in certaincases (notablySterling'sextraordinaryIslandsin
theNet, 1988) incorporatesin itself theknowledgeof its own inevitablefailureto imagine
the future,therebyattaininga level of self-consciousness rarein science fiction. I am
confident, finally, that I could show how cyberpunk,far from being a symptom of the
"imaginationof the multinationals"[CulturalLogic 321], actuallyconstitutesan attempt
at the "cognitive mapping"of the spaces projectedby thatimagination.
But perhapsJameson'sdenunciationof cyberpunkis afterall less inconsistentthan
I have made it out to be (though no less baffling). For if we reexamine his initial
of cyberpunkas thesupremeliteraryexpression"ifnotof postmodernism,
characterization
thenof late capitalismitself' (my emphasis),we finda fairlyastonishingimplication,and
an equally astonishinglapse. Jameson seems to imply thatcyberpunkis somehow the
direct expression of late capitalism itself, as though it were unmediatedby inherited
literaryforms or historicalgenres (this implicationis borne out by later remarks[see
CulturalLogic 38,321]). If thatis indeedwhathe meansto imply, thenthis would be an
astonishing lapse on the partof someone who has taughtus so much (in The Political
Unconscious and elsewhere) aboutthe complex mediatingrole of genre and the "sedimentation"of history in genre forms. Far from being the "direct"expression of late
capitalism-or anythingelse-cyberpunk is, of course, like otherpostmoder cultural
practices,a complex "layering"of mediatingformsand genres,a confluence of literaryhistoricalstreamsof diverse provenance.
We learn many things from Jameson's readings;but what we do not learn is why
certaintexts (the"AlienNATION"video, Haacke'sinstallations,theFrankGehryhouse,
Philip Dick's novels) are to be regardedas critical of postmoder culturewhile others
("DiamondDust Shoes,"Perelman's"China,"the Westin Bonaventure,cyberpunk)are
evidently irremediablycomplicit. I am at a loss to explain the system or principle
motivatingJameson'semphases. They seem arbitrary,thoughI hesitateto dismiss them
as merely mattersof personalpreferenceor taste. We do learnsomethingfrom them, at
least, about the difficulty of distinguishing the diagnostic from the symptomatic in
postmodern culture. Almost anything that can be construed as a diagnosis of the
postmodernconditioncanalso, it appears,be construedas a symptomof it. This truthhas
been driven home by David Harvey who, turningthe tables on Jameson,has suggested
thatJameson's own rhetoric(or "hyper-rhetoric,"
to use Harvey's term)might itself be
construedas a symptom of postmodernismas much as, or more than, a diagnosis of it
[Harvey351; see CulturalLogic x, 12]. While I believe Jamesoncan be exoneratedof
this charge-a good deal more easily than Baudrillard,ArthurKroker,or Paul Virilio,
Harvey'sotherexamplesof postmodern"hyper-rhetoric"-thefact thatit canbe brought
at all says a lot about the indeterminaciesof the postmoderncondition.
4
LindaHutcheon'smistake,it seems to me, is to havethrownawaythe narrativealong with
the metanarrative. So conscientious, or anxious, has she been about avoiding any
appearanceof countenancing some totalizing metanarrativethat she has ended up
deprivingherself of the cognitive and extrapolativeresources(and I would also add the
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pleasures)of narrativityitself. In recentyears it has become clear across a wide rangeof

theoreticaldisciplines not only that story-telling should not be scorned as a mode of
producing,organizing,andauthorizingknowledge,but thatmuchof the discoursewhich
we have regardedas "theory"hasreallybeen a kindof sublimatedstory-tellingall along.6
I would not go so faras to suggest thatstorytellingis unavoidablein theoreticaldiscourse,
forit seems thatHutcheonhas managedto avoid it aboutas completelyas one could. What
I do hope to have suggested, in the pages above on the negative consequences of
Hutcheon'sanxietyof metanarrative,is the costliness of too conscientiousa renunciation
of story-telling.
More positive and productiveis Jameson's position (or, if not exactly his "final"
position on the matter,at least a position he took on one occasion). Ratherthan letting
one's discoursebe shaped-or deformed-by the desireto evade anddeflect accusations
of metanarrativity,
betterto tryto tell as good a storyas possible, one thatmakestherichest
sense
of
the
possible
phenomenonin questionandprovokesthe liveliest possible critical
scrutiny,controversy,counter-proposals,and (why not?)counter-stories.This is what I
understandJameson to be suggesting when he writes, apropos of his account of
postmodernismin the "CulturalLogic" essay,
I have proposed a "model"ofpostmodernism,which is worth what it's worth
and mustnow take its chances independently;but it is the constructionof such
a model thatis ultimatelythefascinating matter,and I hope it will not be taken
as a knee-jerkaffirmationof "pluralism"if say thatalternateconstructionsare
desirableand welcome,since the graspingof thepresentfromwithinis themost
problematical task the mind canface. [Afterword383-84]
It is, we mightparaphrase,the telling of the storythatis valuable,along with the avenues
that any particularstory opens up for the telling of other-perhaps better, certainly
different-stories in the future.
But if we conclude thatHutcheonhas renouncedtoo much when she renouncesthe
narrativealong with the meta-, this still does not addressher anxiety about the meta- in
metanarrativity,the "mastery"in masternarratives. Here I would propose that we can
have the knowledge-producingand world-makingresourcesof masternarrativewithout
its implications of coercive mastery-so long as we undertaketo construe master
narrativesin a way thatmightbe called thekey of "as-if." In the key of as-if (the allusion
is to Vaihinger,of course), masternarrativesare left intactso far as the productivityof
theirstoriesis concerned,but"turneddown"or "demoted"so faras theirtruth-claimsare
concerned:theybecome moreor less useful fictions. I am recommending,in otherwords,
that ratherthan renouncing master narratives,we deliberately "weaken" (perhaps in
Vattimo'ssense? [see Borradori])or"trivialize"them,andthatwhen we proposeourown
6. ChristopherNorris,
theintellectual
surveying
landscapein1985,claimstohavediscerned
a general"narrative
turn"ofpostmodern
thoughtanalogousto, butalso in somewaysundoing,
the "linguisticturn"of modernthoughtearlierin thiscentury:"Astheideagainsgroundthatall
theoryis a species of sublimatednarrative,so doubtsemergeaboutthe verypossibilityof
[23]. Forsurveysof this
knowledgeas distinctfromthevariousforms
of narrativegratification"
allegednarrativeturn,see Bal andBarry,andmoregenerallythethreespecialissuesof Poetics
RevisitedI, II, III,"1990-91. For a varietyof examplesof "theuses of
Today,"Narratology
inthesciences,philosophy,andliterature"
storytelling
(thesubtitle),seeNash. Specificexamples
of the narrativeturnin variousdisciplinesmightincludeRorty(philosophy),White(history),
Bruner(psychology),Brown(sociology),McCloskey(economics),Tyler(anthropology),
and
Brooke-Rose(literarytheory). (Whateverhappenedto narratology?asks Brooke-Rose,and
answers: "It got swallowedinto story"[16].) For a narrativeapproachto theoriesof
inparticular,see McHale,"TellingPostmodernist
Stories,"andMepham.
postmodernism
diacritics / spring 1992

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31

masternarratives(why not?)we do so fromthe outsetin this weakenedor as-if form,not

as masternarrativesbut "masternarratives."
I doubt that Jameson would welcome this proposal. Indeed, he seems to have
anticipatedit and ruled it out in advance in his remarkson the logic of what StuartHall
calls "discursivestruggle." If in the competitionamong discourses which is so much a
featureof the postmoderncondition,one discoursedaresto assertits "nonoptionalitythatis to say, its privilegedauthorityas an articulationof somethinglike a truth,"then it
will be seen, writes Jameson,
notmerelyas usurpatoryandrepressivebut... as theillicit attemptof one group
to lord it over all the others. But if, in the spirit of pluralism, it makes its
autocritiqueand humblyadmits is mere "optionality,"the media excitement
falls away, everyoneloses interest,and the [discourse] in question,tail between
its legs, can shortly be observed makingfor the exitfrom the public sphere.
[CulturalLogic 397]
It is the familiarcatch-22 of postmoderndiscourseonce again: claim authority,and you
are denouncedas coercive; renounceit, and you find yourself withoutan audience. I do
not, however, take as dim a view of the "spiritof pluralism"as Jamesondoes. I would
like to believe that,if we can learnto entertainmasternarrativesnot as they are intended
to be entertainedbutin thekey of as-if, andif we begin tellingourown storiesin the same
as-if key, then the very natureof the discursivestrugglewill be alteredbefore long, and
for the better.
I would like to thinkthatmy proposalis very muchin the same vein as the late Donald
Barthelme'sprogramfor undoingpatriarchy,set forth in his "Manualfor Sons":
Yourtruetask,as a son, is to reproduceeveryone of the enormities[committed
by yourfather], but in attentuatedform. Youmust become yourfather, but a
paler, weakerversionof him. Theenormitiesgo withthejob, butclose studywill
allow you to performthejob less well than it has previously been done, thus
moving toward a golden age of decency, quiet, and calmed fevers. Your
contributionwill not be a small one, but "small" is one of the concepts you
shouldshootfor.... Begin by whispering,infront of a mirror,forthirtyminutes
a day. Then tie your hands behindyour backfor thirtyminutesa day, or get
someone else to do thisfor you. Then, choose one of your most deeply held
beliefs, suchas thebelief thatyourhonorsandawardshavesomethingto do with
you, and abjureit. Friends will helpyou abjureit, and can be telephonedif you
begin to backslide. Yousee thepattern,put it intopractice. Fatherhoodcan be,
if not conquered,at least "turneddown" in this generation-by the combined
efforts of all of us together. Rejoice. [270-71]
The masterfulnessof masternarratives-and the consequentanxiety-can be "turned
down" in this generationby the combinedefforts of all of us together. Rejoice.
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