PostModern Culture was one of the first online academic journals--probably
the very first to deal with film/TV-related topics.  I just received the
table of contents (see below) for their latest issue and learned that they
have joined Johns Hopkins Press' "Project Muse" (as has Wide Angle,
incidentally).
 
One of the repercussions of this move is that PMC will now start charging
for past issues--although the current issue will still be distributed for
free.  I can understand the reasons for making this change and cannot fault
the PMC editors for doing so, but it does sadden me a little.  As the
Internet and the World Wide Web "mature" it seems like fewer and fewer
resources are available without charge.  And as those charges mount, the
distribution of information, data, opinion and analysis becomes
increasingly limited.
 
I have conflicted feelings about enterprises such as Project Muse.  Does
anyone else share my ambivalence?
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Volume 7, Number 2 (January, 1997)              ISSN: 1053-1920
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Editors:                                Eyal Amiran
                                        Lisa Brawley
                                        Stuart Moulthrop
                                        John Unsworth
 
Review Editor:                          Paula Geyh
 
Managing Editor:                        Sarah Wells
 
List Manager:                           Jessamy Town
 
Research Assistant:                     Anne Sussman
 
Editorial Board:
 
     Sharon Bassett                     Phil Novak
     Michael Berube                     Chimalum Nwankwo
     Nahum Chandler                     Patrick O'Donnell
     Marc Chenetier                     Elaine Orr
     Greg Dawes                         Marjorie Perloff
     J. Yellowlees Douglas              Fred Pfeil
     Jim English                        Peggy Phelan
     Graham Hammill                     David Porush
     Phillip Brian Harper               Mark Poster
     David Herman                       Carl Raschke
     bell hooks                         Avital Ronell
     E. Ann Kaplan                      Susan Schultz
     Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett      William Spanos
     Arthur Kroker                      Tony Stewart
     Neil Larsen                        Allucquere Roseanne Stone
     Tan Lin                            Gary Lee Stonum
     Saree Makdisi                      Chris Straayer
     Jerome McGann                      Rei Terada
     Uppinder Mehan                     Paul Trembath
     Jim Morrison                       Greg Ulmer
     Larysa Mykata
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
     Dear Readers,
 
     With our January, 1997 issue, Postmodern Culture begins
     publishing with the Johns Hopkins University Press.
     Hopkins' innovative Muse project promises to advance
     the art of electronic publishing in ways that will
     benefit the journal and its readers. Johns Hopkins
     Press will also provide much needed financial and
     technical support. This new arrangement entails some
     changes in our operation, but we'll continue to bring
     you innovative and challenging interdisciplinary work
     and hope you'll continue with us in this intellectual
     and publishing adventure.
 
     Postmodern Culture will continue to be published three
     times each academic year: September, January, and May.
     As each new issue of the journal becomes available it
     will appear simultaneously at the journal's current
     World Wide Web address (WWW.IATH.VIRGINIA.EDU/PMC) and
     on JHUP's Project Muse online journals site
     (MUSE.JHU.EDU). The Virginia site will offer the
     current issue in World Wide Web format (HTML) free of
     charge. When a new issue is published it will replace
     the prior issue. Back issues will not be available at
     this site.
 
     The Hopkins site will provide SGML-encoded text,
     searchable access to all issues and volumes of the
     journal, and other enhancements including document
     delivery by special order. Access to this site and its
     services is by paid subscription. Readers affiliated
     with institutions that subscribe to the Muse project
     will have access through those subscriptions. To find
     out if your institution subscribes, see our subscriber
     list (MUSE.JHU.EDU/PROJ_DESCRIP/SUBSCRIBED.HTML).
     Institutions may obtain PMC either through a
     full-resource subscription to Project Muse or
     through a single-title subscription at the rate of
     $50 per year.  Individuals not affiliated with subscribing
     institutions may subscribe for $20 per year.
 
     Subscription information can be found at <MUSE.JHU.EDU/ORDERING/>.
     Institutional subscription information is at
     <MUSE.JHU.EDU/ORDERING/SUBSCRIPTION_FORM.HTML> and individual
     subscription information is at
     <WWW.PRESS.JHU.EDU/ACCESS/INDIV_FORM.HTML>.
 
     JHUP will notify individual subscribers of the contents
     of each issue as soon as it is published. Later in the
     year subscribers will be offered an article
     notification service that will record a user profile
     reflecting particular interests in subjects or authors.
 
     The PMC LISTSERV list will continue at Johns Hopkins.
     JHUP will distribute the table of contents for each
     issue through this list; however, because conversion
     from HTML/SGML to ASCII is prohibitively complex and
     expensive, we will no longer provide text-only versions
     of articles.
 
     The change from free electronic distribution to a
     combination of free and for-fee access may surprise
     some of our readers, so it deserves an explanation.
     Since the founding of the journal, the University of
     Virginia and North Carolina State University have
     generously subsidized PMC's operations, but they cannot
     continue this support. Grants for startup funding have
     gradually been exhausted. In order to carry on, the
     journal needs a source of income.
 
     PMC has been and continues to be the work of many
     volunteers. The editors and editorial board contribute
     their time and efforts without remuneration.
     Nonetheless, the journal incurs numerous costs,
     including a paid staff (our hard-working managing
     editor and various assistants), postage, telephone
     bills, advertising, software, supplies, etc. We have to
     recover some of these operating expenses.
 
     Gaining financial solvency is one reason we've
     affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University Press, a
     publisher that is in the forefront when it comes to
     providing inexpensive, broad access to electronic
     scholarly materials. Project Muse, JHUP's innovative
     electronic journals collection, enables worldwide,
     networked access via subscription to the full text of
     over forty journals. Muse currently enables access by
     over 2.3 million academics at more than 260 subscribing
     institutions, as well as to the 4 million residents of
     Cleveland and Pittsburgh through their public library
     systems.
 
     We're very pleased that Johns Hopkins has agreed to
     work with us to meet the challenges of publishing a
     contemporary academic journal. With this new situation
     PMC finds a stable home and secures its future; we
     think that this arrangement offers as much as possible
     both to casual and professional readers at minimum
     cost. Academic publishers will have to find new
     paradigms that serve their audience in the evolving
     electronic environment. That is what we have endeavored
     to do ourselves, and will continue to do as part of
     Project Muse.
 
     If you are affiliated with an academic institution,
     please encourage the library to subscribe to the Muse
     collection and/or to PMC.
 
     Thank you.
 
                         EYAL AMIRAN
                         LISA BRAWLEY
                         STUART MOULTHROP
                         JOHN UNSWORTH
 
                         Editors, Postmodern Culture
 
 
     --------------------------------------------------------
 
                             CONTENTS
 
          Arkady Plotnitsky, "'But It Is Above All Not True':
          Derrida, Relativity, and the 'Science Wars'"
 
          Maria Damon, "Lenny Bruce's 1962 Obscenity Trial:
          Public Culture and the Jewish Entertainer as
          Cultural Lightning Rod"
 
          Tony Thwaites, "Currency Exchanges: The Postmodern,
          Vattimo, Et Cetera, Among Other Things (Et Cetera)"
 
          Heikki Raudaskoski, "'The Feathery Rilke Mustaches
          and Porky Pig Tattoo on Stomach': High and Low
          Pressures in _Gravity's Rainbow_"
 
          Penelope Engelbrecht, "Bodily Mut(il)ation:
          Enscribing Lesbian Desire"
 
          Steven Jones, "The Book of _Myst_ in the Late Age of
          Print"
 
                         -----------------
                              Fiction
 
          Paul Andrew Smith, "Radio Free Alice"
 
          Gregory Wolos, "Son of Kong, How Do You Do?"
 
                         -----------------
                              Reviews
 
          David DeRose, "'A Lifetime of Anger and Pain': Kali
          Tal and the Literature of Trauma." Review of Kali
          Tal, _Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literature of
          Trauma_. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1996.
 
          Thomas Vogler, "Dressing the Text: On the Road with
          the Artist's Book." Review of _Dressing the Text_
          exhibition.
 
          Lynda Hall, "Holly Hughes Performing:
          Self-Invention and Body Talk." Review of Holly
          Hughes, _Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler_. New York:
          Grove, 1996.
 
          Tammy Clewell, "Failing to Succeed: Toward a
          Postmodern Ethic of Otherness." Review of Ewa
          Plonawska Ziarek, _The Rhetoric of Failure:
          Deconstruction of Skepticism, Reinvention of
          Modernism_. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996.
 
          Sujata Iyengar, "The Resuscitation of Dead
          Metaphors." Review of "Incorporating the Antibody:
          Women, History and Medical Discourse," a
          conference held at the University of Western
          Ontario, October 5-6, 1996, and the accompanying
          exhibition "Speculations: Selected Works from
          1983-1996," by Barbara McGill Balfour.
 
          Mike Hill, "What Was (the White) Race? Memory,
          Categories, Change." Review of Noel Ignatiev and
          John Garvey, eds, _Race Traitor_ (New York:
          Routledge, 1996) and Mab Segrest, _Memoir of a Race
          Traitor_ (Boston: South End Press, 1994).
 
                         -----------------
 
                              Letters
 
                         -----------------
 
                         Related Readings
 
                         -----------------
 
                              Notices
 
                         -----------------
 
     Arkady Plotnitsky, "'But It Is Above All Not True':
     Derrida, Relativity, and the 'Science Wars'"
 
        o Abstract: The article considers a remark by
          Jacques Derrida on Einstein's relativity. This
          remark has been widely circulated without proper
          scholarly and philosophical treatment in recent
          discussions around the so-called "Science Wars,"
          in the wake of Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt's
          _Higher Superstition_, and then Alan Sokal's "hoax
          article." By examining several specific responses
          to Derrida's statement and his work in general by
          scientists and others, the article argues that
          this circulation is a symptom of a deeper problem
          that permeates the current intellectual
          landscape--still the landscape of "two cultures"
          (scientific and humanistic) in spite, and even
          because, of massive transformations of both these
          cultures and of the interactions between them
          during recent decades. This problem shapes the
          reception of the work of Derrida and several other
          figures, such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel
          Serres, and Gilles Deleuze, on the part of the
          scientific community. The article examines the
          circumstances, contexts and meanings of Derrida's
          remark, and considers the general question of
          reading philosophical texts, such as Derrida's,
          that engage or refer to mathematics and science.
          It also suggests a reading of Derrida's statement
          itself that will, hopefully, lead to more
          productive responses to the work of Derrida and
          other recent thinkers on the part of the
          scientific community.--ap
 
     Maria Damon, "Lenny Bruce's 1962 Obscenity Trial: Public
     Culture and the Jewish Entertainer as Cultural
     Lightning Rod"
 
        o Abstract: In 1962, comedian Lenny Bruce was tried
          for obscenity in San Francisco and, for the only
          time in his many subsequent arrests and trials,
          acquitted. The trial transcript documents a moment
          in San Francisco's history, bringing together the
          social currents surrounding the emergence of a gay
          men's community; the discourse of expertise and
          the town/gown politics of the Irish/Italian police
          force against the "long beards" at Berkeley; and
          the tensions between the language of juridical
          process and that of the carnivalesque. San
          Francisco was shortly to become a center for
          several different countercultures noted for their
          flamboyant aesthetic and their emphasis on
          alternate social organizing units (the spectrum of
          gay relationships, hippie "tribes," Third World
          arts communes, etc.), which questioned the
          traditional relationship of sexuality to
          reproduction and family life. I want to argue
          that, though he was neither gay, San Franciscan,
          politically active in the conventional sense, nor
          literary in the conventional sense, Bruce's role
          as hyperverbal Jewish "entertainer" (in-betweener)
          set his trial as a moment signaling cultural
          change in San Francisco. Further, this scenario
          resonates with more recent and ongoing debates
          about the role of non-normative artistic
          expression in civic life.--md
 
     Tony Thwaites, "Currency Exchanges: The Postmodern,
     Vattimo, et cetera, Among Other Things (et cetera)"
 
        o Abstract: A frequent criticism of the idea of the
          postmodern is that it lacks both clear referent
          and conceptual coherence. It may be more useful to
          see what is going on in such debates in terms of a
          performative and asyndetic logic, whose figure is
          the instability of the list, neither coherent nor
          incoherent. Drawing on the work of Gianni Vattimo,
          this article tries to reframe the terms of the
          debate by suggesting a concept of the aesthetic
          which would be neither simply vanguardist nor
          populist, but linked intimately to the possibility
          of community, history, the political and
          social.--tt
 
     Heikki Raudaskoski, "'The Feathery Rilke Mustaches and
     Porky Pig Tattoo on Stomach': High and Low Pressures in
     _Gravity's Rainbow_"
 
        o Abstract: On one occasion Mikhail Bakhtin
          describes his famous "chronotopes" as places
          "where knots of narrative are tied and untied".
          While it is very difficult to find chronotopes
          like these in Thomas Pynchon's _Gravity's Rainbow_,
          many passages in the text nevertheless keep
          asking: where and how do characters and readers
          (and the text itself) position themselves? What
          time are they in? The novel certainly posits the
          existence of an epic, unilinear, and apocalyptic
          time; however, this kind of time never arrives
          inside the text. Thus possibilities for novelness,
          something new, remain. What positional
          possibilities, then, does this leave for
          characters and the narrator? This essay tries to
          find answers to this question by studying how the
          binary opposition of "high" and "low" works in the
          novel in various respects.
 
          These positionalities prove "highly" unstable in
          the novel. The vain search for high unities
          results in low-feeling melancholies. On the other
          hand, only through low, popular cultural genres it
          is possible, at least momentarily, to feel high.
          Neither high canon (as, obviously, in Joyce's
          _Ulysses_) nor low carnivalism (as in Bakhtin's
          reading of Rabelais) prove capable of attaining
          supremacy. Yet this does not have to lead to
          "postmodernism" as neutralized relativism.
          _Gravity's Rainbow_'s labyrinthine carnivalism is
          different. Although there are no pure, closed
          sites for low marginals, either, positional
          tensions will not ease off. On the contrary: just
          because transcendental subjects and dialectical
          syntheses turn impossible, the novel is able to
          maintain hard and urgent questions of
          positionality.--hr
 
     Penelope Engelbrecht, "Bodily Mut(il)ation: Enscribing
     Lesbian Desire"
 
        o Abstract: "What do lesbians really want?"
 
          I raise this question in my essay, and offer a
          conditional answer that devolves from the
          inter/active relation of lesbian Other/Self and
          lesbian Subject: a mutual relation mediated by
          their lesbian Desire, that Desire characterizing
          and characterized by alinear %jouissance%.
 
          Because that pro/vocative lesbian %jouissance% may
          be construed in analogy to Derridean %differance%, I
          perceive lesbian Desire as enscribed in erotic
          textual site(s) of "saturated %aporia%." I explain
          how the "un/mark" refers to those ambivalent signs
          of bodily mutilation--s/m-inflicted bruises, scars
          of assault, and particularly mastectomy
          scars--which may be read and re-read as
          transformative signs, for example, of pain which
          becomes pleasure, of horror which metamorphoses
          into and through healing.
 
          These bodily un/marks comprise the multi-valent
          signifiers of a corporeal mut(il)ation which not
          only gestures toward an "essentialistic" lesbian
          embodiment, but which also articulates that
          essential materiality as/in an inter/active
          performativity. I observe lesbian sign, text, body
          as mutable situations of relational Desire even as
          they enable the endless mutation(s) of lesbian
          Desire, a mutual activity which remains ever
          in(con)clusive.
 
          One answer to the question? Lesbians Desire more
          time--pe
 
     Steven Jones, "The Book of _Myst_ in the Late Age of Print"
 
        o Abstract: This essay considers the CD-ROM game
          _Myst_, arguably the most widely experienced
          hypernarrative (if not exactly hypertext) of our
          time. In _Myst_ and its paratexts--prequel, sequel,
          sources, and marketing--we see dramatized some
          fundamental cultural anxieties surrounding the
          emergence of hypertext in the late age of print.
          The primary sign of these anxieties in the game is
          the ubiquitous image of the magical "linking"
          book, floating above the landscape or concealed in
          the machines that structure the game-play, clearly
          representing hypertext and what it portends for
          the aura of the Book in the late age of print.
          From the game and its books we move to an
          important precursor, Jules Verne's _The Mysterious
          Island_, which serves in turn as a link to the
          subgenre of Victorian adventure fiction and its
          bookish obsessions with technology (and islands).
          Then, linking forward to a recent work, Neal
          Stephenson's SF novel, _The Diamond Age_, the essay
          concludes by suggesting how _Myst_ inevitably
          exceeds the boundaries of its authors' intentions,
          aura, and back-story novelization. The essay
          recognizes that, on the one hand (as J. David
          Bolter has argued), the book may be moving to the
          margins of culture, but on the other hand (as
          Maurice Blanchot reminds us), culture remains
          tenaciously "linked to the book." At the heart of
          a mass-audience hypertext adventure game, the Book
          in _Myst_ signals a profound anxiety over the
          impending absence of the material book as an
          object of cultural significance.--sj
 
 
     --------------------------------------------------------
 
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----
Jeremy Butler
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