All of this begs the question, for Kruger as well as for any politically engaged postmodern artist: If we’re all patsies of the simulacrum, how can we choose a political program? How does one slip out from under “remote control” in order to make decisions with any but false consciousness? In U2′s Zoo TV Live [...]
At its worst, Kruger’s prose sounds like a ditto prepared for Postmodernism 101: “History has been the text of the dead dictated to the living, through a voice which cannot speak for itself. The ventriloquist that balances corpses on its knee, that gives speech to silence, and transforms bones and blood into reminiscences, is none [...]
Mes Chères, Working on my summer research, I was trying to remember something I thought I’d said about U2 in a review essay published back in 1994 in the online journal Postmodern Culture. When I found it and re-read it, I was surprised, actually, that I had written it: it’s been so long since I’ve [...]
Five more kvetches about Kakutani’s style of literary criticism and we’re done, boys & girls. Hold on tight. The first I sort of mentioned in the very first post, and it’s implicit in much of what I’ve written already: to wit, she (#6) too much enjoys delivering the jeremiad. As Neil Innes sings in his [...]
I’ve realized recently that I can be something of a reactionary against “reactionaries.” I suppose I’m a left-reactionary, though reactionary against both right- and left-reactionaries. Quite a “meta-” situation, to be sure: precisely the kind of thing Michiko Kakutani loathes. As many of my readers will be aware, Kakutani has been at it again; her [...]