Postfederman

Abstract

Postfederman Jeffrey R. Di Leo (bio) As we mourn the recent death of longtime ABR contributing editor Raymond Federman, we also attempt to fully appreciate the scope of his achievement. This task turns out to be easier said than done. Over the past thirty or so years, his fiction has been the subject of a good deal of scholarship in multiple languages. However, in spite of this wealth of attention, the scope of Federman's achievements has yet to be fully recognized by the academic community. One of the reasons for this lack of recognition stems from the ways in which Federman's novels have been categorized. In the US, Federman's work has most commonly been connected with a group of writers that brought "new life" to American fiction in the wake of pronouncements of the death of the novel in the late 1960s. His revitalizing, innovative peers include Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Steve Katz, Clarence Major, Ishmael Reed, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Ronald Sukenick. While the identification of Federman with this group of writers is accurate and not without its merits, in the longer run, it has served to exclude or marginalize his work from other—and arguably even more significant—contexts. Far too many accounts treat Federman as merely a member of a small group of writers who created through narrative experimentation a pioneering body of "metafiction" or "postmodern" American literature. Though relevant to those interested in tracing the development of American letters, such accounts neglect the range of his contributions to both the contemporary critical and world literature canons—contributions that scholars are only just beginning to recognize and explore in detail. His recent passing provides a good opportunity for us to reconsider an amazingly creative and daring thinker whose work is significant to not just considerations of the development of innovative fiction in America, but potentially to a number of distinct disciplines, and established and emerging critical discourses. These critical discourses include translation studies, Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, bilingual studies, Beckett studies, cultural studies, philosophy of language, postmodern theory, body criticism, critical theory, identity studies, narrative theory, trauma studies, philosophy of literature, and autobiography theory, among others. It should be noted that the disciplines represented here are far wider than just English, the standard province of Federman scholarship. They include philosophy, comparative literature, foreign languages, history, linguistics, and sociology. Federman's emphasis on voice over character, his playfulness with identity, his use of numerous alter egos, and his investigation of writing in the shadow of the Holocaust make his work a rich source for those invested in contemporary cultural studies and literary theory. His writing is a powerful voice in an age that has redirected attention to the cultural, historical, and political powers of fictional discourse. Federman, who passed away last month at the age of 81, is probably more relevant now than ever. The discourses necessary for appreciating the range and depth of his achievement—discourses such as cultural studies and literary theory—have only recently reached full maturation and institutional acceptance. It is easy to see this when one recalls that when Federman's early masterpiece Double or Nothing came out in 1971, "new criticism" was still considered "radical" by most English departments—departments which rarely if ever considered contemporary fiction as worthy of scholarship. One must also remember that Federman's writing becomes more significant in a critical climate charged by discussions of the relationship between culture, history, language, and narrative. While these discussions were forming in the seventies, they were still far from maturation. The seventies saw the rise of elegant and close structuralist, deconstructive, Marxist, and psychoanalytic interpretations of literature. Increasingly, emphasis on the libidinal, political, and social and/or social nature of signification would come to challenge the very profession of literary studies by laying the foundation for cultural studies. It is in the context of this post-literary or post-literature climate that Federman's fictions can be best understood. While Federman's writing is an amazing resource to engage through structuralist and/or poststructuralist theoretical contexts, it becomes even more powerful when considered through theory sensitive to the personal, social, and political dimensions of interpretation. As the eighties...