The Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction.

Abstract

With assistance of poststructuralist theories by Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan, Play of in Postmodern American evaluates contemporary role of doppelganger. The doppelganger or double was previously used in Plato's works explain sexual attraction; in Western folklore signify imminent death; in premodern English literature explore relationship of soul and body, reason and conscience, or any number of binary oppositions; and in twentieth-century literature depict conflict between conscious and unconscious. Traditionally double has affirmed rational humanist views of an indivisible, fixed identity and universal absolutes. Gordon E. Slethaug argues that in postmodern literature double has ceased function as a metaphor for unity (or aberrational metaphysical-physical conflict and psychological decomposition) and instead celebrates a discontinuous self in a fragmented universe. A self-conscious literary device, it now assesses human desire structure language, fiction, and all reality. By specifically applying his theory works by Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, John Hawkes, John Barth, Richard Brautigan, and Raymond Federman, Slethaug gears Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction to fictional works that depart from psychological perspectives of Freudian psychoanalysis or Jungian archetypalism, thus setting his work apart from earlier studies of double. The authors Slethaug examines are concerned with de-formation and re-formation of signifying structures in society and fiction: In Despair, Nabokov shows how doppelganger has linked analogy, metaphor, philosophical idealism, and transcendental mysticism. In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon interrogates binarity, putting it under erasure, and affirms binary intersubjectivity; he also looks at human tendency equate systems. In Blood Oranges, Hawkes investigates way in which twin drives of eroticism and death, commonly viewed in Freudian psychology as antithetical, are similar in subject transference. In Lost in Funhouse, Barth presents a dizzying array of doubles that simultaneously use and displace previous significations. In TheHawkline Monster, Brautigan's minimalist metafictive parody of double depicts our narcissistic view of reality. In Double or Nothing, Federman subverts conventional double, exposing its gamelike structures and traditional views of life and text. Slethaug shows that by interrogating sign of double each author examined questions binarity upon which double is fixed, uses and subverts traditional significations, and reinvigorates a cliched literary device. This pathbreaking book will engage those interested in contemporary theory, contemporary American literature, and fantastic in literature.