Critical Assertions Research Articles

Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism (review)

Reviewed by: Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism Aldon L Nielsen Madhu Dubey. Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. ix + 284 pp. Dubey begins by noting that while "we would expect African-American literature to form a vital resource for debates about postmodernism, it is conspicuously missing, even when these debates are launched in the name of racial difference" (2). Too often, when African-American literature is invoked in such discussions, it is in an effort to separate African-American writing from any association with the postmodern. Still, the gap Dubey offers to fill is not quite as wide as the publishers suggest on the book's cover, where they tout Signs and Cities as "the first book to consider what it means to speak of a post-modern moment in African-American literature." The fact that Dubey's own text makes reference to earlier books that undertake just such a consideration should serve to remind us that marketing departments are generally the final arbiters of jacket copy. Dubey's concentration on fiction brings about a further elision of preceding books on the subject, but Signs and Cities will be recognized, most particularly by its grateful predecessors, as a major statement on the subject as well as an invaluable addition to fiction studies, offering both broader and more acute comprehensions of postmodern moments. [End Page 767] Dubey follows Wahneema Lubiano in pointing out that the "decentering of Western cultural authority" should hardly be regarded as a crisis for African-American cultural studies (21), pointing to a long-standing black skepticism regarding Western metanarratives of the modern. Black critics raised telling questions about traditional views of agency and subjectivity in the West long before other black critics raised suspicions about the timing of poststructuralist critiques of subjectivity, and Dubey's acknowledgment of Toni Morrison's assertion that New World Africans faced the dilemmas of postmodern existence long before those dilemmas were named such by philosophers points in its turn to a long history of writings, most notably by W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James, asserting the modernity of African peoples and the contributions of New World Africans to emergent modernism. I find especially useful the ways in which Dubey addresses issues of the urban, anatomizing at the same time the curious turn toward the rural South and the past that has marked the growing popularity of a certain nostalgic reading of African-American culture in the years following the revolutionary 1960s. Dubey traces some of this to "the desire for a mystical encounter with the 'nonrepresentable' or 'naked' face of the other," which is but "the inverse side of claims about the decline of reality in postmodern times" (193). She effectively ties these phenomena to a mode of privileging of the voice that proceeds under the demonstrably false assumption that vocal signs are somehow less mediated, not in need of interpretation in the same way that is required by technologies of writing. Sutton E. Griggs, though he appears on few syllabi of postmodernity, cautioned as early as 1916 in Life's Demands that African Americans "must move up out of the age of the voice" into succeeding technologies, and succeeding generations of black technophiles have been not only "early adopters" but major innovators. This is part of what Dubey is getting at in her discussion of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, a novel that "undertakes a critical excavation, revealing African Americans to be the hidden architects of modern cities" (238). The critical assertion that black culture is in so many ways the hidden architect of the modern is, of course, an assertion that can only be made from the standpoint of a post in the after-modern, and Dubey's book is a veritable blueprint of the contemporary racial spaces of the cityscape. There are occasional oversights due to the exclusive focus on fiction. Dubey's masterful discussion of John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire usefully locates a real-life model for the character of Richard Corey, but shows no awareness of the character's literary model. While it could be that readers of Wideman's generation may know the character...

Discussion of Real Investment Implications of Employee Stock Option Exercises

Bens, Nagar, and Wong [BNW, 2001] investigate how employee stock option plans influence corporate payout policy and investing decisions. BNW hypothesize that firms divert cash from profitable investment expenditures to fund share repurchases in an attempt to mitigate earnings-pershare (EPS) dilution from stock option exercises. The relation between corporate finance, managerial incentives and investing decisions is a rich and important area of academic research. In recent years, the widespread growth in employee stock option plans has spurred increased interest on the part of shareholders, regulators and academics as to the effects of these plans on financing activities, incentives and equity valuation. Further, there is growing evidence that managers are concerned with the financial accounting implications of stock options plans (e.g., Carter and Lynch [2001]1). BNW motivate their study with four assumptions about managerial behavior. The first assumption is that managers believe employee stock option exercises dilute EPS. Second, BNW assert that managers believe share repurchases mechanically increase EPS. Third, BNW assume that managers and/or investors myopically focus on short-term EPS. The fourth critical assertion is that BNW's sample of S&P 500 firms have severe cash constraints and high financing costs (e.g., low free cash flow, small reserves of liquid assets, and no source of inexpensive short-term debt financing) that force

Re-Reading the Romance: Genre and Gender in Isabel Allende's 'Niña Perversa'

Much of the current criticism of the work of the Chilean author Isabel Allende hinges on the premise that she exploits the romance genre in her best selling novels such as La casa de los espíritus (1982) and Eva Luna (1988). Critics haue also drawn attention to this factor in her 1990 collection of short stories, Cuentos de Eva Luna. However, as I shall argue in this article, detailed reading reveals that there is much more to the fiction of this author than simply conventional, sentimental romance. Taking issue with critical assertions which neatly tend to classify Allende's work, I will first undertake a general discussion of romance, drawing upon the current debate in cultural studies surrounding the genre, particularly amongst feminist scholars. Furthermore, using socio-psychoanalytic theory, I will then offer a reading of 'Niña perversa' which reveals that Allende uses the romance in her story not in order to endorse conventions, but rather in order to address and contest regressive patriarchal ideas.

Re-Reading the Romance: Genre and Gender in Isabel Allende's 'Niña Perversa'

Much of the current criticism of the work of the Chilean author Isabel Allende hinges on the premise that she exploits the romance genre in her best selling novels such as La casa de los espíritus (1982) and Eva Luna (1988). Critics haue also drawn attention to this factor in her 1990 collection of short stories, Cuentos de Eva Luna. However, as I shall argue in this article, detailed reading reveals that there is much more to the fiction of this author than simply conventional, sentimental romance. Taking issue with critical assertions which neatly tend to classify Allende's work, I will first undertake a general discussion of romance, drawing upon the current debate in cultural studies surrounding the genre, particularly amongst feminist scholars. Furthermore, using socio-psychoanalytic theory, I will then offer a reading of 'Niña perversa' which reveals that Allende uses the romance in her story not in order to endorse conventions, but rather in order to address and contest regressive patriarchal ideas.

Welcome Don Kennedy

I n a few days, it will be time to hand over the responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief of Science to Professor Don Kennedy of Stanford University. Time, as they say, flies when you are having fun, so the realization that this Editor-in-Chief has held the job for more than 5 years still seems hard to swallow. As Phil Abelson, Science 's Editor-in-Chief from 1962 to 1984, said to Dan Koshland (Editor-in-Chief from 1985 to 1995), and Dan said to me, this has to be one of the best jobs in the scientific world. Science receives a constant stream of high-quality research papers and has published some of the most exciting and important scientific discoveries and ideas of our time. It has the wisdom of experts available around the world to help evaluate these results and explain them to our readers. And Science has a highly motivated and experienced staff of editors to help sift through the frequently polarized views of authors and reviewers. This job is a constantly moving dynamo daring to be contained. As a former neuroscientist and an active environmental policy mover, the new Editor-in-Chief will certainly take pride in the original research content in the back of Science. It is because of this segment of Science that the AAAS has long believed that the Editor-in-Chief should be a prominent active scientist. Our new Editor-in-Chief certainly qualifies. Other scientists will recognize him as someone who can analyze complicated situations and make logical and, at the same time, fair decisions. A “real” scientist at the top of the editorial masthead gives readers and authors the assurance that someone who understands the peer-review process from the inside out can keep it in tune. Of course, with rejection rates that often exceed 90%, Science Editors-in-chief have a particularly challenging task balancing referee reports across fields, retaining rigor of decisiveness, and sensing when it is time to take a chance with a new finding. But the weekly issues of Science are far more than a sterling series of outstanding original research papers. For many readers, each weekly issue is a window on the news of the world of science. Science covers the policy issues, personnel changes, academic moves, and other noteworthy discoveries announced elsewhere in the literature or at scientific meetings. Situated between the News sections and the original research papers, Science 's Compass offers opinions from scientists and policy analysts who put the original research and the policy issues into perspective. It will not have escaped the new Editor-in-Chief's notice that the Science of 2000 has evolved a fair distance from its precursor of half a decade ago. Not only will the new Editor-in-Chief carry responsibility for the weekly print publication, he will also have four strongly complementary companion products within the Science family of publications: Science OnLine, Science 's Next Wave, Science News on the Web, and Science 's Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment. Next week, we will take a look back at some of the changes that seem to have captured the strongest followings. But none of the changes and none of new products sprung fully formed from the mind of the Editor-in-Chief. They grew from readers' complaints, editors' concerns, and production pitfalls. The changes emerged from a constant effort to achieve the goal of serving the scientific community with the most accurate, timely, and comprehensive information needed to do their jobs optimally. Putting all of these new ideas into practice while accelerating the decision-making and workflow into print and online was only possible because of our highly effective art and production colleagues. Finally, then, there is the Editorial column. This Editor-in-Chief's scientific career experiences benefited from limitless open-mindedness, a stance that readily accepts novel findings but seriously constrains critical editorial assertions and calls to action. For policy-wonk wannabes who aspire to greater wisdom, reticence is a virtue. But many issues have indeed inflamed us over the past 5 years, and our archives reflect the positions taken. Readers who look forward to new opinions will appreciate the in-depth profile of the new Editor-in-Chief by his Stanford faculty colleague Professor Paul Ehrlich, which appears on page 1349 of this issue. For now we say, welcome Don and fare well.

Measuring variability in early child language: don't shoot the messenger.

Feldman et al. criticize the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) as having too much variability, too little stability, and insufficient ability to predict early language delay. We present data showing that these characteristics of the CDI are authentic reflections of individual differences in early language development rather than measurement deficiencies. We also respond to their critical assertions concerning sociodemographic influences on the CDI scores.

Radically Contested Assertions in Ecosystem Management

Summary Ecosystem management is a magnet for controversy, in part because some of its formulations rest on questionable assertions that are radically contested. These assertions are important to understanding much of the conflict surrounding ecosystem management and, therefore, deserve thoughtful discussion and vigorous debate. Unfortunately, the assertions usually receive little scrutiny because critics, supporters, and the public are, understandably, absorbed in the personal and societal consequences of implementing controversial public policy choices under the rubric of ecosystem management. Professional natural resource managers, typically operating from within government bureaucracies and professional organizations, tend to blunt debate over the critical assertions by depicting ecosystem management as an evolution of past management approaches. Others, usually from outside the traditional natural resource management professions, contend that ecosystem management is revolutionary, not evolutionary. In this more radical view, ecosystem management is much more than a mere reformulation of classic natural resource management. To accept such a radical view of ecosystem management, I propose that there are four necessary, but implicit assertions. None of the assertions is accepted without challenge: each has articulate supporters and detractors. My conclusion from evaluating the radically contested assertions and policy corollaries is that much, but not all, of what is alleged as a scientific basis for ecosystem management is an assertion of fundamental values or, at the very least, an expression of personal policy preferences.

Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, and: Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (review)

Reviewed by: Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, and: Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb Sharalyn Orbaugh Tomi Suzuki. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. 248 pp. John Whittier Treat. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. xvii + 487 pp. In the 1880s a Japanese writer, translator, and critic named Tsubouchi Shoyo proposed that the term “shosetsu” be adopted as the standard Japanese translation for the modern literary form described by the English word “novel” or the French “roman.” In his influential essay “Shosetsu shinzui” (“The Essence of the Novel”), Tsubouchi explained the salient characteristics of this unfamiliar Western form to his Japanese readership and enthusiastically promoted “the novel” as the most effective vehicle for the expression of modern life. Thereafter writers and critics took their understanding of this form, gained primarily from attempts to translate English, French, German, and Russian novels into Japanese, and used that understanding to experiment with the writing of original shosetsu. By the turn of the century the nature and significance of the shosetsu was no longer problematized; writers had domesticated the form and had even devised a new literary language to accommodate the expression of a particularly Japanese modernity. Through the 1970s English-language scholarship on Japanese literature reproduced the assumption of an unproblematic equivalency between the novel and the shosetsu, almost invariably with the concomitant [End Page 538] critical denigration of Japanese “novels,” which were seen as lacking in plot, character development, and dramatic incident. This continuing critical discomfort with the Japanese “novel” is perhaps not surprising; although based on (the 19th century Japanese understanding of) the Anglo-European “novel,” the modern literary form shosetsu remains stubbornly and provocatively different from its Western model. Since the 1980s there have been several English-language studies that explored the shosetsu as a separate form, to be read on its own cultural terms. Tomi Suzuki’s Narrating the Self joins this critical conversation, focusing on a sub-set of the form called the “shi-shosetsu” (or, in an alternate reading, “watakushi-shosetsu”), often translated as “I-novel.” The shi-shosetsu may be narrated in first- or third-person but is usually assumed to be a transparent depiction of the author’s own life and thoughts, devoid of irony. Japanese critics have often argued that this subset of the shosetsu is in fact the most significant and the most “truly Japanese” of modern Japanese literary forms. Recent Western studies (such as those by Edward Fowler and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit) have worked to identify the defining formal characteristics of the shi-shosetsu, particularly as it differs from the novel, both to recuperate it from the defamation of previous Eurocentric criticism and to offer response to Japanese-language critical discussion of the form. Hijiya-Kirschnereit, for example, argues convincingly that there were women writers of shi-shosetsu, contrary to the usual Japanese critical assertion that it was a form employed by men only. Suzuki’s study positions itself explicitly in relation to these recent publications on the shi-shosetsu: her project is to counter the notion of the shi-shosetsu as “an inherent literary genre with identifiable textual features”; she sees it rather as “a historically constructed dominant reading and interpretive paradigm.” Although the issues discussed in this book are identical to those that have configured earlier studies—authenticity, phonocentrism, the autonomous subject, and the development of a modern language, among others—Suzuki takes a historiographic approach, identifying the various moments when the idea of shi-shosetsu was created and then recruited to substantiate retroactively particular arguments about these issues. Although Tayama Katai’s Futon (1907) is frequently cited as the origin-text of the shi-shosetsu, the category was not created until at least two decades later, in the service of a critical debate about the value of Japanese literature [End Page 539] in comparison with Western forms. As Suzuki explains, significant debate over the shi-shosetsu surfaced twice more: around 1935 and immediately after World War II. She traces the circumstances that produced and defined these debates—both in the contexts of literary and social history—and then discusses...

The effects of matrix organization size and number of project assignments on performance

Peters, Waterman, and a number of popular management authors have recently offered numerous criticisms of matrix structures. This investigation empirically tests two of these critical assertions in the areas of matrix organization size and number of project assignments. The findings based on a sample of 64 high-technology firms suggest that Peters' and Waterman's conclusions are incorrect. >

Bias in validity generalization variance estimates: A reply to Hoben Thomas.

In a recent article Thomas (1988) derived the expected value of the true validity variance estimate used in validity generalization studies. Based on computations of the expected values for certain scenarios, Thomas made a number of critical assertions regarding the variance estimate. This article shows that Thomas's arguments regarding deficiencies in the variance estimate used in validity generalization studies are misleading

Fathering Herself: A Source Study of Shakespeare's Feminism

THE COLLABORATION OF CRITICAL METHODS suggested by title of this essay might appear a rather unlikely, even forced, proposition. Source study and are a strange pair: first is largely interested in finding in Shakespeare verbal echoes of earlier texts, second committed to discovering in Shakespeare a foreshadowing of particular political identities. Certainly, in considering feminism (a debatable, and surely anachronistic, construction), prospect of looking to Shakespeare's sources for origins of any political understanding of the woman's part seems to offer little promise; behind critical assertion that finds Shakespeare's portrayals of women remarkable lies unarticulated suspicion of rare if not unprecedented quality of his cultural voice. In other words, assumption of Shakespeare's uniqueness presupposes a differentiating context, and it is in relationship to conception of source as cultural context that I would like to consider Shakespeare. Traditionally relationship between Shakespeare and his literary sources, which source study examines, has been imagined as linear and determinative, an empirical matter of subtractions and additions, in which Shakespeare finds and rejects or accepts details of plot structure, character, or style. I would like to re-imagine this relationship less as a transference of formal ingredients, with sources as sites of mere borrowings, than as a culturally determined reading by Shakespeare of contexts that he found provocative-or not provocative enough. Curiously it is this sense of a source as merely a site of borrowing that feminist criticism has unwittingly adopted in its effort to stake some ideologically consistent claim to Shakespeare. Until recently, feminist criticism of Shakespeare divided itself-and Shakespeare-into two seemingly incompatible ideological camps. Pioneering feminist forays into Shakespeare's canon, while seeking to compensate for bias in a critical tradition that has tended to emphasize male characters, male themes, and male fantasies as well as to develop a uniquely feminist criticism capable of searching out the woman's part, discovered in Shakespeare an apparent commitment to portrayal of liberated female characters, strong in voice and action. Shakespeare here be-

On the normality of probability distributions of inflation and GNP forecasts

This study analyzes mean probability distributions reported by ASA-NBER forecasters on two macroeconomic variables, GNP and the GNP implicit price deflator. In the derivation of expectations, a critical assertion has been that the aggregate average expectation can be regarded as coming from a normal distribution. We find that, in fact, this assumption should be rejected in favor of distributions which are more peaked and skewed. For IPD, they are mostly positively skewed, and for nominal GNP the reverse is true. We then show that a non-central scaled t-distribution fit the empirical distributions remarkably well. The practice of using the degree of consensus across a group of predictions as a measure of a typical forecasters' uncertainty about the prediction is called to question.

The Three Masks of American Tragedy by Dan Vogel (review)

Book Reviews • THE THREE MASKS OF AMERICAN TRAGEDY, by Dan Vogel. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974. 180 pp. $6.95. American tragedy, argues Professor Vogel, is definable through an examination of central nineteenth and twentieth-century works which illustrate specific "masks" derived from earlier periods of tragedy. Moreover, in spite of the regional and thematic differences among works examined, certain American plays and novels share a distinct tragic spirit and tone which belie the common critical assertion that there is no such thing as American or, for that matter, modern tragedy. In presenting his case, Mr. Vogel demonstrates a sound grasp of tragic theory and American literature. His individual analyses of such works as Absalom! Absalom! and Mourning Becomes Electra are incisive and serve his central thesis well; his discussion of the necessary background to the specific masks worn by American tragic figures - those of Oedipus, Christ and Satan, respectively - is generally cogent and sensible, particularly in the long opening section ofthe book which shows how the Oedipal hero assumes such diversely American personae as Ephraim Cabot, Willy Loman, Thomas Sutpen and Willy Stark. The suggestion that Job was a type oftyrannos who, along with Oedipus, especially appealed to American tragedians is among the most interesting speculations of the book, for it shows clearly how Job's role as common man is eventually linked to Aristotelian elements of tragedy. While one might resist yet another attempt to portray Willy Loman as tragic hero, one must credit Professor Vogel with as forceful an argument as has yet appeared, dependent as it is upon literary history rather than the limited emotional response upon which such "proof' usually rests. The paradox of Christian tragedy is epitomized for Vogel in the fate of Billy Budd, "not only a handsome foretopman, but an innocent, flawed Adam and a condemned Jesus" (p. 128). Thus, an age of Christianity, despite Vogel's 201 202 BOOK REVIEWS acknowledgment that there exists a basic incompatibility between tragic and Christian doctrine, results in the inevitable development in America of figures like Dimmesdale who, "after experiencing the fall ofAdam and suffering ofJob" (p. 126) die like Christ. In the brief final section of the book, Vogel focuses upon Captain Ahab and Joe Christmas, "diabolical villains with Christological veneers who turn out to be heroes" (p. 141). The Three Masks ofAmerican Tragedy is consistently an interesting book that nevertheless suffers from its own complex of quasi-tragic flaws. While properly crediting the importance to his study of critics like R.W.B. Lewis, Bernard Knox and a host of other significant literary analysts, Vogel is willing to quote Richard Watts, J. Donald Adams and Brooks Atkinson when their remarks appear to help him prove his point. A similar absence ofjudgment occurs in the analyses ofsome of the primary works. While declaring that the tragic world of An American Tragedy "does not admit a tragic tyrannos" (p. 59), Vogel is elsewhere in the book strangely unwilling to distinguish among the relative achievements of the works he describes. Winterset, while useful in a discussion of American tragedy, is finally a bad and pretentious play; to take the playas seriously as Vogel does is implicitly to suggest that virtually every work considered is an equally accomplished work of art. Critical terminology is at times confusingly rendered. Why, when he speaks of Milton's Adam, does Vogel equate "realism" with "tragedy"? Why does he limit the terms to describe catharsis to those of Aristotle, pity and terror, when so much else in the book rightly enlarges the Aristotelian frame of reference? Why, in a work otherwise aware of Melville's contribution to American tragedy, does Vogel ignore "Benito Cereno" and, especially, Robert Lowell's adaptation of that work in The Old Glory? How can a discussion of American tragedy ignore The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night? One could go on: A seven page analysis of Desire Under the Elms disregards O'Neill's conscious use of the Hippolytus; Vogel seems unaware of Eric Bentley's important and relevant study, The Life of the Drama, and Robert Brustein's equally appropriate Theatre ofRevolt. Vogel's prose style is frequently inflated: Out...

God's Lioness and the Priest of Sycorax: Plath and Hughes

Poets deep and mysterious can too easily become mirrors, their central obscurities burnished to reflect our cultural preoccupations. So popular categories falsify. We are invited to understand Sylvia Plath as feminist, despite the rather strong animosity to women in The Bell Jar which led Harriet Rosenstein (writing in Ms.) to question falsely assigned role as feminist heroine.' And in a culture fascinated by the spectacle of its own gradual self-destruction, there is perhaps even more preoccupation with Sylvia Plath as suicide, despite various brave but questionable critical assertions that suicides have little of general importance to say to us.2 Clearly it is impossible to deny that the feminist and suicidal categories touch on Plath's vision of sexual destruction, but those classifications fail to take us deeply enough into her poetry; even taken together they suggest too simple a direction for the violence she evokes, too reductive a preoccupation with Plath as victim. Finally there exists something at the bottom of her writing we do not yet understand, something hidden, and often inadequately described by the poems themselves, something for which we use our most equivocal terms. Most of the different versions of Plath in The Art of Sylvia Plath:' agree in resorting to words like magic, ecstatic, mystic, oracular, prophetic, and visionary, but