Document Type

Article

Department

Media Studies (Pomona)

Publication Date

2-1999

Keywords

Cohen, Josh, 1970-; Books-Reviews; American history and culture; Postmodernism

Abstract

Josh Cohen, in his new book Spectacular Allegories: Postmodern American Writing and the Politics of Seeing, argues that postmodern American novelists ranging from Norman Mailer to Joan Didion, Robert Coover to James Ellroy, do not merely fall into accord with this critique -text good; image bad- but are in fact using the allegorical nature of their encounters with and representations of visual culture as a means of reintroducing the image to history, an attempt to construct a new critical politics of visuality. The possibility of a critical visual agency is raised for Cohen in these writers’ gendered representations of the reversible and dialogic nature of specularity-that the watcher may, at any moment, become the watched-a mutable relationship that is made possible by a perceived crisis in masculine narrative and visual authority, and may undermine the domination imposed by that traditional authority.

Comments

Previously linked to as: http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/u?/irw,330.

This article may also be found at http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/490/403.

Use of this file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Rights Information

© 1999 Kathleen Fitzpatrick

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

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