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Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Although published many decades ago, William Gaddis's The
Recognitions is only now beginning to receive the critical
attention it deserves. Carnival of Repetition, the first
full-length study of the novel, is a sophisticated analysis that
places it in a new literary and cultural context .This novel of the
1950 s is unlike anything else from that decade. It harks back to
the works of high modernism (exemplified by Joyce's Ulysses) and
looks forward to postmodern fiction (especially as practiced by
Barth, Pynchon, and DeLillo). Imitation is its major theme, one
that Gaddis pursues on many levels, across several continents, into
mazes of arcane knowledge and bogus scholarship, and even into the
novel's structure through the repetition of prior texts and the
interplay between literal and disguised quotation. Through an
endless play of repetition, Gaddis con-founds the reader's
recognition of similarity and difference.Johnston uses the theories
of Bakhtin and Deleuze (and others, such as Julia Kristeva) to map
out a context for this most unusual and difficult work. From
Bakhtin, he appropriates the concepts of "carnivalesque" fiction
and dialogism (or a plurality of independent voices, no one more
important than another). From Deleuze, he borrows the idea of the
simulacrum, a copy that presupposes no original and that becomes
meaningful through a process of infinite repetition. With these
instruments, Johnston analyzes the labyrinth of copy and
counterfeit that Gaddis constructs in his novel.
Baudrillard's remarkably prescient meditation on terrorism throws
light on post-9/11 delusional fears and political simulations.
Published one year after Forget Foucault, In the Shadow of the
Silent Majorities (1978) may be the most important sociopolitical
manifesto of the twentieth century: it calls for nothing less than
the end of both sociology and politics. Disenfranchised
revolutionaries (the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang) hoped
to reach the masses directly through spectacular actions, but their
message merely played into the hands of the media and the state. In
a media society meaning has no meaning anymore; communication
merely communicates itself. Jean Baudrillard uses this last
outburst of ideological terrorism in Europe to showcase the end of
the "Social." Once invoked by Marx as the motor of history, the
masses no longer have sociological reality. In the electronic media
society, all the masses can do-and all they will do-is enjoy the
spectacle. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities takes to its
ultimate conclusion the "end of ideologies" experienced in Europe
after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the death of revolutionary
illusions after May 1968. Ideological terrorism doesn't represent
anything anymore, writes Baudrillard, not even itself. It is just
the last hysterical reaction to discredited political illusions.
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