Universal Abandon: The Politics of Postmodernism edited by Andrew Ross (review)

Book Reviews103 intentionality and somewhat depend upon our interpretation ofthe text in its entirety, a text that Parker repeatedly contends cannot be deemed totally comprehensible? Even if we do not find Parker's version of textual criticism troubling, it remains uncertain whether or not the Genetic Text may serve any purpose other than to aid stylistic analysis or to help check unlikely or grossly errant readings. Parker aeserte that Hayford and Sealts "made it clear that some lines of criticism would be dead ends for any critic taking them" (176) emd that we must "acknowledge that there eire limits to what we can responsibly say" (178) about Billy Budd because ofits incompleteness and inconsistenciee. What, of interpretative interest, can responsibly be said about Billy Budd Peirker does not eufficiently articulate. Parker'e etudy ie moet compelling in the early eectione on Melville's late career and the history of the text's reception; and the proee throughout ie commendably lively and unpretentious. But when Peirker encouragingly concludes that "dazzling insights await any good reader" (178) ofthe Genetic Text, it is difficult not to feel that a more ample sampling of the insights to be garnered—in Reading Billy Budd itself—would have lent credibility to his promise. BRUCE HARVEY Temple University ANDREW ROSS, ed. Universal Abandon: The Politics of Postmodernism . Minneapolis: University of Minneeota Preee, 1988. 300 p. There eire now on the market numerous collections ofessays onpostmodernism and the postmodern: some will be eclipsed by Universal Abandon: The Politics ofPostmodernism, ably edited and perceptively introduced by Andrew Ross. Framed within an arresting political focus, it offers its readers twelve essays, bracketed by interviews with Fredric Jameson emd Cornel West. These essays address topics ranging from Crocodile Dundee emd Banana Republic to the politice of appropriation, sexual difference, emd neocolonialism, eis the authors "respond to what they eaw as the most significant political iseuee to have emerged out of their work within and around the poetmoderniem debates" (xvii). The reader primarily interested in literary postmodernism must look eleewhere, because the dominant figures here are Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Andreas Huyssen, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Lacan, emd Jean-Francois Lyotard. These men and their texts powerfully dominate the assumptions and arguments of the essays. Literature as such and specific literary works are seldom mentioned except in the context ofpopular culture. There eire obvioue threads of continuity uniting the dozen essays. All the authors apparently agree with Hal Foeter that there are "two basic positions within postmodernist eut: one aligned with neoconeervative politice, the other 104Rocky Mountain Review associated with poststructuralist theory." The neoconservative branch "proclaims a return not only of historicist figuration . . . but also of the privileged eu-tist" whereas the poststructuralist branch "produces a critique ofprecisely those categories and configurations" (251). Many ofthe essays treat the various kinds of appropriation, whether these appropriations take the form of feminist annexation of "psychoanalysis for a political aesthetics" (Laura Kipnis 155), or the "appropriative and quotational strategies" of photography (Abigail Solomon-Godeau 198), or "appropriation as positive unoriginality figure[d] as a means ofresolving the practical problems of a peripheral cinema" (Meaghan Morris 114). Then, too, there is a heavy stress on the pluralities of postmodernism, perhaps captured most tellingly in Lawrence Grossberg's negative listing ("denying totality, coherence, closure, expression, origin, representation, meaning, teleology, freedom, creativity and hierarchy") played immediately against his positive listing ("celebrating discontinuity, fragmentation, rupture, surfaces, diversity, chance, contextuality, egalitarianism, pastiche, heterogeneity, quotations, and parodies") (172). In his interview, Jameson delineates a third feature: "the system of postmodernism comes in as the vehicle for a new kind ofideological hegemony that might not have been required before" (8), a point clearly privileged in Ross' introduction when he notes that "a postmodernist politics must complete the Gramscian move to extend the political into all spheres, domains and practices of our culture" (xv). Finally, the title of the collection, Universal Abandon, brilliantly figures discussion of universal abandonment or the abandonment of universale in the founding myths or narratives or texts explored at least indirectly in all the essays. Ernesto Laclau notes this abandonment as the defining feature of the period: "it is...