Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction about Postmodernism (Serpent's Tail High Risk Books)
In Doom Patrols, Shaviro (The Cinematic Body) is out to prove that he is not just a nerdy literature-and-film professor at the University of Washington, he is also a member of the hip-oisie who (gasp!) goes to rock concerts, reads comics and uses the word fuck. Through 17 loosely defined personal essays on subjects ranging from Bill Gates to Truddi Chase (of 92-personalities fame), Shaviro expounds on postmodernism. He applies the idea that essence is obsolete to examples from American culture (many already overanalyzed) including Kathy Acker and Cindy Sherman. Shaver's style is at times self-consciously smart ("This ability to deceive ourselves and to be sincere... is the defining characteristic of what it means to be American, or to be human") at other times embarrassingly confessional ("I needed your wound, but since that night you've withheld it from me"), always deliberately quotable ("war is menstruation envy"). Oddly, race has virtually no significance in his version of the postmodern universe. While Shaviro draws some interesting connections between the theory of natural selection and postmodernism, his book is still a party gathering the same tired, talked-out guests: Warhol, Burroughs, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Foucault. One gets the sense that Shaviro is trying way too hard to impress a readership of the converted?people who are easily wowed by ponderous statements such as: "When you open your mouth?or your ass, or your cunt?there's no way of knowing what 'foreign particles' will enter." That may be true, but some of us have a pretty good idea.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.