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Page 1: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

 

 

 

  In the Name of God

   

Page 2: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Page 3: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

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IV

ABSTRACT

Postmodernism, in its broadest definition, denies the existence of any unified

human subject as the centre of perception and consciousness. It portrays a defragmented

world in which discourse creates reality rather than reflecting it as it is. Humanism, on

the other hand, apparently moves in the opposite direction by putting much emphasis on

the human subject as the centre of consciousness in a meaningful world. The utopian

aspirations so prevalent during and after the Enlightenment Age and their reiteration by

many in the contemporary era clearly reflect such an attitude.

Given this fact, any effort to integrate these two ways of looking at the world into a

unified, and meanwhile, cogent moral position is apparently doomed to failure.

Vonnegut Against Himself is an attempt to show that such an effort has been made with

a certain amount of success by one of America's most prolific authors, namely Kurt

Vonnegut Jr. In light of Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of narrative crisis and rejection

of grand narratives in the postmodern era, I have contended that By deconstructing

some of America's most important grand narratives and using some world-building

strategies in the realm of fiction (characteristic of many other postmodern works of

fiction) on the one hand, and emphasizing the moral aspects of human existence on the

other, Vonnegut has remained faithful to the humanist tradition of the centrality of the

human subject while maintaining a postmodern attitude towards issues of ethical

significance such as the relationship between science and ethics, fiction and truth, etc.

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V

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the Department of foreign languages at Tehran university for the

opportunity it provided for me to complete my thesis. I also wish to express my

indebtedness to Dr. Behzad Qaderi, Dr. Beyad and Dr. Marandi, each of whom gave me

a different sense of the function of literature in society as a whole. I wish to be grateful

to Mohammad-Ali Qaznavi for bearing with my almost pathological obsession with

Vonnegut and Nietzsche. Finally, I wish to preserve my last and deepest appreciation

for the coauthor of the comic book of my life, without whose help this thesis could not

be brought to completion.

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VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: Research Preliminaries ...................................................................... 1

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

Research Significance ................................................................................................... 3

Definition of Key Terms ............................................................................................... 5

Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 6

Research Methodology ............................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER II: Human Subject: From Birth to Disruption .................................. 14

Kant, Descartes, and the Rise of the Modern Subject ................................................ 16

Sigmund Freud and the Beginnings of a Disruption ................................................... 22

Nietzsche, the Fictionality of the Subject, and a Negotiated Morality ....................... 26

The Apollonian versus the Dionysian: Towards a Dialectic of Nietzsche’s Philosophy

.................................................................................................................................... 29

Nietzsche and the Illusion of Truth ............................................................................. 33

Nietzschean Ethics? .................................................................................................... 36

Nietzsche and Nationalism: Towards a Postmodern Disbelief ................................... 41

Nietzsche and the Modern Subject ............................................................................. 42

CHAPTER III: Cat’s Cradle: Theory behind Fiction .......................................... 46

The Postmodernism of Cat’s Cradle ........................................................................... 47

Lyotard and the Politics of Disbelief .......................................................................... 53

Cat’s Cradle and the Grand Narrative of Religion ..................................................... 61

Cat’s Cradle and the Illusion of a Telos ..................................................................... 65

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VII

Cat’s Cradle and the Mirage of Scientism .................................................................. 69

CHAPTER IV: Slaughterhouse 1945: Pilgrim’s Progress, Symptomatic of Excess

.................................................................................................................................... 78

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Paradox of Authenticity ............................................... 79

Either Irony or Silence: No Way out .......................................................................... 82

Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonnegut’s Deconstructive Project: War and the Linear

progression of Time .................................................................................................... 84

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Question of the Archive ............................................... 89

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Interrogative Function of Language ............................. 94

Slaughterhouse-Five: Memory, Testimony, History .................................................. 95

CONCLUSION: towards a Critical Reorientation ................................................ 98

WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................... 101

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CHAPTER I:

Research Preliminaries

Introduction

Both World War II (1939-1945) and the Vietnam War (1954-1975) came to play

an important role in shaping America as it stands today. The latter in particular created a

real distrust of official facts as presented by the military and the media. Furthermore, as

Hellmann notes, "the ideology of the 1960s had licensed a revolt against homogenized

forms of experience" (8). The senseless violence and destruction caused by the Second

World War, the political witch-hunt led by Mccarthy and his likes, the execution of

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for their alleged role in passing secret information regarding

nuclear weaponry to the Soviet Union in 1953 despite serious questions concerning the

fairness of their trial and international pleas for clemency, all contributed to a sense of

alienation, which as Hoffmann notes, "made the existential particularly attractive after

the second World War" (202).

In addition, the rise of what afterwards came to be known as the 1960's

counterculture in the United States raised a series of ethical and aesthetic challenges for

the post-war generation in America. The origins of these challenges can be easily traced

back to a decade earlier, when a group of American artists and writers known as the

Beat Generation, inspired by Eastern philosophy and religion gained unprecedented

popularity for their unconventional forms of representation and their break with

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conventional social values (Abrams 21). Furthermore, the traumatic experiences of the

two wars, particularly the Second World War, led many to the conclusion that language

in its traditional form could in no way represent what actually had happened. This

provided the impetus for the creation of a number of innovative techniques to take the

language out of the limitations imposed by classic realism, itself a product of industrial

capitalism (Belsey 6), so that it could serve as the medium through which the

contemporary experience of loss and disbelief could be expressed. What has come to be

known as postmodern flight from realism indicates the artists' and writers' consensus

over the fact that representing new and unique experiences requires new

representational techniques.

Given the above account, literature both as an academic discipline and as a field

of human experience did (and could) not take a neutral stance towards these major

developments. Freudian psychoanalysis and his concept of the unconscious, Jacque

Lacan's concept of an inaccessible reality, and last but not least, post-Saussurean

linguistics played a crucial role in illuminating the formative and self-reflexive (as

opposed to the reflexive) nature of language and the constructed nature of represented

reality. Christopher Butler points out to this very constructedness of reality when he

observes that "We live, not inside reality, but inside our representations of it" (21).

Freud's concept of the unconscious, postcolonial studies and feminist criticism,

in spite of all the differences existing between them, made the Cartesian concept of a

unified and thinking subject, the Kantian notion of the free exercise of reason and the

Hegelian concept of a dialectic-progressive vision of human history extremely difficult

to defend. Roland Barthes's notion of the difference between a readerly and a writerly

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text, between work and text, seriously challenged the realist assumption of a simple

one-way relationship between the author and the reader (Nicol 44).

These developments brought about a major shift towards self-consciousness in

literature. In other words, although the postmodern writer had not succeeded in

liberating himself from the prison of language and discourse, at least he was conscious

of his captivity and could deal with it with a sense of irony (Eco 111). While classic

realism claimed to have opened the window of literature onto the realm of real life,

these writers substituted the mirror for the window. In other words, while classic

realism ostensibly used literature as a transparent window through which the reader

could have an objective view of reality, postmodernist fiction, by talking self-

consciously about itself, illustrated the constructed nature of reality and the self-

referentiality of language and literature. Indeed, far from disengagement from reality,

postmodernist fiction, as I hope to suggest in due course, strove to present reality as

faithfully as possible.

Research Significance

At our class of American literature I gave a brief presentation outlining

Vonnegut's career as an author. At the time, I had the nagging premonition that my

presentation was Greek even to some of the most intelligent students. The reasons for

such a feeling were not far to seek. First, any comprehensive survey of Vonnegut's

career within the space of a class presentation prepared in less than two weeks was

completely out of the question. Second, I did not have access to various primary and

secondary sources as I now do. In addition, Reading the Harry Potter series and

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Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, took a heavy toll on my time, but

meanwhile provided me with invaluable insights into one of the most neglected aspects

of literature in the Iranian academia, namely fantasy literature.

It goes without saying that achieving an accurate understanding of literature

involves much more than merely reading so-called literary masterpieces.

Kurt Vonnegut is an author who, while showing traces of fantasy literature in his

works, has a message fraught with social and philosophical implications for the whole

human race.

Except for some of Vonnegut's works, there is not, to my knowledge, even a

single book in the libraries of Iran's major universities directly dealing with his works,

indicating the extent to which this author and his works have been neglected in the

Iranian academia. This is partly due to the fact that anyone who tries to speak to his

fellow human beings in a simple and direct style is often doomed not to be taken

seriously. This makes access to research sources far more difficult, but provides the

researcher with the impetus to raise questions rather than giving him a know-it-all

feeling of complacency.

Vonnegut and his works, however, have fared rather well in the United States,

particularly in the 1990s. If one judges an author's reputation in terms of scholarly

interest and production, the 1990s can be seen as a decade of rejuvenescence for Kurt

Vonnegut. Leonard Mustazza's Forever Pursuing Genesis: the Myth of Eden in the

Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1990), William Rodney Allen's Understanding Kurt Vonnegut

(1991), and Jerome Klinkowitz's Biography: Kurt Vonnegut's America, along with

numerous monographs and journal articles attest to Vonnegut's return to the scholarly

spotlight after a long period of undeserved obscurity.

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In 1994 alone, the Greenwood Press published The Critical Response to Kurt

Vonnegut, edited by Leonard Mustazza, and The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: An

Authorized Compendium, by Marc Leeds.

The sheer number of critical reviews and books about Vonnegut and his works

indicates the extent to which the conundrums posed by Vonnegut have garnered critical

and scholarly attention. To cap it all, Vonnegut remained prolific even during the last

years of his life, and expressed his commitment to his social milieu through criticizing

much of what has passed under the name of democracy and human rights across the

globe.

Contemporary culture is moving at an almost incomprehensible speed. The

exponential multiplication of the opportunities and lifestyles available to the inhabitants

of Europe and North America has brought about a situation in which spatial and

temporal boundaries shrink almost into nothingness. Conventions, customs and ways of

life once serving to distinguish one place from another, have now turned into matters of

choice and taste for an internationalized and cosmopolitan consumer.

Issues of ethical significance are not exempt from the influence of such

developments. These developments raise a series of formidable challenges before

hitherto taken for granted moral values. It seems quite obvious that traditional moral

values, if they are to meet these challenges in a constructive way, have to adapt

themselves to these changes in the first place. In other words, any good old definition of

right and wrong simply does not do, and it seems as if a new morality has to be defined

through combining some of the elements of the traditional morality with a pragmatic

view on life and existence.

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Kurt Vonnegut's fiction, I believe, presents such a pragmatic ethics. In the two

works under consideration, namely Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut

offers a meliorist fiction in the context of a seemingly gloomy future and a nightmarish

past.

Definition of Key Terms

Grand narratives: According to Lyotard, these are the governing principles of

modernity, and produce systematic accounts of the world, its development in the course

of history, and man's status in it. Christianity, Enlightenment, Humanism, Scientism and

religion are amongst the most important of such totalizing systems. Lyotard, of course,

distinguishes between grand narratives of speculation and those of emancipation.

However, for the sake of clarity, this distinction has not been observed.

Humanism: A cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance that

emphasized secular concerns as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art

and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome.

Human subject: Man as defined in terms of an essential nature or substance as

distinguished from his/her nonessential attributes.

Morality: A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct. At the risk of

oversimplification, morality and ethics have been used synonymously in order to avoid

much unnecessary complication and confusion.

Postmodernism and Postmodernity: Although the former denotes a stylistic

current and the latter refers to a specific historical period, these two terms have also

been used synonymously in the interests of clarity and avoiding confusion.

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Postmodernist fiction: I have limited my definition of this term to a body of

fiction written in the united States between 1960 and 1980, sharing particular themes

such as the relationship between truth and falsity, the interrogation of history, etc.

Literature Review

Given Vonnegut's unique and enduring place in contemporary American

literature in general, and American fiction of the 1960's and 1970's in particular,

presenting a comprehensive list of critical works investigating different aspects of his

writing is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Therefore, in what follows several

major publications are listed, which either deal directly with one or more critical aspects

of Vonnegut's writing, or concern themselves with concepts and theories necessary for

an adequate understanding of Vonnegut's works as they stand in relation to the social

and cultural background in which they have been created.

Brian McHale's Postmodernist Fiction (1987) is an all but comprehensive

inventory of strategies implemented by postmodernist fiction writers to lay bare the

processes of world-building in fiction. There he argues that the shift from epistemology

to ontology is the hallmark of postmodernist fiction making it distinct from modernist

fiction in which the epistemological dominance forms the basis upon which other

components of the fictional world come to rest (11-12). In this book, McHale presents a

linear and progressive version of the change of dominant from epistemology to

ontology, a point of view which McHale himself later modifies in a later book entitled

Constructing Postmodernism. Especially relevant to the subject of this thesis is the sixth

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chapter of this book in which the relationship between postmodernist fiction and the

realm of history is explored in more detail (84-99).

Constructing Postmodernism: In this book (published in 1992) McHale

practically rejects his early linear and progressive account of the move from

epistemology to ontology for a pluralistic account in which various constructions of

postmodernism engage in a dialectic interaction. The interface between postmodernist

fiction and science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) is explored more fully with

reference to specific texts and critics. "Postmodernism is not a found object, but a

manufactured artifact" (11). Beginning from this constructivist premise, Brian McHale

develops a series of readings of problematically postmodernist novels - Joyce's Ulysses,

Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's

Pendulum, the novels of Joseph McElroy and Christine Brooke-Rose, avant-garde

works such as Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless, and works of cyberpunk science-

fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker and others.

Although mainly focused on "high" or "elite" cultural products - "art" novels -

Constructing Postmodernism relates these products to such phenomena of postmodern

popular culture as television and the cinema, paranoia and nuclear anxiety, angelology

and the cybernetic interface, and death, now as always (in spite of what Captain Kirk

says) the true Final Frontier.

A Rhetoric of The Unreal: In this book (first published in 1981), Christine

Brooke-Rose traces the historical continuity among the varieties of modern "unrealism,"

from the "classic" fantastic of Poe's "The Black Cat" and James's The Turn of the Screw

to such contemporary forms as the "new" science fiction (Vonnegut, McElroy) and the

nouveau and nouveau roman. What is missing from A Rhetoric of the Unreal is the

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extension of this story to include (American) postmodernist fiction, for, just at the point

where the story arrives at postmodernism, Brooke-Rose abruptly abandons her narrative

paradigm of continuity and takes up instead a different paradigm, one based on the

parasitism of postmodernism on historically prior modes. She seems unable to imagine

how the principle of hesitation, upon which all the previous varieties of unrealist poetics

had been based, might be extended to postmodernist fiction, and it is this failure of

imagination that explains the abrupt change of paradigms at the end of A Rhetoric of the

Unreal. Ironically, what Brooke-Rose lacks in her theory of unrealist fiction she might

readily have found in her own practice of it. Notwithstanding this failure, A Rhetoric of

the Unreal is of major importance as the theoretical manifesto of a practitioner.

Darko Suvin in The Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) introduces the

concept of cognitive estrangement. By "estrangement" he means virtually what Bertolt

Brecht (1898-1956) and his followers had in mind when talking about defamiliarization.

This point is, as we shall see later, the COMMON denominator of science fiction and

what has come to be categorized under the rubric of postmodernist fiction. Suvin

introduces the concept of novum (a new idea, apparatus, etc) as the cause of

discontinuity between the fictional and empirical world.

Robert Scholes qualifies this definition and proposes that any old discontinuity

will not do. This discontinuity should be present at the structural level of the fictional

world as well as the narrative level. This qualification goes a long way towards

identifying the border between science fiction on the one hand, and any other form of

fantasy on the other, which may have no affinities with, and no basis in, the rational

structures of thinking.

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Metafiction: In this book (first published in 1984), Patricia Waugh traces the

origins of literary self-consciousness from the nineteenth century up to the present time.

She studies different forms of self-consciousness which have gone into the making of

literature, and particularly fiction, as we know them today.

Damien Broderick analyzes the postmodern self-referentiality of science fiction

narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive encyclopedia. He shows how, for

rich understanding, sf readers must learn the codes and vernacular of these imaginary

worlds, while absorbing the ‘lived-in futures’ generated by the overlapping intertexts of

many sf writers. His book, Reading by Starlight includes close readings of cyberpunk

and other postmodern texts, and writings by such sf novelists and theorists as Brian

Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, Christine Brooke-Rose, Arthur C. Clarke, Samuel R. Delany,

William Gibson, Fredric Jameson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Vivian Sobchack, Darko

Suvin, Michael Swanwick, Tzvetan Todorov and John Varley.

Metafiction: In this book (first published in 1995), is a very informative

collection of writings on the subject of self-consciousness in fiction and in criticism,

Mark Currie focuses on the breakdown of the border between criticism and fiction as

part of the crisis in metalingual objectivity. It includes an introduction which charts the

evolution of literary self-consciousness alongside issues in literary theory, particularly

in the relationship between historiographic self-consciousness and the return to

historical perspective in the new historical criticisms of the 1980s.

Literary Theory, an introduction: This is undoubtedly one of the turning points

in literary theory despite doing little justice to some of the thoughts it represents. In this

Book (first published in 1983), Terry Eagleton presents a thorough survey of the critical

ideas which predominated before the resurgence of interest in history and politics. It is

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very entertaining and instructive on the subjects of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis

in literary theory.

A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction: In this book (first

published in 1988), Linda Hutcheon traces the origins of postmodernism in art and

literature. This book offers a rich and complex discussion which is of much help in

gaining a clear and profound insight into Vonnegut's works, especially Slaughterhouse

Five.

Black Humor Fiction of the 60s: In this book (first published in 1973), Max F.

Schulz tries to give an inclusive, and meanwhile, exclusive definition of black humor

before contextualizing it in the American fiction of the 1960s. Having presented a

relatively comprehensive definition of the term "black humor", Schulz then sets out to

investigate its various manifestations in the writings of authors such as John Barth,

Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coovver, Bruce J. Friedman, and last but not least, Kurt

Vonnegut. In the third chapter assigned to the black humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Schulz

argues for a delicate balance of inconclusiveness in Vonnegut's novels, which he calls

"the unconfirmed thesis of Kurt Vonnegut." Tonie Tanner presents a similar argument

in his City of Words (1971).

Robert A. Hipkiss, in The American Absurd: Pynchon, Vonnegut and Barth

(1984) examines the problems of purpose and morality in Vonnegut's novels in the

context of other writers like Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett who postulate an absurd

and amoral world. He argues that Vonnegut expresses his fatalistic and pessimistic

views on human life through putting his characters in nightmarish situations. As we

shall se below, this view is strongly challenged by Lawrence R. Broer.

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In Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1989), Broer offers a

psychoanalytic study of Vonnegut's novels

beginning with Player Piano and going through Bluebeard, emphasizing the

importance of Vonnegut's actual experience for the construction of his fictions. Broer

argues, for example, that the Tralfamadorian view of reality is the very antithesis of

Vonnegut's position that artists should be treasured as alarm systems, and as biological

agents of change.

Kurt Vonnegut: Fantasist of Fire and Ice: David H. Goldsmith in this survey of

Vonnegut's works up through Slaughterhouse Five, argues that pilgrims beset by

obstacles search for purpose and messiahs in a world that both offers and frustrates

meaningfulness. Jerome Klinkowitz presents a study of Vonnegut's work in the context

of his utterances as a public figure concerned with social, political, civic, and spiritual

issues. Clark Mayo Considers Vonnegut's use of an outer space alien's perspective to

examine social and religious values and practices. Donald E. Morse discusses how

Vonnegut's novels reflect the major traumatic public and private events that have gone

into imagining being an American during the twentieth century. He focuses upon how

Vonnegut deals with the Great Depression, World War II, nuclear weapons, the

Vietnam War, changing social institutions, marriage, the family, divorce, growing old,

experiencing loss, and anticipating death.

Research methodology

This project is based on more than eight months of library research. A

combination of primary and secondary sources has been consulted in order to insure the

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authenticity of the research findings, a comprehensive list of which can be found at the

bibliography section. In most cases, however, priority has been given to the primary

sources, and the secondary sources have been used as complements to them. For works

with more than one edition, attempt has been made to use the best edition in terms of

both accessibility and authenticity. In cases where an excerpt or argument originally

presented in a primary source has been quoted from a secondary one for one reason or

another, the validity of the second source's reference to the primary one has been

accurately established on a case-by-case basis. In addition, wherever the electronic

edition of a book or any other printed material has been consulted, the electronic version

has been accurately collated with the printed version to avoid any confusion regarding

page citation.

In her influential book entitled Postmodernism and the Social Sciences, Pauline

Marie Rosenau investigates the relationship between postmodernism and various

branches of humanities such as history, literature, social sciences, etc. In defining

postmodernism, she divides the postmodern camp into two major parts, namely the

sceptical and the affirmative postmodernists. She argues that while The sceptics see the

postmodern world as one of chaos, fragmentation and meaninglessness, affirmative

postmodernists (affirmatives) attempt to engage in non-dogmatic and local projects, and

often are not uninterested in adopting ethical norms, although of a totally different kind

from those of modernity. Based on this argument, I have situated Vonnegut in the latter

camp, arguing that although sharing with radical postmodernists a critique of modernity

and its claims to the attainability of objective truth, he tries to offer an ethical

substitution for the apparently collapsed metanarratives of modernity.

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In addition to this preliminary chapter, the present study comprises four other

chapters as well. The second chapter deals with the origins and significance of the

apparent conflict between Enlightenment humanism on the one hand and

postmodernism on the other. In addition, the relationship between postmodernism and

its intellectual precursors will be investigated with particular reference to Freud's

psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's philosophical ideas. To this end, the genealogy of

the postmodern antisubject position will be investigated with particular reference to

these two theoretical frameworks. Such an investigation becomes more of a necessity

when this antisubject position is understood as the cornerstone of what has come to be

known as the collapse of metanarratives in the postmodern era.

The third chapter deals with the practical implications of these debates with

particular focus on Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963). Here I'll elaborate on the argument

that while helping usher in the postmodern phase of American fiction in terms of both

form and content, Cat's cradle presents a humanist solution to what Ihab Hassan calls

"current shibboleths" (xv). To this end, Vonnegut's deconstruction of some of the most

important grand narratives of American society such as scientism, religion, the

American dream, etc. will be investigated. In addition, I shall try to demonstrate that by

using Metafiction techniques, Vonnegut emphasizes the metaphorical nature of truth,

thus undermining claims to objectivity and universality made by totalizing systems such

as religion, science, etc.

The fourth chapter deals with the same issue, this time with particular focus on

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). This chapter revolves around the argument that Vonnegut,

while offering to share a nightmarish experience of the contemporary world, does not

succumb to a wholly pessimistic view of life, this traumatic experience notwithstanding.

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Here I will argue for an interrogative function of Slaughterhouse-Five in relation to an

historical event as a new strategy to cope with a nightmarish experience, namely the

firestorming of Dresden during the Second World War. Here again, the relationship

between truth and falseness is investigated, this time in terms of historical knowledge

and the ways in which the past becomes accessible to the present.

A short reflection on the legacy of Vonnegut as the prophet of hope in a

postmodern society. Here I have attempted to show that In spite of a thirty-year span

between Vonnegut and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the issues with which

he has, both consciously and conscientiously, concerned himself are still relevant to the

contemporary world.

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CHAPTER II:

HUMAN SUBJECT: FROM BIRTH TO DISRUPTION

It has now become almost a cliché to say that from Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)

onward, an irreversible separation has taken place between subject and object in the

Western psyche (Eagleton, "Literary" 45). This duality in thought, I believe, has

evolved into a subject-object dichotomy from which the Enlightenment philosophers

like Kant and Descartes have derived their conception of the human subject as the

autonomous centre of meaning and consciousness. Some major differences

notwithstanding, these two philosophers share the view that there is an entity to be

called human subject, whose existence can be established through the free exercise of

the power of reason, the establishment of universal moral principles, and methodical

doubt in order to arrive at a genuine foundation for thought and experience.

The rediscovery and study in the Renaissance period of the art, literature and

civilization of the ancient Greek and Rome, also known as "Humanism" rests on similar

philosophical views (See also Mayer). The philosophical tradition of Humanism sought

to define thought, experience, perception and consciousness in terms of a unified human

subject as their fulcrum. This view along with its underlying assumptions unavoidably

had far-reaching implications for the realms of both ethics and fiction. In terms of ethics

and the choosing of ethical values, universality (or at least universalizability) came to

play a crucial role in defining the appropriateness of ethical choices, and even shaping

the criteria used to evaluate such choices. Especially prevalent in this period was the

belief that there exists an external world, completely independent from human

perception and consciousness, waiting to be known and acted upon through human

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knowledge and action. Language was seen as a mirror faithfully reflecting the external

world as it stood. The claim to objectivity and universality made by modern science also

rested on the assumption that there is a one-sided relationship between the knower and

the known, through which the knower (man) is able to know and act upon the known

(the universe) without being shaped or even modified by it.

During the Middle Ages the Bible was regarded as the highest authority across

the whole Christendom defining man's relationship with an omnipotent and omnipresent

being called God and his status in the universe (Melehy 14). The Bible was considered

as God's revelation to man of eternal and immutable truths. Simply put, God, as

portrayed in the Holy Scriptures, spoke and refused to be spoken to. This brought about

such a rigidity in the Christian faith that for long centuries, translating the Bible into

European vernacular languages was regarded as a manifestation of heresy punishable by

death. John Wycliffe (1328?-1384), William Tyndale (1494?-1536), and Miles

Coverdale (1488-1568) paved the way for the Protestant Reformation during the

sixteenth century of the Roman Catholic Church through their reformist theories and

English translations of parts or even the whole Bible.

This attribution of the Bible and its teachings to God laid the foundations for a

theory of authorship according to the generalized version of which the author was

gradually shoved into a godlike role of creating meaning. The most memorable classical

expression of such a viewpoint in the Renaissance period was presented by Sir Philip

Sidney:

The poet doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things

either better than nature bringth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never

were in nature as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such

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like; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the

narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own

wit. (qtd. in McHale, "Postmodernist" 27-8)

Furthermore, the Bible's narrative style and its teleological account of human

history from creation to the Judgment Day had a formidable influence on the way events

were organized and accounted for in the western mind.

Kant, Descartes, and the Rise of the Modern Subject

These and other factors led many to the conclusion that human history was a

linear progress from savagery to civilization and progress. This linear and teleological

history, of course, implied an autonomous, goal-oriented, rational and unified human

subject. These notions remained almost intact, and continued well into the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, when Descartes, Kant, Hegel and others sought to find

something other than the divine law for the evaluation of man's behaviour.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) poses the view that unlike physical and

empirical knowledge, metaphysical issues such as the existence of God, the freedom of

the will and the eternity of the soul cannot be proper subjects for scientific and rational

inquiry. Despite this sceptical attitude towards metaphysical knowledge, Kant accepts

these issues as postulates for a moral life. This is one of the manifestations of belief in

what Lyotard calls "grand narratives", of which more later on. Thus, Kant can be

regarded as an intellectual sceptic, but meanwhile as a moral conformist as well.

The Kantian ethics is expounded in his classic work entitled Critique of

Practical Reason (1788) and the earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

(1785). Kant's ethics is based on the principle of categorical imperative, one formulation

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of which is: "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that

it should become a universal law" (qtd. in Hill 198).

His last great work, The Critique of Judgment, deals with aesthetic judgment and

the existence of teleology or purposiveness in nature. This is a turning point in the

history of philosophy, since as the Copernican astronomy had explained the movements

of the celestial bodies partially with reference to the observer's movements, Kant had

accounted for the existence of a priori synthetic knowledge by stating that in knowing,

things confirm to the mind and not vice versa. In fact, in facing the world, the Kantian

mind is like someone riding a merry-go-round whose revolution causes different images

to be observed by him. Malpas might have been right when he suggests that this link

between the Copernican revolution in philosophy, the focus on the self in poetry and the

onset of modernity is not coincidental (65).

But a word of caution seems in order here. This synthetic theory of the mind is

hardly original with Kant. As early as the fourth century before the Christian era, Plato

had referred to this duality of appearance versus reality, this time with a slightly

different vocabulary. Plato's concept of the world of ideas, I believe, is another version

of the same proposition. This concept, presented in the form of the allegory of the cave

states that what the human mind perceives is at one remove from the innermost reality

of the thing itself. For instance, when a carpenter makes a door or a window, he just

imitates the idea of a door or a window. The so-called world of ideas is the place

wherein the true reality of things lies, and the external world as seen by us is nothing but

an imitation of that pure reality.

Kant attempts to find something inherent in the human mind and will to fill the

gap caused by the demolition of the authoritative status once occupied by religion:

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While the Baconian investigator sets out to elicit the secret laws of

nature, clearing his mind of the idols of prejudice in order to see more

clearly what is actually there, Kant argues that there is nothing ‘there' that

has not been put there by the already-existing categories of thought. Reason

does not observe nature; it constitutes it. With its strict separation of means

and ends, its absolute distinction between the instrumental world of non-

rational nature (‘things') and the sovereign authority of rational humankind

(‘persons'), Kant's ‘transcendental idealism' completes the theoretical

demolition of religion, relocating its usurped authority within the human

mind and will. (Davies 120)

Descartes, also known as the father of modern rationalism, in his Meditations on

First Philosophy, subjects all his sensory and empirical knowledge to a methodical

doubt in order to arrive at a transcendental foundation of existence by means of which

the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and the existence of an external world

can be established. In fact, Descartes was looking for a center in terms of which changes

in perspective could be explained. Melehy calls this hypothetical centre a "geometrical

zero point" (93). This apparently indubitable foundation is expressed in the dictum

"Cogito ergo sum", meaning "I think; therefore, I am" (Descartes 103).

Descartes begins his argument by the premise that all his knowledge and

experiences may have been caused by illusion, madness or sickness. At the end, he is

persuaded that this is not the case, and construes this act of being persuaded as an

irreducible sign of the reality of the external world and the existence of a thinking "I".

The Meditations concludes with the declaration that "For as God is no deceiver, it

follows necessarily that I am not deceived" (168). In fact, through proving the existence

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of an act of thinking, Descartes, influenced by linguistic determinism, deduces the

existence of a thinker as a matter of course. In other words, just as in grammar every

predicate has a subject, Descartes puts the act of thinking in the role of a predicate

requiring a subject to make sense.

Ironically enough, Descartes, at the end of his argument, reasserts the notion

which he had set out to challenge, i.e. that of a benevolent and transcendent deity. In

fact, Descartes, as Frederick Jameson correctly argues, has had a formative role in

shaping the modern Western subject:

With Descartes, we . . . witness the emergence of the subject, or in

other words, of the Western subject, that is to say, the modern subject as

such, the subject of modernity. ("Singular" 43)

The rise in Europe of the romantic movement during the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries with its emphasis on individual expression and rejection of the

neoclassical notions of unity, objectivity, rationality and truth, anticipated much of the

postmodern antagonism towards the subject in subsequent eras. This antagonism led

many postmodernists to "consider the subject to be a fossil relic of the past, of

modernity, an invention of liberal humanism, the source of the unacceptable object-

subject dichotomy" (Rosenau 42).

Transcendentalism, which can be rightly regarded as the American brand of

romanticism, asserted the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcended the

empirical and the scientific, and was knowable only through intuition. Furthermore, the

French and American revolutions turned the last years of the eighteenth, and the whole

nineteenth century into a period of political upheaval and intellectual radicalism.

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The subject-object dichotomy mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, with

its implications for a theory of human subjectivity, contributed to an essentialism, i.e.

the metaphysical theory according to which the essential properties of an object can and

should be distinguished from those that are accidental to it. In the postmodern era,

however, this subject-object dichotomy was seriously challenged in favour of more

pluralistic accounts of human existence. Given the affinities between the subject-object

and the author-reader dichotomies, this challenge inevitably influenced the role and

even the concept of author(ity). Simply put, as the former was challenged in the

postmodern era in favour of a more interactive relationship, the latter was also

challenged in favour of a relationship with the reader acquiring the status of a co-creator

of meaning along with the author. It was Based on such a dynamic relationship that

Roland Barthes announced "the birth of the reader" at the cost of "the death of the

author" ("Death" 148).

The Cartesian subject, as the reader might have come to notice, has been

presented as a watertight entity with sharply defined and clear-cut boundaries separating

him from, and giving him a vantage point from which to look at the external world. This

definition of the human subject carries a wide range of political, racial, ethnic and

gender implications. Barrett reformulates this view in a more sophisticated form:

Let us imagine the celebrated Cartesian subject. He is made in the

image of his inventor. He is white, a European; he is highly educated, he

thinks and is sensitive, he can probably even think in Latin and Greek; he

lived a bit too soon to be a bourgeois, but he has class confidence; he has a

general confidence in his existence and power; he is not a woman, not black,

not a migrant, not marginal; he is heterosexual and a father . . . It is entirely

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clear to us that this model of the subject is centred, and unified, around a

nexus of social and biographical characteristics that represent power. (90)

With a bit of intellectual audacity, one can even claim that the Cartesian subject,

to all intents and purposes, has been presented in a vacuum. In other words, defining the

human subject only in terms of his or her thinking ability implies the exclusion of the

racial, ethnic, political and ideological ingredients which have, for better or worse, gone

into his or her making. Descartes, in a politico-theological sleight of hand, presents the

human subject in the image of his creator, presumably a metaphysical deity. Michel

Foucault heavily criticizes such an apparently ahistorical notion of the human subject by

arguing that such a definition of the subject has "emerged about the same time as the

English empiricism, French rationalism, and faith in the Reformation, all of which

emphasized the importance of the individual" ("Author" 143).

The Psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche's opposition to what

he saw as the herd morality, his concern over the grave consequences of the nihilism

caused by the self-destruction of Christianity and the subsequent fall of scientism from

grace, and last but not least, Edward Said's critique of the distorting effects of the

projection of the Western grand narrative of imperialism upon Oriental societies, did

much to contribute to the demise of, or at least, revision in the theory of subjectivity.

After all, as Michel Foucault has rightly noted, the theorization of man is not as old as it

might seem at first glance:

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the

most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a

relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area –

European culture since the sixteenth century – one can be certain that man is

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a recent invention within it. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows,

man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."

("order" 386-87)

Before dealing with these theories and their implications for an ethics of

literature, a word of caution seems in order. While Freud's psychoanalytic theory and

Nietzsche's critique of western morality coincide with the onset of what has come to be

known as modernity, Said's critique of Western imperialism and the image of the Orient

presented by it is offered in a postmodern context and based on Lyotard's concept of

narrative crisis. This highly significant difference notwithstanding, contribution to a

disruption of the theory of a unified human subject can be regarded as their common

denominator. Therefore, any attempt at separating these theories from their historical

contexts would be tantamount to disregarding the historical differences which have

shaped these theories in the first place. In the interests of brevity, however, I shall limit

the scope of my discussion only to Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's

philosophy, while recognizing and fully appreciating the value of postcolonial critiques

of the theory of human subjectivity, Edward Said's included.

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Sigmund Freud and the Beginnings of a Disruption

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is undoubtedly one of the creative minds of the

modern era. His psychoanalytic theory profoundly influenced twentieth-century

thought. Thomas Pynchon's talk of the invention by Freud of a "new science of mind"

bears witness to the immensity of this influence (383). But before dealing with this

influence, particularly in terms of the unity of the human subject and its wide-ranging

implications for modern ethics, a few words concerning the general outline of his

psychoanalytic theory seem in order.

Freud's most significant contribution to the demise of a unified notion of a

totally conscious subjectivity was the postulation of an unconscious part for the human

psyche. Based on this view, there is an unconscious level of the psyche operating

independently from the conscious level and acting as a repository of forgotten or

repressed psychosexual drives. This is part of our mind to which all our thoughts,

memories, and wishes are relegated. According to Freud, Dreams, parapraxes (minor

slips of the tongue), and jokes are amongst the most important of our access points to

the unconscious (Eagleton, "Literary" 136-37).

Freud also proposed a tripartite structure for the human psyche according to

which the human psyche was divided into three distinct, but meanwhile interrelated

spheres: the id, the superego and the ego. The first two divisions constitute the

unconscious part of the psyche, and the third division is the one most in touch with

external reality. The id is the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious, and

serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate gratification of

primitive needs. It knows no limitations whatsoever, and is not satisfied with anything

short of the unqualified gratification of all instinctual drives.

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In contrast to the id, there exists yet another unconscious division of the psyche,

namely the superego. But the similarity between these two parts begins and ends at their

unconscious origin. This part of the human psychic system operates as its moral police,

negotiating a psychological balance through controlling the irrational drives of the id.

The superego is formed through the internalization of moral standards of parents and

society, and censors and restrains the ego. At the risk of oversimplification, the

superego can be interpreted as Freud's version of conscience.

The ego is the third component of the psyche in Freud's theory. In fact, the ego

is torn between a demanding and insatiable id on the one hand, and an upbraiding

superego on the other. Based on this model, far from being a product of stable and given

set of characteristics, the individual's identity is a process resulted from a form of

negotiation between these three parts of the human psyche, the domination of each of

which determines the individual's pattern of behaviour at a specified point in time and

space.

It goes without saying that Freud's ideas, with all their originality, could (and

did) not take shape in a vacuum. Only a few years before he proposed his

psychoanalytic theory, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82) had revolutionized the study

of biology with his theory of evolution based on natural selection. Darwin's

evolutionary theory had substituted the Judeo-Christian story of creation with an

apparently scientific history of evolution. In addition, Darwin's notion of survival and

reproduction instincts was reformulated in Freud's psychoanalytic theory as the

unconscious drives.

Following Freud's contention that man's inner self, and not God or any other

metaphysical being, operates as the center of his unconscious drives, philosophy and

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psychology parted company with more than good grace. In the final analysis,

psychoanalysis was a human effort to find another ground for thought and experience

other than the metaphysical foundations hitherto presumed to play such a crucial role.

Psychoanalysis, in fact, was a new model to explain human behaviour with reference to

his or her inner processes of thought and consciousness rather than to external forces

and agents. As Richardson notes, "As the hereditarians and environmentalists reached

stalemate, psychoanalysis emerged as a new explanatory model, a means of resisting a

biology that threatened to sweep all before it" (27). Psychoanalysis demonstrated that

human beings were rather less in control of their thoughts and emotions than previously

believed. It presented the conscious mode of the psychic system as just the tip of the

iceberg, thus significantly changing the image of the human subject from a finished and

retouched product into a becoming process. In fact, by dethroning man from the status

of a wholly rational and conscious being, Freud as the father of psychoanalysis

contributed to a new kind of humanism while undermining much of what was

commonly presumed as such. Tony Davies aptly summarizes Freud's legacy of this new

kind of humanism:

Freud saw himself as . . . a humanistic rationalist of the old school,

dispelling error and superstition and throwing the murkiest corners of the

psyche open to the sunlight of scientific reason. But his demonstration of the

fragility of conscious selfhood, its enslavement to irrational drives and

unformulated wishes over which it has little control, removed the

philosophical supports of enlightened rationality and punctured its illusions

of sovereignty. (60)

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Furthermore, by postulating an unconscious level of the human psyche, Freud's

psychoanalytic theory challenged the hitherto unchallenged notion of a coherent, unified

and integrated modern subject. In other words, he eliminated the self-conscious subject

and substituted it with a decentred, self-deceptive and heterogeneous subject who, more

often than not, was “unaware of his/her unconscious motives, fears, hopes and wishes”

(Flax 59). Terry Eagleton uses this notion of a decentred subject to offer a critique of

postmodernism:

The postmodern subject is a “dispersed, decentred network of

libidinal attachments, emptied of ethical substance and psychical interiority,

the ephemeral function of this or that act of consumption, media experience,

sexual relationship, trend or fashion. ("Illusions" 71)

This notion, however, suffers from a number of flaws. First of all, Eagleton

incorrectly equates the postmodern subject's decentered identity with his/her emptiness

of ethical substance and psychical interiority, thus implying that postmodernism in

general, and the postmodern subject in particular, look down their noses at issues of

ethical significance. Furthermore, this is a bird's-eye view that ignores in its one-

dimensionality the constitutional tension between idea and reality or realizability, here

of the unique centered character that Eagleton gives universal validity. Such a static

position also ignores the historical circumstances that determine the ideal of character

and its conditioning by time and social change.

Furthermore, the last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the

emergence of the Decadence movement in Euro-American aesthetics. M. H. Abrams

rightly relates this phenomenon to wider social and cultural developments:

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The emphases of the decadence on drugged perception, sexual

experimentation, and the deliberate inversion of conventional moral, social,

and artistic norms reappeared, with modern variations, in the Beat poets and

novelists of the 1950s and in the counterculture of the decades that

followed. (55)

The term fin de siècle often used to refer to this period is born out of a

biologization of time, indicating an aesthetic cul-de-sac (ibid.; and Richardson 21),

which, I believe, had dynamics of its own making to offer. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

(1844-1900) was one of the few intellectuals who sought to put this apparent impasse to

creative, and meanwhile critical use. Until the end of his intellectual life, i.e. when

madness closed around him in 1889, Nietzsche bravely refused to conform to what he

saw as the herd morality, and sought to make an artistic artifact out of what he regarded

as the meaningless chaos of a life without God.

Nietzsche, the Fictionality of the Subject, and a Negotiated Morality

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know": this is Lady Caroline Lamb's unqualified

verdict against Lord Byron (1788-1824), English romantic poet (qtd. in Owen 1). This

harsh judgment, although not about Nietzsche, typifies the Anglo-American response to

him and his philosophy until recent times. The reasons for such feelings ranging from

mild apathy to outright disgust are not far to seek.

Like many other intellectuals, Nietzsche has been gang-pressed into supporting

positions, some of whose implications he has not even survived to witness. In other

words, just as there are significant differences between Marx and Marxism, Nietzsche

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and Nietzscheanism are as different as one can imagine. Poststructuralism,

postmodernism, atheism, Marxism, nihilism, anarchism, vegetarianism, national

radicalism, Nazism and anti-Semitism are just a few "ism"s which have, explicitly or

implicitly, regarded Nietzsche and his philosophy as their source of inspiration.

Unfortunately enough, in the absence of a coherent and integrated interpretation of his

philosophy, these claims have gone unchallenged for a sufficiently long time for these

(mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations to acquire the irrefutable status of eternal

wisdom. The lack of an integrated and context-oriented interpretation of his ideas has

made him like Moulavi's elephant in the dark. In other words, each of these "ism"s has

taken one or several constituents of his philosophy out of their original context without

having a coherent understanding of the whole.

This philosophy, or more accurately, its misinterpretations and

misappropriations, have lent support to some ideologies which have been implemented

to justify some of the most horrendous atrocities perpetrated under the name of life-

affirmation, the overman, the master morality, the last man, and other key concepts in

Nietzsche's philosophy in the course of human history.

Before the Nazi inhabitation of the Nietzsche archive, Nietzsche's sister, in a

probably ill-advised effort to spread her brother's ideas to a wider population, attempted

to bring herself to the good graces of men like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler

(Wicks 125). Elizabeth Nietzsche (1846-1935) assumed editorship of Nietzsche's corpus

following his collapse into insanity in 1889. Her political sympathies, however, may

have been influenced by her marriage to Bernhard forster, an anti-Semitic political

leader. But in the long run, this effort proved extremely damaging to Nietzsche's

reputation and his philosophical ideas. This was how an incisive philosophy was made

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to serve some of the most absurd and dangerous ideologies forged in history. In fact,

academic negligence on the one hand, and politico-ideological misappropriations on the

other, have formed a vicious circle causing Nietzsche's philosophy to be rejected before

it is even appropriately understood. Nietzsche's ideas have been dexterously

decontextualized, radically distorted, and then unfairly implemented to justify any

imaginable barbarity. Nietzsche's concept of the will to power, for example, although

comprising the power over oneself as a key component, has been interpreted in such a

way as to authorize any form of illegitimate quest for power over others. To make

things even worse, many of Nietzsche's critics from various camps vociferously and

vehemently criticize Nietzsche on the basis of these very decontextualized and distorted

ideas, without even bothering to put these ideas back in the context in which they have

originally been presented.

However, during the second half of the twentieth century, when Nietzsche's

reputation in the English-speaking world was at its lowest ebb, Walter Kauffman, an

émigré professor of philosophy at Princeton University sought to make Nietzsche's

ideas accessible to the English-speaking world through the translation of his works into

English. Like any project of such a magnitude, this enterprise could not limit itself to

translation, and inevitably engaged itself with the field of interpretation as well.

Following the publication of his translations, many in the Anglo-American world began

to ask themselves a profoundly disturbing question: if this is what Nietzsche has

actually said, then what all the fuss has been about?

Kaufmann sought through his scholarly translations to re-establish Nietzsche's

damaged reputation. He attempted to comprehensively establish Nietzsche's remoteness

from the Nazism and other irrationalist ideologies that had claimed him as their

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forebear. That said, Nietzsche's philosophy, with all its valuable insights, has not been

able to recover completely from more than a half-century of undeserved and unfounded

association with German imperialism. It is indisputable that Nietzsche's ideas can be

appropriated in such a way as to give validity to violent and cruel ideologies as that of

the Nazis, but the same is true about Christianity, egalitarian politics and the liberal

humanism providing the basis for the so-called civilizing mission of colonial

imperialism.

Kaufmann's enterprise, however, has inevitably contributed to the Anglo-

Americanization of Nietzsche and his philosophical ideas, and if we accept the view that

postmodernism is a largely Anglo-American phenomenon (as I readily do), Nietzsche's

philosophy can be seen as playing a highly significant and formative role in shaping

some of the most important ideas associated with postmodern philosophy and reflected

in postmodernist writing, exemplified among others, by Kurt Vonnegut.

I will begin my discussion with a general outline of Nietzsche's distinction

between the apollonian and the Dionysian impulses of the human mind and its

implications for a theory of human subjectivity. In addition, the case is made for some

kind of correspondence between this distinction and Freud's psychoanalytic theory. A

general outline of Nietzsche's ethics and his position with regard to such issues as truth,

morality and Christianity will follow, leading us to the conclusion of this chapter,

namely the relationship between these positions on the one hand, and Nietzsche's

antagonism towards the notion of a unified human subject on the other.

The Apollonian versus the Dionysian: Towards a dialectic of

Nietzsche's philosophy

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In The Birth of Tragedy, published when Nietzsche was just twenty-seven years

old, he introduces one of the most crucial binary oppositions of his philosophy, namely

that of the Apollonian versus the Dionysian. Nietzsche believed that the Greeks before

Socrates were not only a beautiful people; they were essentially gave free reign to their

instinctual drives and emotional expression, causing them to acquire a matchless

psychological health. He looked at Classic Greece and its culture and civilization as an

ideal against which various aspects of contemporary culture and civilization could be

measured.

But before dealing with his notion of Greek culture and the reasons for its

beauty, let us see why the Greeks have chosen to develop the tragic form in the first

place. In other words, let us deal with the apparent contradiction between the beauty of

the Greek race on the one hand, and its chosen form of expression on the other. The key

to understanding this apparent contradiction, Nietzsche believes, lies in the creative

capacities of suffering. Tragedy is the supreme example of a form of art which provides

invaluable insights into the hitherto unexplored depth and terror of human experience.

In Nietzsche's view, the Greeks developed a tragic art simply because they had the

capacity to "envisage life as an endless cycle of creation and destruction" (Spinks 14).

In fact Nietzsche argues that this ability to cope with this contradiction between beauty

and destruction has contributed to the emergence of the genius of Greek culture:

Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for

what is hard, terrible, evil, problematic in existence, arising from well-

being, overflowing health, the abundance of existence? Is it perhaps possible

to suffer from overabundance? Attempting and challenging, sharp-eyed

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courage that craves the terrible as one can crave the enemy, the worthy

enemy, against whom it can test its strength? ("Birth" 3-4)

Nietzsche divides the Greek history into three major periods, each of which is

defined in terms of the relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies

(Wicks 28-9). But before investigating this three-fold style of analysis in greater details,

it is worth mentioning that this type of analysis is not wholly original with Nietzsche. In

fact, it is a common feature of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the

German analytic tradition. This tripartite division was inspired by the three-fold form of

the logical syllogism which Kant had implemented in order to structure his theory of

knowledge (Wicks 158). Schiller, for example, divided human development into the

sensory, aesthetic, and intellectual phases, strikingly similar to Nietzsche's analysis

described below. Hegel too, divided the world of art into the symbolic, classical, and

romantic periods. Finally, Marx divided economic history into feudal, capitalist, and

communist phases (ibid.).

In the pre-classical period, according to Nietzsche's analysis, the feral and unruly

Dionysian energies came to overshadow the more composed and orderly Apollonian

impulses, giving rise to rather unrefined and animalistic cultural groups. These groups

had almost no limitation in expressing the crudest and the most rudimentary forms of

their instinctual drives. The classical era is marked by an optimal balance between these

two apparently opposing forces, allowing the Greeks to develop and express their

natural impulses derived from the Dionysian energies in a more sophisticated and

creative fashion, enabling them to extricate themselves from the more crude and

unsophisticated aspects of these energies. Using Hegel's concept of a dialectical

relationship between opposites, one can argue that this golden age of balance and

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harmony is the upshot of a dialectical interaction between the Apollonian and the

Dionysian energies, in which the Dionysian energies offer some kind of thesis, later to

be modified by the antithesis of the Apollonian energies, forming through their

interaction a harmonious balance as their synthesis. This similarity notwithstanding,

there is a basic difference between Hegel's concept of dialectical interaction and

Nietzsche's notion of the balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies.

But as Michael tanner observes, unlike Hegel, who encumbers his argument by a

necessarily progressive and rationalistic vision of the formation of the synthesis,

Nietzsche deliberately leaves the binary opposition between appearance versus inner

reality unresolved to make his point (10).

An analogy can also be drawn between this division of human energies into

Apollonian and Dionysian on the one hand, and Freud's division of the psychic system

into the conscious and the unconscious levels on the other. Just as the mental health of

an individual depends to a large extent on a well-balanced relationship between these

two components of the psychic system, the health and vigor of a culture, in Nietzsche's

view, requires a balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies: something

allegedly achieved by the Greeks in the classical age.

The post-classic period is, first and foremost, characterized by an unhealthy

repression by the Apollonian energies of the Dionysian impulses, often to the detriment

of the latter, hence of human vitality and creative forces of life. In this stage of relative

stagnation, theory overwhelmingly supercedes action. This antagonism towards theory

anticipates the postmodern distrust of all sorts of theories as mere imposition of specific

perspectives on the universe.

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Closely related to this theory is Nietzsche's criticism of the classical definition of

man as the "rational animal." Nietzsche believed that such a definition unduly

prioritized man's rational part over his driving force of life, thus downplaying the

significance and power of instinct as the driving power of life itself.

As mentioned at the beginning of the present chapter, Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)

has often been identified as the founder of rationalistic thinking. This does not mean

that before Socrates no rational being lived under the Sun, but that Socrates, by

introducing knowledge as the way towards salvation, contributed to the development of

a subject-object dichotomy which came to be used as the basis for a rationalistic mode

of thinking in the Western philosophical tradition. Nietzsche's view on this Socratic

influence on our present-day attitude towards knowledge and truth is worthy enough to

be quoted ad verbum:

Our entire modern world . . . recognizes the theory-driven person –

of whom Socrates is the archetype and forefather – as the ideal, as someone

who is armed with the highest powers of knowledge, and who works in the

service of science. All of our education strategies have essentially this ideal

in view; every other type of existence has to drag itself up from the

sidelines, as a merely permitted, and not really desired, type. (qtd. in Wicks

29)

This excerpt clearly illustrates Nietzsche's position with regard to rationalistic

modes of thinking. Nietzsche heavily criticized the dichotomies of science versus myth,

subject versus object, truth versus metaphor, and philosophy versus poetry:

He who recalls the immediate consequences of this restlessly

progressing spirit of science will realize at once that myth was annihilated

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by it, and that, because of this annihilation, poetry was driven like a

homeless being from her natural ideal soil. If we have been right in

assigning to music the power of again giving birth to myth, we may

similarly expect to find the spirit of science on the path where it inimically

opposes this mythopoeic power of music. (qtd. in Wicks 38)

The only grounds acceptable to Nietzsche for distinguishing between statements

are the strength, authenticity and beauty with which they are uttered (qtd. in Davies 37).

In spite of his profound and serious misgivings about the creative lie, Nietzsche always

ridiculed the love of knowledge as an ideal enterprise (Megill 54-8).

Nietzsche and the Illusion of Truth

Nietzsche's antagonism towards the Socratic rationalistic mode of thinking

anticipates much of what is at stake in the rejection by some radical postmodernists of

the whole notion of theory and theorization. If, as Baudrillard asserts, the secret of

theory lies in the nonexistence of truth (qtd. in Rosenau 77), then it follows that

Nietzsche's opposition to this mode of thinking can have far-reaching implications for

discussions of truth and morality so prevalent amongst postmodernists belonging to

both the radical and the moderate camps. This brings us to the discussion of Nietzsche

and his take of the concept of truth, and its implications for a pragmatic and

nonessentialist morality, advocated by many postmodernists.

Nietzsche and the Concept of Truth

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Rather than accepting truth as something transcendent and immutable, Nietzsche

attempts to offer a history of its constitution and origin. Talking about a history of the

constitution and origin of truth may strike some as surprising, but this is one of the most

challenging aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. We commonly assume truth to be

expressive of an objective and value-free statement about the universe and its

phenomena. In other words, truth in this sense is thought to represent a timeless and

immutable touchstone by means of which we come to establish a relationship between

thought and experience. Furthermore, much of what is offered as philosophy rests on a

supposedly evident distinction between truth and value. According to this distinction,

values are concepts used by a culture to regulate itself, varying in different times and

places, while truth is regarded as a timeless and unchanging transcendent concept

establishing an objective relationship between thought and experience.

Nietzsche's first step in offering a critique of the history and constitution of truth

was to reject the hither-to given distinction between truth and metaphor. At first glance,

these two terms seem to be as much incompatible with each other as one might wish. As

noted above, truths are thought to offer an objective relationship between thought and

experience. Metaphors, on the other hand, are presumed to offer insights of a

completely different kind. For instance, when Shakespeare says "life's but a walking

shadow", he is actually superimposing a metaphoric language (walking shadow) on a

presumably real experience (life). In fact, Shakespeare offers a dramatic and vivid

image of a real experience through poetic language. This language creates a perspective

upon the world that does not exist in the world. Therefore, the relation between literal

and metaphoric has, more often than not, been defined in terms of a binary opposition in

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which the latter is presented as a subordinate type of subjective expression, while the

former stands for objectivity and pure truth.

Nietzsche traces the origins of this allegedly tendentious binary opposition to

Plato and his concept of the world of ideas. As noted above, Plato believed that this

world and its phenomena are only shadows of a higher reality, namely that of the world

of ideas. The world of ideas, in Plato's philosophy, is where the truth of a thing resides.

This very argument, I believe, has evolved into condemnation by Plato of any kind of

literature not specifically concerned with moral or national issues. This argument gives

him carte blanche to dismiss poets from his ideal republic.

Nietzsche, however, believed that by inventing the concept of spirit and the good

in itself, Plato had committed a dogmatist's mistake, namely that of mistaking a

subjective perspective on life for an absolute and objective ideal ("Beyond" 32). Far

from believing in the existence of an ideal and transcendent value called "truth",

Nietzsche saw what is commonly regarded as truth as a way of establishing the

coherence and validity of a particular way of life. This is commonly known as

Nietzsche's perspectivism, according to which "there can only ever be imperfect

interpretations and never absolute truths about the world" (Robinson 21).

Another implication of Plato's notion of an ideal truth is that the value of a

particular judgement is often measured in terms of its alleged truth or falseness.

Nietzsche, however, in Beyond Good and Evil refutes this notion by arguing that the

falseness of a judgement does not necessarily mean that it has no value at all (35-6).

Nietzsche was of the opinion that the weak often preserve themselves by constantly

lying, cheating, flattering, camouflaging and other such means. In the interests of

survival, keeping false appearances seems to be something of a necessity and not so

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objectionable after all. In other words, the Nietzschean perspective on life is not a moral

one (Wicks 42).

Nietzsche uses another argument to justify his critique of the notion of an ideal

and transcendental concept like truth. He contends that there is no clear-cut and sharply-

defined line of demarcation between truth and metaphor. Based on this notion, truths are

merely metaphors whose illusory nature has been forgotten through long usage and

habit, probably in the interests of preserving the coherence of human interactions. In

other words, Nietzsche argues that there is no truth in the absolute and unqualified sense

of the word, and that what we come to accept as such is merely another perspective

(amongst many others) which help us impose a sense of coherence and meaningfulness

on an otherwise irrational and chaotic existence:

What, then, is truth? A movable army of metaphors, metonymies,

anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been

subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration,

and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as

firmly established, canonical and binding; truths are illusions of which we

have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn

by frequent use and have lost all sensual vigour, coins which, having lost

their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins. ("On Truth"

146)

Nietzschean Ethics?

The above discussion takes us to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy, namely,

the relationship between this philosophy and ethics. For many, talking about Nietzsche's

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ethics seems something like a puzzling oxymoron. The misinterpretations of his ideas

and their undeserved association with the ideology of German imperialism partly

account for suspicions of this kind. But Nietzsche could (and did not) take an indifferent

position with regard to ethical challenges as one of the most crucial aspects of human

existence. Here again, I begin my discussion of Nietzsche's ethics by a surprising

observation: that Nietzsche subjects ethics to the same genealogical anatomy as truth. In

other words, Nietzsche offers a genealogical analysis of ethics and ethical values in an

attempt to extricate himself from another given, namely that of the objective and

intrinsic preference of these values over their opposites in the form of binary

oppositions with rigid and inflexible boundaries.

In his critique of ethics and ethical values, Nietzsche concentrates specifically on

Christian ethics as the prevalent ethics of contemporary Western culture. But his

critique can be extended to include a more than significant body of ethical doctrines,

more often than not, with religious underpinnings.

In On the Genealogy of Morality, first published in German in 1887, Nietzsche

presented the argument that Judeo-Christian ethics had been forged as a strategy of

survival by a powerless caste (the Jews) in an attempt to gain power over their

oppressors (31). In other words, far from reflecting timeless and transcendental values,

this ethics was just another particular perspective on existence in order to give

dominance to human(e) traits such as meekness, submissiveness, and the abandonment

of sensual and worldly pleasures previously regarded as worthless. This ethics was,

according to Nietzsche, a clever stratagem on the part of the so-called slaves in order to

guarantee their survival against the so-called masters. In fact, the slaves had turned their

weaknesses into praiseworthy virtues in a systematic attempt (1) to gain a greater share

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of power, and (2) to give meaning to an otherwise unjust and unfair deal called life. But

Nietzsche saw this and other similar moralities as an obstacle towards the affirmation by

human beings of life. He believed that by postulating the existence of another world-to-

come that will redeem earthly experience, Judeo-Christian and other similar moralities

make their followers less able to cope with earthly life.

Nietzsche responded to this situation by the introduction of the ubermensch

(variously translated as "superman" or "overman") as his ideal human being into his

philosophy. Nietzsche believed that the ـbermensch, through subjecting his values to a

thorough reevaluation, is able to extricate himself from moralism and the fiction of free

will.

The prefix "uber" (meaning over) merits more attention. This prefix can be

interpreted in two different, but meanwhile complementary ways. "uber" connotes

"over" in the sense of height and elevation. It suggests the realization of mankind's

highest self into an experience of being that is the upshot of overcoming moralism. This

"uber" can also be taken to denote "across" or "beyond", and this is the essence of

Nietzsche's characterization of man as a bridge we have to pass across in order to

achieve an ideal form of life and its affirmation. This latter meaning is expressed by

Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the following excerpt:

Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman – a rope over

an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous

looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying staying-still. What is

great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man

is that he is a going-across and a going-down. ("Thus" 43-4)

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As this excerpt clearly shows, contrary to the humanist tradition of

anthropomorphism which sees man as the final goal, Nietzsche sees him as a transition

point leading to a yet more sophisticated being, namely the superman. In this sense,

Nietzsche has often been regarded as the doyen of philosophical antihumanists (Davies

35). Of course, the relationship between humanism and antihumanism, like most other

binary oppositions, is not one of pure negation. In other words, each of the two sides of

this opposition has close affinities with the other which it purports to negate. Nietzsche

is not an exception to this general rule. He serves the humanist goals of intellectual

emancipation and enlightenment, articulated around a recognizable ethic of human

potentials and limitations.

Another component of Nietzsche's critique of the notion of an absolute morality

consists of his attack on the notion of a transcendent being as the sole determinant of

right and wrong. He believed that man's belief in such a transcendent entity was caused

by his inability to create new values for himself. In other words, in the absence of a

creative will to create these new values, man clings to faith in such an entity in search of

other "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not"s (Nietzsche, "Gay" 289).

Nietzsche saw the theocentrism of Judeo-Christian morality as the culmination

of the descent of divine types. Of course, his critique was not an indiscriminate offense

against all divine types, but was specifically pointed towards a particular conception of

God, namely the Christian conception:

The Christian conception of God . . . is one of the most corrupt

conceptions of God that has ever been attained on this planet; it represents,

perhaps, the low watermark in the descending development of divine types.

God devolved into the contradiction of life, instead of its transfiguration and

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eternal Yes! God is the expression of hostility against life, against nature,

against the will to life. God is the formula for every slander against this life,

for every lie about the next life! God is nothingness turned into a god, the

will to nothingness pronounced holy! (qtd. in Wicks 55)

The Gay Science, published in German in 1882 is a work of five books and

nearly four hundred aphorisms, containing some of Nietzsche's most radical critiques of

the theocentric ethics so prevalent in his time. Despite its funny and sometimes

colloquial style, this work is highly challenging, and presents a more or less accurate

image of the scope and ambition of Nietzsche's intellectual project. In this work,

Nietzsche offered, for the first time, his notorious notion of the death of god:

The greatest recent event – that God is dead, that the belief in the

Christian god has become unbelievable – is already beginning to cast its first

shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes – the suspicion in

whose eyes –is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some sun seems

to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt;

to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more

mistrustful, stranger, older. But in the main one may say: The event itself is

far too great, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension

even for the tidings of it to be thought of having arrived as yet. Much less

may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really

means, and how much must collapse now that this faith has been

undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown in

it; for example, the whole of our European morality. (279)

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This passage clearly illustrates the elitist nature of Nietzsche's notion of the

death of God. While claiming that this event is gradually dawning over Europe,

Nietzsche admits that only a few are privileged with the ability to comprehend the full

significance of this event and its wide range of implications for issues of a moral stamp.

Indeed, this highly elitist notion is compatible with Nietzsche's opposition to equality

before God as the spurious illusion of the masses. Nietzsche's definition of a higher type

of man clearly indicates his profound hostility to the notion of equality before God.

Another constructive approach to gain a more accurate understanding of

Nietzsche's notion of the death of God would be to relate this argument to a major

component of Freud's psychoanalytic theory, namely the Oedipus complex. Freud

argued that the child, at a certain stage of his/her development, has a sexual desire

towards the parent of the opposite sex, and looks at the parent of the same sex as a rival

to be overcome. The realization of this scenario is quite consistent with an individual's

sense of personal autonomy, but since the realization of this scenario is not practicable

under normal circumstances, the child finally learns to accept his/her role and abandon

his/her desire for the parent of the opposite sex. As Robert Wicks has argued, just as

when one is free from the dominating forces of his/her parents, one is able to creatively

engage in forging one's own values and to regard oneself as a unique person, the death

of God proclaimed by Nietzsche gives the individual the ability to create his/her own

values in a higher level of cultural consciousness (58). In other words, while Freud

presents personal autonomy in terms of individual development, Nietzsche uses the

notion of God's death at a higher level of cultural consciousness.

Nietzsche and Nationalism: Towards a Postmodern Disbelief

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Another important point concerning the excerpt quoted above is that Nietzsche

apparently extends the alleged collapse of the belief in the Christian God to other

totalizing systems of thought, and contends that with the collapse of faith in God, such

systems no longer have the prestige and validity that they previously enjoyed. However,

he acknowledges that the appeal to a transcendental or higher world or being is

inseparable from the decline of the creative will, hence the persistence of totalizing

systems of belief such as scientism, patriotism or revolutionary politics that identify

absolute value in terms of abstract concepts such as nation, progress, freedom,

democracy or universal rights.

The issue of nationalism and national identity is a case in point. Like any other

totalizing system of belief, nationalism creates a series of binary oppositions in order to

define itself in terms of one of the sides of these oppositions. It forges a sense of

belonging by attaching emotional significance to a specific geographical territory or a

particular historical construction of a group of people. Nationalism consolidates this

sense of belonging through the use of a national anthem (often expressive of loyalty to

the national identity and commemorating the heroic past), a national flag (as a symbol

of national pride and identity), and abstract concepts such as patriotism.

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche tries to demonstrate that the feeling of

possessing a distinct national identity often manifests itself in the form of nationalistic

ideologies. Naturally enough, however, these ideologies cannot and are not meant to

constantly coincide in a conflict-free environment. Conflicts arise and war becomes an

allegedly necessary evil for the protection of national identity and national interests.

Nietzsche regards this enthusiastic feeling of belonging as the “depletion of

natural energies” that could otherwise be put to appropriate cultural use ("Human" 481).

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But Nietzsche sees these surges of nationalistic sentiments just as a transient

countercurrent which futilely resists the integration mechanism which works inexorably

towards the final amalgamation of all the world's people. In the final analysis, it can be

said that By postulating the collapse of such totalizing systems as nationalism,

Nietzsche attempts to dissolve God's shadow following his death, or more accurately,

his murder. Interestingly, this argument anticipates Lyotard's concept of narrative crisis

in the postmodern era, of which more later on.

Nietzsche and the Modern Subject

Nietzsche extended the scope of his critique of the Socratic rationalistic

thinking, itself based on a subject-object dichotomy, to the notion of a coherent human

subject. Nietzsche challenged the notion of a thinking and feeling human subject with

the ability for logical and causal reasoning (Rosenau 44). Perhaps one can claim him as

one of the precursors of the postmodern antisubject position. Nietzsche's critique of one

of the most important tenets of humanism in his own time was based on its association

with subject, Christianity and transcendence. It was only by positing the existence of a

coherent and unified human subject that Judeo-Christian and other similar ethical

systems could impose their universalistic values on individuals. The notion of subject,

according to Nietzsche, imposes the ideal of being on the fact of becoming, thus stifling

the creative naturalness of strength.

Nietzsche also uses his critique of truth and metaphor to offer a challenge to the

concept of the self. One of the most important flaws of metaphysical thought, he

believes, is that it presupposes a substance or subject behind appearances, bestowing

meaning on these appearances. Nietzsche explains this presupposition in terms of a

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linguistic determinism. This notion seems to require a more detailed explanation. "I

think, therefore I am": this is Descartes's famous argument in defending the notion of a

coherent and unified human subject. But Nietzsche argues that this argument is merely a

formulation of our grammatical habit, namely that of postulating a doer for what is

done. Simply put, Western linguistic systems portray the world in subject-predicate

terms in such a way that we always see everything in terms of a performer-performance

dichotomy:

The spirit, something that thinks: where possible even absolute, pure

spirit – this conception is a second derivative of that false introspection

which believes in thinking: first an act is imagined which simply does not

occur, "thinking', and secondly a subject-substratum in which every act of

thinking, and nothing else, has its origin: that is to say, both the deed and the

doer are fictions. ("Will" 264)

Nietzsche challenged the commonplace assumption so prevalent in metaphysical

systems of thought like those of Descartes and Rousseau, according to which the subject

"I" is the precondition of the predicate "think" ("Beyond" 47). For Nietzsche, the

problem with this way of conceiving the relationship between the doer and the deed is

that the latter is seen as an effect of a sovereign and independent subject with the ability

to recognize the world as a self-evident entity, i.e. as a thing in itself. Far from seeing

the doer and the deed as two distinct entities, Nietzsche regards the former as containing

merely an interpretation of the latter, and thus not as belong to the deed itself. Based on

this view, Nietzsche arrives at the startling conclusion that the doer and the deed are

fictions whose creation had been made possible through our linguistic structures in the

first place ("Will" 264).

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Interestingly, Nietzsche's critique of the notion of a unified and transcendent

subject anticipates the death of the subject declared by many postmodernists. Jameson,

for example argues that "one of the key themes in contemporary critical theory that is

enthusiastically taken up by postmodernism is the death of the subject itself – the end of

the bourgeois monad or ego or individual" ("Postmodernism" 15).

What, then, is the consequence of such a view for issues of ethical significance?

Nietzsche believes that once the distinction is made between actions on the one hand,

and an independent and responsible self on the other, it becomes possible to judge

people in moral terms, i.e. according to their adherence to certain social and political

norms. In this sense, Christian morality, for which the idea of free will seems to be self-

evident, turns into an elocution of judgement rather than a rhetoric of emancipation.

To sum up, from Socrates onward, a rationalistic mode of thinking has come to

dominate Western thought, based on which there is an autonomous human subject with

full awareness of his/her actions. This notion, with occasional modifications and

revisions, has come to be recognized as the cornerstone of major philosophies and belief

systems up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Freud's

psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's wholesale attack on morality in the traditional

sense contributed to the demise of this theory.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory demonstrated that far from a unified and totally

self-conscious entity, the human subject is actually made up of fragments of forgotten

memories, fears and hopes which have gone into his/her making since his/her

childhood. He strove to offer a model of the psychic system in which the irrational was

regarded as important in terms of force as, if not more important than, the rational in

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terms of form. In other words, he tried to show that the human subject was not, after all,

as self-controlling and rational as previously believed.

Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of the distinction between truth and metaphor, of

the separation of subject and object, of totalizing systems of thought and belief, and

finally of the theocentrism of traditional morality played a crucial role in undermining

the philosophical foundations of a unified and coherent subject. Foucault believed that

Nietzsche was the founder of the uniquely sceptical philosophy now called

"postmodern." He argues that "Nietzsche marks the threshold beyond which

contemporary philosophy can begin to start thinking again; and he will no doubt

continue for a long while to dominate its advance ("Order" 353-54). The main point of

Nietzsche's critique of traditional morality, as Robinson observes, is that "moral beliefs

usually have a dubious historical pedigree, and hide their less attractive motives and

purposes" (73).

In sum, both Freud and Nietzsche saw religion as illusory, and engaged in a

human effort to find another foundation for thought and experience other than the

divine. These efforts paved the way for the establishment, or at least the promulgation

of nonessentialist and nonuniversalist types of morality based on pragmatic

considerations rather than dogmatic categorizations. This forms the essence of the

postmodern humanism of which, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, Vonnegut is

one of the most eloquent exponents.

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CHAPTER III:

Cat's Cradle: Theory Behind Fiction

"God doesn't care what becomes of us, and neither does nature, so we'd better

care. We're all there is to care." –Kurt Vonnegut

"If Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's masterpiece, Cat's Cradle is a close

runner-up" (Tomedi 39). While sharing some characteristics with mainstream

postmodernist fiction, it has also some common features with science fiction, causing

many to ignore Vonnegut's serious message for the whole human race by simply

categorizing this and other fictions written by him as absurdist, or sf at best. Of course,

this observation should not be viewed as denigrating the status of sf and its

contributions to the growth of responsible and committed literature, but rather, it

indicates the extent to which academic categorizations can be misleading if not properly

applied.

Part of the problem is caused by what Larry McCaffery calls "the . . . collapse of

hierarchical distinctions between high and low art, between official high culture and

popular or mass culture, in the postmodern period" (qtd. in McHale, "Constructing"

225).

This chapter seeks (1) to establish the status of Cat's Cradle as a postmodern

work of fiction, (2) to exonerate this work and its author from accusations of nihilism

and pessimism often pointed at them, and (3) to illustrate that by deconstructing some of

the most important metanarratives of American society, this work of fiction can be

regarded as the harbinger to one of the most sustained critiques of the project of

modernity, i.e. Lyotard's notion of a narrative crisis in the postmodern era. To this end, I

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begin my discussion of this work of fiction by looking at the ways in which it can be

regarded as a postmodernist fiction. A brief account of Lyotard's notion of

metanarratives and their demise in the postmodern era will follow, and then I shall

discuss how Vonnegut, by deconstructing religion and scientism as two of America's

most important grand narratives, attempts to offer a humanist solution to the challenges

that a postmodern and rapidly advancing society like that of the united States may

present.

The Postmodernism of Cat's Cradle

In terms of both form and content, there are a number of elements linking Cat's

Cradle to mainstream postmodernist fiction. In what follows, I shall try to explore some

of these elements with specific reference to Cat's Cradle in more details.

At the beginning of Cat's Cradle we are told by the narrator that he is going to

write a factual book concerning the events of August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic

bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (14). The nuclear attack on Hiroshima in 1945

is common historical knowledge, and it should not come as a surprise if an author

chooses to write a historical novel based on this historical event. In fact, Vonnegut

chooses irving Langmuir (1881-1957), American Nobelist in surface chemistry as the

model for one of the major characters of his novel, Felix Hoenikker. But what McHale

calls the "non-contradiction restraint" on the tradition of historical fiction begins and

ends just at this point ("Postmodernist" 87). By this restraint, McHale means that

"historical . . . persons, events . . . can only be introduced on condition that the

properties and actions attributed to them in the text do not actually contradict the official

historical record" (87).

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If we take the traditional form of historical fiction practiced by writers such as

Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper or Leo Tolstoi as the norm against which to

evaluate other works in the same vein, then a fantastic historical fiction is necessarily

something of an anomaly. But Vonnegut, by offering a mixture of the fantastic and the

historical, attempts to foreground the artificiality and Fictionality of the fictional world,

while offering a critique of the way in which science has been made to contribute to one

of the most horrific experiences in human history, i.e. the use of nuclear weapons

against a sovereign state. This indicates that As Peter Reed observes, "The fantastic

offers perception into the quotidian, rather than escape from it" (77). In other words,

these fantastic elements "give Vonnegut a chance to show what is happening here in

ours; it is a way of exposing negative influences that might make things turn out a little

differently, or a means of pointing out what is really going on" (Tomedi 121).

The narrator's quest for factual information, on the other hand, sets up one of the

most important themes of Cat's Cradle, i.e. the futility of any quest for wholly objective

truths. Postmodernism has often been accused of irresponsibility by practically effacing

"all sense of the difference between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, serious and

non-serious discourse" (Norris 2). But as Gerhard Hoffmann observes, "Postmodern

narrative is indeed the most philosophical narrative in the history of the genre" (163).

Furthermore, as Todd F. Davis rightly argues, "the reality of Postmodernity lies in its

awareness of the constructed nature of truth and the ensuing efforts to allow voices,

once silenced by the modern monomyth of one essential "truth," to speak from the

margins" ("Kurt" 14). This argument is highly reminiscent of Nietzsche's view

regarding the metaphorical and interpretive nature of truth mentioned in the previous

chapter.

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"Call me Jonah" (11), reads the first sentence of the novel. This raises issues

regarding the narrator's identity, itself one of the most important preoccupations of

postmodern philosophy. This sentence also echoes the famous first line of Melville's

Moby Dick, whose narrator, Ishmael, becomes the only survival of Ahab's idiotic quest

for the white whale (Tomedi 45). Similarly, John/Jonah, the narrator in Cat's Cradle

survives an apocalypse to tell the tale. Furthermore, near the end of the novel, the

narrator describes the "fearful hump" of Mount McCabe as a "blue whale" (214).

The Narrator's name also contains a highly suggestive allusion to the story of

Jonah, an eight-century bc Hebrew prophet. According to the Old Testament, God

commands Jonah to "go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their

wickedness has come up before me" (1:2). But Jonah attempts to escape from "the

presence of the Lord" (1:3-10). A tempest arises, mariners cast Jonah overboard on his

own request, and he is swallowed by a "great fish" (1:17). Jonah prays from the belly of

the fish (2:1-9), is subsequently vomited out . . . upon the dry land (2:10), and is

commanded to return to Nineveh . . . and "proclaim to it the message that I tell you"

(3:2). Jonah Preaches (3:3-4), the people repent (3:5-9), and God, seeing their works,

spares them (3:10).

If we carry this analogy to its logical conclusion, America turns out to be the

Nineveh of the contemporary age, and the fictional Jonah is the prophet who is to rescue

it from its impending dark fate. But whether it would be too late for the people (the

American people) to correct their ways remains to be seen. In fact, as Richard Giannone

observes, "Vonnegut implies through his novelistic use of Jonah that science has led us

so far astray that the enormous cry of Old Testament prophecy is needed to correct the

course of life" (56).

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The use of metafictional techniques is another element linking Cat's Cradle to

mainstream postmodernist fiction. Patricia Waugh defines Metafiction as "a term given

to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its

status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and

reality" (2). Indeed, the use of metafictional techniques is hardly original with

postmodernist writers. As early as the second half of the eighteenth century, Tristram

Shandy begs his reader's attention by appealing to such techniques: "bear with me and

let me go on and tell my story in my own way" (15). But what distinguishes the

postmodern use of Metafiction, as Malcolm Bradbury judiciously argues, "is its relation

to the public and social fictions that surround it, and its attempt to find a mode of

discovery and exploration within them" ("Intimations" 204).

Classic realism, by referring to historical events and personages, attempts to

authenticate the fictional world, and thus hide the ontological joint between fact and

fiction. Coleridge's notion of the willing suspension of disbelief clearly reflects such an

attitude. But postmodernist fictions like Cat's Cradle exactly underscore such

ontological joints, thus problematizing the relationship between fact and fiction.

"Nothing in this book is true" ("Cat's" 4). This epigraph practically turns coleridge's

notion of the willing suspension of disbelief into the willing suspension of belief. In

other words, this epigraph foregrounds the fictionality of the world of the novel, thus

challenging the camouflage strategies used by classic realist fiction in order to conceal

the constructed nature of the fictional world in particular, and that of the language in

general. But as Roland Barthes observes, "These facts of language were not perceptible

so long as literature pretended to be a transparent expression of either objective calendar

time or of psychological subjectivity . . . as long as literature maintained a totalitarian

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ideology of the referent, or more commonly speaking, as long as literature was realistic"

("To Write" 138). Patricia Waugh means virtually the same thing when she argues that

"far from dying, the novel has reached a mature recognition of its existence as writing,

which can only ensure its continued viability in and relevance to a contemporary world

which is similarly beginning to gain awareness of precisely how its values and practices

are constructed and legitimized" (19).

In other words, through the use of metafictional techniques, postmodernist

writers such as Vonnegut attempt to illustrate that contrary to the common assumptions

of classic realism, "Novels do not depict life, they depict life as it is represented by

ideology" (L. Davis 24).

The term "postmodern" has often been associated with hybridity. Genetically, a

hybrid is defined as the offspring of different parents or stock. Almost since its

inception as a distinct literary genre, the novel has been looked upon as a serious art, not

to be mixed with other non-serious, and allegedly inferior types of discourse. But the

theories of Jacques Derrida and other deconstructionists contributed to the demise of

binary oppositions, one of which is held between serious (allegedly superior) and non-

serious (allegedly inferior) types of discourse.

This elimination of such binary oppositions accounts for another important

characteristic of Cat's Cradle also shared by many other postmodern works of fiction,

i.e. the inclusion of elements borrowed from often marginalized literary genres such as

science fiction. Given the accessibility of such forms to a wider audience, their use may

be regarded as a positive development:

These forms not only are entirely appropriate as vehicles to express

the serious concerns of the present day, but are forms to which a wide

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audience has access and with which it is already familiar. The use of popular

forms in serious fiction is therefore crucial for undermining narrow and

rigid critical definitions of what constitutes, or is appropriately to be termed

"good literature." Their continuous assimilation into serious fiction is also

crucial if the novel is to remain a viable form. (86)

A more simplified version of the same argument is presented by Farrell, who

argues that "Like other examples of postmodern art, such as Andy Warhol's paintings of

soup cans, Vonnegut's writing blurs the line between high and low culture" (ix).

Vonnegut himself describes his novels as "mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny

chips; and each chip is a joke" (Allen 91).

In his seminal study of the structure of science fiction as a literary genre, Darko

Suvin introduces the idea of a novum. He defines novum as a confrontation with, and a

contradiction to the empirical givens of this world, "a strange newness" (4). Robert

Scholes qualifies this definition by arguing that fabulation, by which he means science

fiction, "offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know,

yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way" ("Structural" 29).

In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut introduces the ice-nine as a novum in order to create

a world radically different from ours. As Vonnegut himself says, Langmuir had shared

the idea of a form of ice which could remain frozen at room temperature With H. G.

Wells, the famous British sf writer, but Wells showed no interest, and Vonnegut used

the idea in Cat's Cradle (qtd. in Tomedi 42).

In addition to the elements mentioned above, there are some other elements

linking Cat's Cradle to mainstream postmodernist fiction. Cat's Cradle consists of 127

chapters, the length of some of which is even less than one single page. This strategy

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helps remind the reader of the Fictionality of the text. In other words, in a text that deals

primarily with harmless untruths (foma) which govern our lives, Vonnegut tries to

demonstrate that his novel is just as manmade as are the reasons we invent for living.

Like our experience of everyday life, each chapter, as Vonnegut himself notes, is

nothing but "one day's work, and each one is a joke" ("Man" 128).

In addition, Vonnegut introduces the island of San Lorenzo as a Caribbean

country adjacent to the united States, thus disrupting the reader's geographical

knowledge. In doing so, Vonnegut creates what McHale calls a "zone" ("Postmodernist"

45). This zone is created through the superimposition of a new geographical space on an

already familiar one. Cat's Cradle was written just one year after the Cuban Missile

Crisis. Albert E. Stone sees this geographical similarity as a significant point. Focusing

on Frank's portion of ice-nine which freezes the ocean first in San Lorenzo, he poses the

argument that the fictional Third World Caribbean country accomplishes what the

Cuban Missile Crisis closely fails to achieve (63).

Having introduced some of the most crucial elements linking Cat's Cradle to

mainstream postmodernist fiction in terms of both form and content, I shall now discuss

the philosophical and theoretical linkages between this work of fiction and

postmodernist philosophy. To this end, Lyotard's notion of the incredulity towards

metanarratives in the postmodern era and its two most important critiques will be briefly

introduced, followed by an account of how Cat's Cradle, by deconstructing some of

these metanarratives belonging to American society, anticipates much of what is at

stake in Lyotard's theory of the narrative crisis in the postmodern era.

Lyotard and the Politics of Disbelief

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Whence have we come? Whither are we going? what are we here for anyway? In

other words, what is the meaning of life? These are some of the most important

questions facing humanity since times immemorial. It is in response to such

philosophical challenges that various systems of belief have sought to present a

meaningful account of the universe and the ways it works. Eclecticism seems to be the

norm for all, or at least a significant majority of such systems. In other words, each of

these systems seeks to offer an all-embracing account of existence.

In his seminal study entitled The Postmodern Condition: A Report on

Knowledge, Jean-Francois Lyotard (1928-98) offers his theory of the demise of grand

narratives and metanarratives in the postmodern era. He makes a distinction between

grand narratives as the governing principles of modernity on the one hand, and

metanarratives as the legitimizing structures of science on the other. I, however, use

these concepts synonymously in order to avoid a great deal of unnecessary

complications. Furthermore, Lyotard makes a rather nuanced distinction between

narratives of speculation and those of emancipation (35-6), a distinction which I have

not observed for the same reason.

Based on such a definition, religion, scientism, nationalism etc. can be regarded

as the major grand narratives of modernity, which, according to Lyotard, have been

seriously challenged in the postmodern era. Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle exemplifies such a

challenge. But before dealing with Cat's Cradle and its deconstruction of some of

America's most crucial grand narratives, a closer look at Lyotard's theory and its most

important critiques seems useful.

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Lyotard famously defines Postmodernism as a “distrust towards the

metanarratives of the past, of the epistemological narratives inherent in our collective

cultural memory—narratives that help us define and make sense of the past” (xxiv).

Elsewhere he succinctly defines the postmodern as "an incredulity toward

metanarratives" (72).

The status of knowledge constitutes the backbone of Lyotard's theory. The basis

of his argument is that "the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is

known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern

age" (3). Lyotard makes the case for a change in the status of knowledge in the

postmodern era:

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will

be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production.: in both cases, the

goal is exchange. (4)

Elsewhere, he laments the separation of scientific activities from human

concerns:

Research and the spread of learning are not justified by invoking a

principle of usefulness. The idea is not at all that science should serve the

interests of the state and/or civil society. The humanist principle that

humanity rises up in dignity and freedom through knowledge is left by the

wayside. (31)

Finally, He divides knowledge into narrative and scientific categories, arguing

that "scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always

existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge,

which I will call narrative" (7).

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Like Michel Foucault, Lyotard relates the concept of knowledge to the notion of

power by posing two fundamental questions: "who decides what knowledge is, and who

knows what needs to be decided" (9)? In keeping with such a viewpoint, Lyotard holds

the political institutions of a society responsible for the formation and establishment of

such narratives: “The institutions of a society, especially the politically charged ones,

are not content to simply know—they also legislate. That is, they formulate

prescriptions that have the status of norms" (31). Madan Sarup, however, preserves this

legislative role for those governing principles rather than political institutions, arguing

that "Narratives (popular stories, myths, legends and tales) bestow legitimacy upon

social institutions . . . They thus define what has the right to be said and done in the

culture in question" (135).

It was perhaps a practical consequence of his theory that Lyotard, as

Dave Robinson notes, "rejected his earlier commitment to the political

certainties of Marxism and the French Communist party" (Robinson 42).

Again to quote Robinson, "According to Lyotard, the Marxist grand

narrative ignores the libidinal drives of human beings, or in Nietzschean

terms, their Dionysian nature" (ibid.). Other totalizing accounts do not fare

much better in Lyotard's philosophical scheme. They too are subjected to

the same epistemological and ontological challenges as the grand narratives

of Marxism and Communism. Of course, Lyotard is not alone in making a

case for the collapse of grand narratives of modernity. Douglas Kellner, for

example, argues that "the tradition of modern philosophy was destroyed by

its vacuous and impossible dreams of a foundation for philosophy, an

absolute bedrock of truth that could serve as the guarantee of philosophical

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systems" (240). Glenn Ward also challenges various so-called grand

narratives by arguing that "forms of knowledge build themselves up on

certain centres and origins that have no basis in reality" (29).

Lyotard's critique and other similar theories are, more than anything else,

pointed at the project of modernity as defined by its alleged progress towards

transcendental ideas such as truth, enlightenment, justice, etc. There are, however,

important challenges to Lyotard's theory of the final collapse of grand narratives, to

which I shall now turn. But it should be noted that most of such criticisms are applied to

the whole postmodernism as a distinct project, but since postmodernism, at least in its

philosophical dimensions, has come to be identified with Lyotard's theory, these

critiques do have implications for this theory as well as for postmodernism as the

philosophical system based on this theory.

The first critique of this and other similar theories concerns the relationship

between postmodernism as a philosophical system on the one hand, and capitalism as

the allegedly dominant world system on the other. Again, the Hegelian concept of

dialecticism may be of much help as an analytical tool. Simply put, Hegel believed that

the dialectic process between a thesis and an antithesis finally leads to the formation of

a well-balanced synthesis. Hegel saw the final realization of justice and freedom as a

sign of recognition as the final synthesis, and implied that his own period was the

culmination of such an optimal balance.

The Hegelian concept of an optimal synthesis forms the common basis of the

capitalist and Marxist critiques of postmodernism. In other words, if the idea of history

as a progressive entity is taken to be true, then it necessarily follows that the realization

of such an ideal might not be so far-fetched after all.

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Some advocates of the capitalist system, based on a positive attitude towards

such a system argue that capitalism has offered the final synthesis, and that

postmodernism has nothing to offer to add as an antithesis. Based on such a viewpoint,

the capitalist system is the last station in the progress of history towards an ideal.

Francis Fukuyama represents such a viewpoint. In his The End of History and the Last

Man (1992), he presents the viewpoint that the Western liberal democracy is the highest

ideal attainable by mankind. Indeed, Fukuyama himself is aware of the limitations of his

defense for liberal democracy as the most ideal system in terms of scope and

generalizability, and in a proleptic sleight of hand attempts to ward off such criticisms

by arguing that "While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal

democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primitive forms of rule like

theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved

upon" (xi).

This prolepsis notwithstanding, one could still criticize such a viewpoint on the

basis of its implied particularism. Simply put, Fukuyama is practically arguing that

history has ended gloriously for all who mattered (the people of the Western world), and

if others are still in the grips of totalitarian theocracies or military dictatorships, this is

their own problem. Neither Lyotard nor Fukuyama, do not seem to feel the slightest

qualm over the fact that "allegiances to large-scale, totalizing religious and nationalist

beliefs are currently responsible for so much repression, violence, and war – in Northern

Ireland, Serbia, the Middle East, and elsewhere" (Butler 14). Furthermore, the so-called

war against terror led by the Bush administration in the name of the spread of freedom

and democracy indicates the persistent appeal of grand narratives even in the Western

world. This challenge has been reiterated in a more refined vocabulary by some radical

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elements in the postmodernist camp who argue that "While claiming to better the human

condition, humanism has misled humankind into Marxism, National Socialism, and

Stalinism" (Foucault, "Enlightenment" 168-69). Foucault equates humanism with the

whole project of modernity, thus holding it responsible for what he sees as man's falling

prey to such totalizing accounts (grand narratives) like Marxism and Stalinism.

Fukuyama, however, looks at the issue from an absolutely euphoric standpoint, arguing

that far from collapsing and being demolished, the grand narratives of modernity (or at

least its secular grand narratives)have experienced a revival of sorts in Western liberal

democracies. Obviously, this view runs contrary to Lyotard's notion of the collapse of

grand narratives in the postmodern era.

Terry Eagleton offers another mind-provoking critique of postmodernism in

general, applicable to Lyotard's theory as well. This critique is offered from a Marxist

perspective. Based on this view, the ubiquity of the capitalist system has led many to

take it so for granted that it has acquired the irrefutable status of the holey Trinity:

It is as though almost every other form of oppressive system —

state, media, patriarchy, racism, neo-colonialism — can be readily debated,

but not the one which so often sets the long-term agenda for all of these

matters, or is at the very least implicated with them to their roots. The power

of capital is now so drearily familiar, so sublimely omnipotent and

omnipresent, that even large sectors of the left have succeeded in

naturalizing it, taking it for granted as such an unbudgable structure that it is

as though they hardly have the heart to speak of it. ("Illusions" 22-3)

Lyotard, however, responds to this and other similar criticisms through

subjecting the capitalist system to the same critique as grand narratives of modernity,

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this time from a different perspective. He argues that the capitalist system has replaced

the grand narratives of modernity with those of profit and efficiency. In other words,

contrary to modernity's grand narratives which attempt to have the last word, the

capitalist system seeks to have the next one instead, and apparently does not mind

fragmentation and hybridity as long as they can be made to lead to more profit and

efficiency. Of course, Lyotard is wholly aware of the shortcomings of such a system and

argues that such a system rests on a choice of a terroristic nature: "be operational . . . or

disappear" (xxiv).

The third challenge posed against postmodernism in general and Lyotard's

theory in particular is that postmodernism is heavily implicated in what it seeks to

challenge. In other words, the postulation of the death of grand narratives, as Peter

Osborne rightly argues, "is itself grander than most of the narratives it would consign to

oblivion" (qtd. in Eagleton, "Illusions" 34). To put it simply, "Postmodernism

universalize[s] its case against universals" (ibid. 49 my own brackets). However, this

argument does not seem to be so valid, because to disrupt a meeting, one has to attend

it; the tools one uses to break up a house are the same tools one uses to build it

(Eaglestone 184).

The fourth challenge mainly posed by Habermas postulates an unfinished nature

for the project of modernity. Based on this view, the project of modernity is still a viable

choice insofar as it is construed as a process rather than a product. Habermas argues that

the project of modernity "expresses the conviction that the future has already begun: it

is the epoch that lives for the future, that opens itself up to the novelty of the future" (5).

In other words, far from being a clear break with modernism, postmodernism is simply

a continuation of the ever-unfolding project of modernity. Consequently, talking about

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the death of grand narratives and the failure of the project of modernity seems to arise

from an immature and hasty way of judgement.

The above account, however, should not be taken to mean that Lyotard rejects

all narratives out of hand; on the contrary, he believes that civilized life is not possible

without narratives of one kind or another. For example, while he believes that certain

metanarratives like that of the enlightenment have disappeared, he admits that "recourse

to narrative is inevitable," arguing that even scientific disciplines with an allegedly non-

narrative basis rely on narrative in one form or another in order to represent, and more

than that, to justify their own existence (28). But he explicitly denies that in virtue of the

alleged collapse of grand narratives people are less civilized than before, posing the

view that "Most people have lost the nostalgia for the lost narrative. It in no way follows

that they are reduced to barbarity" (41).

Being fully aware on the undeniable and essential role played by narratives in a

civilized life, Lyotard attempts to find a substitution for that whose death he has

announced. To this end, he also makes another distinction between good and bad

narratives. This distinction is made in terms of their usefulness and potential to serve

human ends. The gist of his argument is that narratives are bad when they become

philosophies of history while little narratives associated with local creativity are

beneficial (146). Thus he places the local above the universal. This view is reiterated by

many postmodernists, who, according to Rosenau, offer "micro-narratives as

alternatives to history" (66). Elsewhere, He elucidates more fully his notion of these

local narratives:

We no longer have recourse to the grand narratives—we can resort

neither to the dialectic spirit nor even the emancipation of humanity as a

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validation for postmodern scientific discourse. But . . . the little narrative

(petit recit) remains the quintessential form of imaginative invention. (60)

Lyotard's commitment to finding another alternative to the grand narratives of

modernity attest to their undeniable appeal. Imagination and creativity forms the basis

of Lyotard's theory. In other words, he places the ordinary people in the role of active

creators rather than passive consumers of narratives. In keeping with this viewpoint, he

construct a model based on which people both shape and are shaped by the narratives

which they themselves bring into existence in the first place. He even steps farther by

arguing that each of these two (people and the narratives) are nothing than the product

of the other. But again, the people seem to play the more formative role:

In a sense, the people are only that which actualizes the narratives:

once again, they do this not only by recounting themes, but also by listening

to them and recounting themselves through them; in other words, by putting

them into play in their institutions. (23)

Having introduced a hopefully brief and general outline of Lyotard's theory, it

should be easier now to see how Cat's Cradle as a postmodern work of fiction

anticipates this theory and its implications for issues of moral significance through

deconstructing two of the most important grand narratives of modernity, I,e. religion

and scientism.

Cat's Cradle and the Grand Narrative of Religion

Religion is amongst the major so-called totalizing accounts of existence

Vonnegut sets out to challenge in Cat's Cradle. However, since religion in the common

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sense of the term denotes a personal and/or institutional system based on belief in, and a

reverence for a transcendental and absolute truth the pursuit of which brings eternal

happiness and bliss, any discussion about religion inevitably brings to the fore issues

such as the relationship between reality and illusion, truth and metaphor, etc.

Furthermore, almost any form of religion involves some sort of ethical system based on

which the proper relationship between man and the alleged spiritual reality, and also

that between man and other people is defined. In what follows, therefore, I shall first

present a short account about how religion, through the postulation of a series of other

smaller narratives, creates a totalizing scheme in which all the parts serve a common

goal, namely that of reinforcing the whole system.

One of the major characteristics shared by most religions is their

anthropocentrism, i.e. the belief that man is central to the universe insofar as he is the

focus of spiritual guidance. In other words, Despite the alleged opposition between

Humanism as an intellectual movement on the one hand and religion on the other,

through placing mankind at the centre of their spiritual concerns, most religions

practically engage in a humanist project whose aims are defined on the basis of

mankind's potential to achieve emancipation through communication with a higher

spiritual reality. Obviously, rather than denoting a specific philosophical and intellectual

movement, this kind of humanism denotes a concern with the interests, needs and

welfare of humans, attached from any ideological or theoretical consideration.

In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut sets religion in its organized and institutionalized

form as his main target of criticism. He especially attacks the absolutism shared by

many religions, i.e. the claim of holding the key to a greater divine truth. To this end, he

uses a fake religion called Bokononism in order to expose the illusory character of all

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religions, particularly in terms of their absolutism. The narrator's quest leads him to the

impoverished island of San Lorenzo where a former American mariner named McCabe

and Lionel Boyd Johnson, a former sightseer, attempt to create a utopia after their own

fashion. To achieve this, McCabe and Johnson divide the material and spiritual affairs

between themselves, McCabe leading the economy and the laws, and Johnson assuming

responsibility for people's spiritual needs by designing a new religion called

Bokononism (127).

After a while, however, this arrangement proves to be inefficient to eliminate the

suffering of the people of San Lorenzo. Religion turns into "the one real instrument of

hope" (172). Therefore, McCabe and Johnson agree that the latter and his religion

should be outlawed "in order to give the religious life of the people more zest, more

tang" (173). This clearly demonstrates that religion is nothing more than an illusory

construct to provide people with a source of hope. In fact, religion achieves this goal

through blinding people to the bitter and harsh reality. As Julian Castle, the

philanthropist millionaire tells the narrator, "truth was the enemy of the people, because

the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide people with better

lies" (172). Herein lies the necessity of lying about reality. This is highly reminiscent of

Marx who famously called religion the opium of the masses.

This function of all religions in general, and of Bokononism in particular, is

illustrated by one of Bokonon's calypsos in which he clearly states the illusory nature of

his religion:

I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we all could be

happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And

I made this sad world A par-a-dise. (90)

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As the reader might have noticed, this religion is based on lies. However, what

distinguishes Bokononism from other religions is the fact that it admits of being based

on lies. In other words, a Bokononist, by definition, admits that his/her religion is

nothing more than a bunch of lies in order to make reality more tolerable. Todd F. Davis

rightly sees Bokononism as a parody of Christianity as one of America's overarching

grand narratives. As he argues, "Bokononists must always be aware that, because the

basis for their living is mere fabrication, any flirtation with absolutism would be absurd"

("Apocalyptic" 157).

Vonnegut apparently prioritizes considerations of usefulness over those of

truthfulness in dealing with religion. This is, as the reader hopefully recalls, reminiscent

of the Nietzschean challenge based on which truth does not have any inherent priority

over untruth (metaphor). In the fourth chapter of Cat's Cradle, he quotes the first

sentence of the books of Bokonon: "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are

shameless lies" (14). Based on this notion, the narrator begins his unfinished book about

the end of the world by a Bokononist warning: "anyone unable to understand how a

useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either" (ibid.).

Elsewhere, the narrator quotes The disclaimer of the first book of Bokonon: "Don't be a

fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma! Foma, of course, are lies" or

'harmless untruths" (265). This disclaimer clearly parodies the realist assumptions

forming the basis of traditional novel. This parodic disclaimer highlights the ontological

joint between the fictional and the real world, thus fusing creation with critique to

replace what had become a matter of course with what now becomes a matter of

discourse (Stewart 19 my own italics).

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There is, however, an apparently inexplicable paradox regarding Bokononism.

This paradox consists of "the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the

heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it" (284). In other words, far from being an

ideal religion, Bokononism is as absurd as any other religion. Shorn of political

commitment, it sets the stage for the world's ultimate destruction. As Zoltan Abadi-

Nagy observes, "by adopting a dogma of uncontrolled irresponsibility, the San

Lorenzans become helpless prey who could have been capable of stopping the tragic

course of events that lead to the end of the world" (89). As Klinkowitz writes, "the lies

of this new religion are purgative, yielding happiness, balance, and comfort"

("Vonnegut" 62).

This blasé attitude towards life causes Bokononism to fall from the other side of

the roof. In other words, although Bokononism is relatively successful in blinding the

people to the harshness of reality, like other religions, it fails the test of facing reality.

Its inability to cope with naked reality is so blatant that Mona tells john that Bokonon

himself would never follow his own advice (for self-destruction as the last straw)

because he knows that it is "worthless" (273). Vonnegut thus demonstrates the futility of

adhering to the grand narrative of religion.

However, this should not be taken to mean that Vonnegut dismisses religion in

any form. In fact, Vonnegut sees religion as an ideal seriously corrupted and

overshadowed by dogmatic interpretations. In his opinion, religions are implicated in

dogma so heavily that they have neglected their own humanist ideal:

I suggest that we need a new religion . . . An effective religion

allows people to imagine from moment to moment what is going on and

how they should behave. Christianity used to be like that. Our country is

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now jammed with human beings who say out loud that life is chaos to them,

and that it doesn't matter what anybody does next. ("Palm" 198-99)

He then continues to offer a new definition of religion as "heartfelt moral code"

(ibid. 202 italics in original). In other words, he criticizes religion in its organized form,

advocating instead a simple moral code accessible to all people. It is in keeping with

this humanist line of thought that he sees the world as containing "enough love . . . for

everybody, if people will just look" ("Cat's" 18).

A more sophisticated version of this argument is presented by Ambassador

Horlick Minton at the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy memorial on the island of San

Lorenzo. He urge the attendants to "think of peace. Think of brotherly love. Think of

plenty. Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise"

("Cat's" 256). If we take Vonnegut's social activism and his humanitarian concerns into

account, we can see Minton as the author's spokesman expressing the same concerns.

Assuming this to be the case, it can be argued that Vonnegut again appeals to the

humanist project of modernity, integrating some elements of this project into his

deconstructive project. This appeal, I believe, places Vonnegut in the oxymoronic camp

of postmodern humanism, which, as Todd F. Davis observes, "affirms humanistic

values while maintaining a postmodern perspective" ("Kurt" 29).

Cat’s Cradle and the Illusion of a telos

Closely related to, and heavily influenced by the grand narrative of religion is the notion

that the world in which we live is a goal-oriented one. Based on such a viewpoint, the

fact that there exist a great number of regularities in the world proves beyond any doubt

that this world has a teleological orientation independent from human needs and desires.

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Vonnegut, however, challenges this notion in Cat's Cradle. He begins this

challenge right from the very title of his book.

Cat's Cradle is the name of a children's game in which a string is looped on the

fingers to form an intricate pattern between a player's hands that can be successively

varied or transferred to another player's hands. Newt, Dr. Hoenikker's youngest child,

further illuminates the relevance of such a title to the content: "a cat's cradle is nothing

but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands and little kids look and look and look at

all those X's . . . ” And what do they see? “No damn cat, and no damn cradle” (166

italics in original).

Vonnegut uses the image of a cat's cradle to demonstrate the meaninglessness of life,

turning this image into a metaphor to refer to illusions and comforting lies that people

make up in their imaginations out of the chaos and meaninglessness of life, just as the

cat's cradle is made out of the disordered tangle of string. For instance, when

John/Jonah, after learning about the Harrison C. Connors's cruelty towards Newt's

sister, Angela, protests that he thought the marriage was a happy one, Newt replies, “See the

cat? See the cradle?” (179). A few pages later, the same comment is made by Newt, this

time about religion (185).

The image of the cats cradle also refers to another illusion, namely the illusion that

Dr. Hoenikker is interested in his children. But as we go ahead, this conviction proves to

be no more than an illusion. The recollections of Martin Breed, the brother of the

research director at General Forge can be a good illustration of this point:

But how the hell innocent is a man who helps make a thing like an atomic

bomb? And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn't even

bother to do anything when the best- hearted, most beautiful woman in the

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world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding . . .

Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less

interested in the living. (52-3)

As noted earlier, the image of the cat's cradle is a metaphoric construct referring to the

illusions by means of which people make up meaning for their own existence.

Furthermore, when jack, the owner of the hobby shop, tells the narrator about his

attempt to restore order to his life after his wife had left him he uses the same image:

"I'm still trying to pull the strings of my life back together" (74).

This creative creation is in complete agreement with Lyotard's notion of the petit recit

as an alternative to the grand narratives of modernity whose demise he had postulated.

Interestingly, this idea of devising a telos for existence, at least in its crude form, can be

traced back to Immanuel Kant:

Since the philosopher cannot presuppose any individual purpose

among men in their great drama, there is no other expedient for him except

to try to see if he can discover a natural purpose in this idiotic course of

things human. In keeping with this purpose, it might be possible to have a

history with a definite natural plan for creatures who have no plan of their

own. (12)

Both Kant and postmodernists seem to have lost all hope of finding an

individual telos for human existence. There are, however, two major differences

between Kant's position and that of postmodernists like Vonnegut and Lyotard. The first

difference is that whereas Kant still believes that human beings have no plan of their

own and have to be blessed with one from a higher source of existence, postmodernists

like Lyotard and Vonnegut apparently reject any notion of a goal-oriented world in

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favour of one in which everyone is responsible for defining the telos of his/her own

existence. Furthermore, while Kant regards the task of finding a natural purpose for

human existence as belonging to philosophers and intellectuals, postmodernists believe

that this is a burden to be carried by each and every inhabitant of the planet. As noted

above, Lyotard's notion of the little narrative (petit recit) is an attempt to promulgate

such a creative belief.

Vonnegut, however, attempts to offer such a creative vision in his fiction. In

Cat's Cradle he presents a parody of the Book of Genesis, thus illuminating the need for

such a creative impulse:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His

cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud,

so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living

creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.

God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man

blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely. "Everything

must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly," said man. "Then I leave it to

you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away. (273)

As the above excerpt shows, unlike the biblical cosmology according to which

God is concerned with the human affairs from first to last, Vonnegut portrays a universe

in which God has created human beings, and then has left them to their own devices.

Furthermore, the last sentence of this excerpt echoes the Nietzschean notion of God's

death. Like Nietzsche, Vonnegut seems to mean by God the traditional morality whose

basis is mainly to be found in religious teachings. Furthermore, the last calypso of the

books of Bokonon, painted in the ruins of San Lorenzo's castle, points out to the folly of

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scolding God: "He'll just smile and nod (274). Elsewhere Vonnegut makes more explicit

his point regarding a society in which instead of relying on pre-established grand

narratives, people would try to get their own small tales told. He argues that people 'are

never stronger than when they have thought up their own arguments for believing what

they believe. They stand on their own feet that way" ("Hocus" 147).

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Cat’s Cradle and the Mirage of Scientism

Having outlined the way(s) in which Vonnegut strives to deconstruct the grand

narrative of religion in Cat's Cradle, I shall now bring my discussion to bear upon

scientism as another grand narrative of American society. But before dealing with this

issue in more details, I should clarify my exact meaning when referring to a

phenomenon called scientism.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language offers two different

definitions of the word "scientism": (1) the collection of attitudes and practices

considered typical of scientists, and (2) the belief that the investigative methods of the

physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry. A closer look at

these two definitions demonstrate a very subtle, but meanwhile significant difference

between them. While the former refers to a collection of attitudes and practices, the

latter covers a more particular system of thought. My sense of the term, however, is

closer to the second definition, i.e. the concept of an excessive reliance on science and

its achievements as a panacea for all the evils of the world, pluss a science alienated

from all ethical considerations. Therefore, I redefine scientism as excessive reliance on

an amoral form of science. Having clarified this point, I shall now continue my

discussion by investigating the relationship between science and religion, and in doing

so demonstrating how Kurt Vonnegut, as a postmodern humanist, attempts to show the

inefficiency of both science and religion to play the role of "open sesame" for the evils

of the contemporary world.

The subject-object dichotomy mentioned in the previous chapter played a crucial

role in shaping what has now become to be known as modern science. In other words,

modern science is mainly based on the assumption that the relationship between the

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knower (man) and the known (the universe) is one of strict separation and distinction.

Based on such a view, the knower influences, but is not influenced by, what he/she is

supposed to know. In other words, by defining a one-sided relationship between the

knower and the known, modern science practically transfigured from a simple act of

knowing into a system of value-creation.

Religion was another important factor in shaping the concept of modern science

as it stands today. Given the apparently long-held opposition between religion as a

metaphysical explanation of the universe and its phenomena on the one hand, and

science as a material and allegedly objective instrument of knowing and acting upon the

universe on the other, this observation may strike the reader as a surprise. But as

Rosenau argues from a historical perspective, "science attacked the arbitrary authority

of church and monarch, both of which based their legitimacy on theology. Modern

science established its reputation on objectivity, rigorous procedures of inquiry, the

material rather than the metaphysical" (9). As rosenau's argument clearly shows,

modern science comes to define itself in terms of its apparent opposition to religion and

religious teachings. This argument is highly redolent of Foucault's notion of the

interdependence between the two sides of an opposition ("Power" 156).

This story, however, is not one of mere progress. Simply put, in setting itself up

against religion, science aspired to become a revolutionary agent of change. In the long

run, however, this aspiration proved to be nothing more than a mirage, because in

attempting to extricate mankind from what it saw as the shackles of religious dogma and

superstition, science had practically advanced another particular monopoly of truth

through expanding its scope of authority even farther than that held by its allegedly

dogmatic and irrational predecessor. In Hegelian terms, it can be said that far from

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establishing a proper dialectical spirit between themselves, science and religion have

engaged in a fight over the monopoly of truth, as a result of which the human aspect of

both was gradually sent to oblivion. As Dave Robinson observes, "Religion and science

both made grandiose claims that Nietzsche thought could never be justified" (22). The

result of such a futile struggle for supremacy instead of a cooperative effort was, as

Nietzsche had correctly anticipated, the promulgation of nihilism and despair (qtd. in

ibid.). Tzvetan Todorov explains this similarity between science and religion:

Scientism, in effect, involves basing an ethics and a politics on what

is believed to be the results of science. In other words, science, or what is

perceived as such, ceases to be a simple knowledge of the existing world

and becomes a generator of values, similar to religion; it can therefore direct

political and moral action. (23)

In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut subjects this particular notion of science to criticism.

He creates in Dr. Hoenikker and his children an image of a science empty of ethical

substance. There are numerous instances in the novel to support this hypothesis. One of

these instances is told by Newt in a letter he writes to the narrator, in which he confesses

that his childhood was not happy with a father whose specialty was not people but

science (21). Another more telling example is given in the same letter:

After the thing [in an experiment] went off, after it was a sure thing

that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to

Father and said, "Science has now known sin." And do you know what my

Father said? "What is sin?" (ibid. my own Brackets)

These examples indicate the extent to which issues of moral significance have

been neglected by modern science as represented by Dr. Hoenikker. Dr. von

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Koenigswald, who apparently represents the author's ideal of a humanist, adopts an

ironic stance towards the issue of the alienation of science from any human

consideration: "I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel

better, even if it's unscientific" (148). Through the use of irony, Vonnegut attempts to

show that science has evolved into a dehumanized sphere of activity. The ice-nine, as

Broer argues, is a "symbol for the coldness and lovelessness Bred into Felix Hoenikker,

who, caring only for his work, passes the effects of coldness to all those around him"

(58).

Scientism, however, in the sense of blind worship of science is not limited to Dr.

Hoenikker. Even Papa Monzano, the San Lorenzan dictator at his deathbed asks John

and Franklin to teach people science, calling it "magic that works" (147). The workers

at General Forge seem to be more than satisfied with the robotlike function assigned to

them by "faceless voices on scientists on Dictaphone records" (34).

Furthermore, this blind worship of science as a panacea for all the evils of

human society is not limited to the fictional level. There was, as Vonnegut himself

admits, a time when he himself was suffering from the same illusions regarding the

power of science as some of his characters did:

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything

worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was

twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother [a physicist who worked for

General Electric], would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty

and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to

make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was

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twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.

("Wampeters" 161)

In fact, as peter Freese observes, "it is this very belief in the infallibility of

science and the unending progress of technology that makes more humane religions

[like Bokononism] necessary" (161). Another important point which has to be born in

mind regarding Dr. Hoenikker is that he, as Funika Nagano rightly observes, "was not a

mad scientist who intended to destroy the world, but a childish and innocent man who

played with the laws of nature" (129). In other words, as Leonard Mustazza argues,

Hoenikker's invention may be the result of innocent curiosity, but his lack of morals

leads to the world's end because of his short-sighted children (79). Of course, this short-

sightedness is not limited to Dr. Hoenikker's three children, but as Vonnegut himself

says, they are "as short-sighted as almost all men and women are" (164). Elsewhere,

Vonnegut turns this particular notion into a general conviction: "It's a law of life that if

you turn up something that can be used violently, it will be used violently" (qtd. in

Allen 97). This may explain why there are never villains in his stories ("Fates 31).

These and other similar arguments lead us to the subtle distinction between

immorality as the deliberate violation of moral principles on the one hand, and

amorality as simply indifference towards right and wrong on the other. In other words,

Hoenikker and his children, while not particularly set against moral principles, do not

seem to possess the slightest notion regarding the nature of such principles either.

Lawrence R. Broer has an interesting point to make regarding the simultaneity between

Dr. Hoenikker's attempt at playing a game of cat's cradle with his youngest child and the

nuclear attack on Hiroshima:

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While both activities originate from an impulse more playful than

devious, cat's cradles [made-up illusions with no basis in reality] like atom

bombs can become the deadliest of adult realities, especially if their use is

determined by such warped and childishly irresponsible people as the

Hoenikker children prove to be. (60 my own brackets)

To Sum up, in the course of this chapter, I have been seeking to

present and substantiate the argument that while expressing his disbelief

towards totalizing accounts of existence such as religion and scientism

mostly associated with the project of modernity, Kurt Vonnegut attempts to

bridge the supposed gap between postmodernism and humanism through the

integration of the key values of modernity such as love, brotherhood, peace,

etc. in his fiction.

Cat's Cradle was written at a time when the cold War ideologies of Capitalism

and communism were dragging the world towards the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

Furthermore, the assassination of John F. Kenedy in Dallas, Texas, in November 22,

1963 marked the culmination of feelings of insecurity and uncertainty in the United

States. By that time, the Vietnam war had also transfigured itself into a military conflict

protracted long enough to generate feelings of frustration and national disgrace for

many Americans. All these developments indicated the fact that “a last stage in national

innocence was over forever” (Ruland and Bradbury 373). It was in such a context that

Vonnegut wrote his stylistic Cat's Cradle as a manifesto of his postmodern humanism.

There are, as I have tried to demonstrate in this chapter, numerous elements

linking Cat's Cradle with mainstream postmodernist fiction in terms of both form and

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content. On the other hand, Todorov distinguishes between three kinds of humanism:

historical, moral, and theoretical (29-30).

The historical brand of humanism deals with the study of the Greek and Roman

civilizations in the Renaissance period. Theoretical humanism, according to Todorov, is

a "doctrine that grants the human being a particular role . . . of initiating one's own act

or some portion of them, of being free to accomplish them or not —therefore of being able to

act at one's will" (ibid.).

The third kind of humanism is eloquently introduced, and faithfully practiced, by Kurt

Vonnegut. He defines a humanist as a person who behaves decently without any expectation of reward or

fear of punishment after his/her death. Simply put, humanism is "nothing more than a handy synonym for

good citizenship and common decency" ("Dr. Kevorkian" 12). He summarizes this definition into

two basic rules: "Ye shall respect one another" ("Fates" 160), and "God damn it, you've

to be kind" ("Mr. Rosewater" 129). Of course, this moral humanism is not separate from

the theoretical humanism postulated by Todorov. In other words, without a freedom of

sorts for human beings to act out their will, talking about respecting others, kindness,

and in short, talking about moral responsibility would be next to delirious nonsense.

The most important linkage between Cat's Cradle and the mainstream

postmodernist fiction is the deconstruction of religion and scientism as instances of

overarching grand narratives governing the society as a whole. In so doing, Vonnegut

attempts to promulgate a simple and pragmatic morality. In fact, as Simon Malpas

shrewdly observes, "If the grand narratives of modernity are premised upon the

development towards truth and justice, their obsolescence marks a condition in which

pragmatism takes over from [traditional] ethics" (40 my own brackets). In other words,

as Tod F. Davis observes, "What distinguishes Vonnegut from other metaphysicians is

his incredulity toward final answers and his unflagging determination to find pragmatic

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responses to profound questions" ("Kurt" 7). And to quote Davis again, "Vonnegut, like

other postmodernists, believes that claims for objectivity and neutrality no longer hold

water; rather, he acknowledges that observations and inventions and actions of all sorts

are subjective in nature, carrying ethical and political implications" (ibid. 9).

Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between three different groups of thinkers:

"those who know where the truth lies, those who have renounced seeking it, and those

who stubbornly pursue it" (169). The first position is associated with dogmatists and

fundamentalists who regard themselves as holding the only objective yardstick to tell

truth from falsness. The second position is associated with radical relativists for whom

everything goes. The third position is associated with affirmative postmodernists like

Vonnegut, who while nurturing serious doubts towards claims for objectivity and

absolute truth, still attempt to find truth in a dynamic tension between the humanist

values of modernity on the one hand, and postmodern doubt on the other.

Vonnegut Elsewhere offers a humanitarian and egalitarian critique of the most

ubiquitous of all narratives, i.e. the capitalist system:

So let's divide up the wealth of the world more fairly than we have

divided it up so far. Let's make sure that everybody has enough to eat, and a

decent place to live, and medical help when he needs it. Let's stop spending

money on weapons, which don't work anyway, thank God, and spend

money on each other. It isn't moonbeams to talk of modest plenty for all.

They have it in Sweden. We can have it here. Dwight David Eisenhower

once pointed out that Sweden, with its many Utopian programs, had a high

rate of alcoholism and suicide and youthful unrest. Even so, I would like to

see America try socialism. If we start drinking heavily and killing ourselves,

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and if our children start acting crazy, we can go back to good old Free

Enterprise again. ("Wampeters" 170)

This, I believe, is a more than cogent response to critics like Terry Eagleton who

criticize postmodernism for what they see as its silence towards capitalism in virtue of

its pervasiveness ("Illusions" 22). Vonnegut offers, or attempts to offer, humanist

solutions to postmodern challenges. Robert Merrill recognizes the value of such

human(e) attempts regardless of their outcome:

The attempt to promote such a meliorist fiction reveals once again

the humane sanity that has always distinguished Vonnegut and his work. It

reveals a principled resistance to the nihilistic seductions of postmodernism,

which more and more contemporary novelists have instinctively or

consciously recognized as a moral and aesthetic dead end. (186.)

This is again a satisfactory response to those like Eagleton who argue that "Only

recently has postmodernism brought itself to deal with ethical issues" ("Illusions" 53).

But there is still a more serious charge against postmodernism in general, and

postmodernist fiction in particular. Postmodernism has often been charged with

accepting the capitalist representation of the past at face value. In other words, it has

been argued that postmodernism attempts to offer a sustaining critique of a past which

has already been defined and arrogated by the capitalist system. This leads us to the next

chapter in which I have posed the argument that Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is an

attempt to save the past from the monopolizing tendencies of the capitalist ideology

through the implication of the interrogative function of language.

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Chapter iv:

Slaughterhouse 1945: Pilgrim's Progress, Symptomatic of Excess

"History is natural selection. Mutant versions of the past struggle for dominance;

new species of fact arise, and old, saurian truths go to the wall, blindfolded and smoking

last cigarettes. Only the mutations of the strong survive. The weak, the anonymous, the

defeated leave few marks . . . . History loves only those who dominate her: it is a

relationship of mutual enslavement."–Salman Rushdie, "Shame"

Slaughterhouse-Five has been hailed by many critics as Vonnegut's magnum

opus. As Todd F. Davis argues, this novel "marks a definite and profound turning point

in Vonnegut's fictional world" ("Kurt" 84). Even it can be plausibly argued that all of

Vonnegut's works prior to Slaughterhouse-Five have been initial attempts at walking

through the flames of Dresden. Jerome Klinkowitz sees Slaughterhouse-Five as a

masterpiece in terms of both form and content:

After working in obscurity for nearly twenty years and struggling for

the right form for his necessary message, Vonnegut has broken through with

Slaughterhouse-Five and is now embraced as the age's guru. (Literary

Subversions 174)

Even Marc Leeds might have a point when he argues that "In some senses,

Vonnegut's life as a novelist was conceived in the death of Dresden" ("The Vonnegut"

536). David ketterer sees this work of fiction as vonnegut's attempt "to confront the

psychic wound that tenses his artistic bow" (299). Raymond M. Olderman sees this

work of fiction as "the personal basis for the apocalyptic darkness in his vision" (196).

In view of the significance of Slaughterhouse-Five in Vonnegut's oeuvre in

general, and its unquestionable status as a cultural icon in American society in

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particular, this chapter seeks to offer a more or less comprehensive analysis of this

spectacular mixture of fact and fiction. To this end, I shall begin my discussion by

looking at the way in which Vonnegut uses metafictional techniques to give authenticity

to his fiction, while paradoxically undermining this very authenticity. The role of irony

as the only sensible alternative to silence in the novel will be investigated with

particular reference to Umberto Eco and john Barth. Vonnegut's deconstructive project

mentioned in the previous chapter will also be analyzed, this time with reference to

Slaughterhouse-Five. A discussion of the relationship between history and literature and

its dynamics in the postmodern era, as well as the problems associated with the archive

and archontic power will lead us to Vonnegut's ambivalent position towards the notion

of the archive and collective memory. Emile Benveniste's notion of three forms of

linguistic utterance corresponding to three different functions of language is used to

press the case for an interrogative function for Slaughterhouse-Five. Finally, a

discussion of Slaughterhouse-Five as a contribution to the collective memory of

American society serves as the conclusion to the present chapter.

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Paradox of Authenticity

Vonnegut blurs the line between fact and fiction right from the title page. As

Farrell notes, "Not only does Vonnegut give the novel two subtitles, but the author's

name is followed by a lengthy introduction to the book itself" (352): "A Fourth-

generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and

smoking too much,) who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner

of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, 'The Florence of the Elbe," a

long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic

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schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers

come from. Peace."

This passage clearly mixes fact and fiction. On the one hand, we know that this

work of fiction concerns the firebombing of Dresden by the Allied forces near the end

of WWII, and that Vonnegut has witnessed and survived the attack. This part of the title

page gives authenticity to the fictional world, preventing the reader from dismissing it

as mere fiction on account of the latter part. But we know, on the other hand, that a

planet called Tralfamadore and its flying saucers are the author's inventions, having

nothing whatsoever to do with the real empirical world. Like Cat's Cradle,

Slaughterhouse-Five begins with the author's metafictional intrusion upon the world of

fiction:

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty

much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot

that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal

enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all

the names." (1)

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the use of metafictional techniques or

self-conscious writing is one of the staples of postmodern American fiction. Vonnegut

puts this technique into critical use. As Nicol Bran rightly argues, "Self-conscious

writing . . . produces self-conscious reading" (40). In other words, Vonnegut writes self-

consciously so that readers come to pay more attention to the processes involved in the

experiences of writing and reading.

The novel comprises ten chapters, only the first and last of which are narrated by

Vonnegut himself. This helps establish the authenticity of the narrated events, while

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calling attention to the very process through which these events come to be represented

in the first place. Furthermore, as Vees-Gulani notes, "the narrator [Vonnegut]

interrupts Billy's story on several occasions to authenticate the events" (180 my own

brackets). For example, in the hospital's latrine, Vonnegut introduces himself as

somebody other than Billy Pilgrim who has witnessed all the events so far: That was I.

That was me. That was the author of this book" (125).

Furthermore, while attempting to establish the authenticity of his fictional world

through introducing some elements from the real world into the novel, Vonnegut

paradoxically undermines this authenticity by using the descriptive phrase "more or

less" in the passage quoted above. This phrase serves to call the reader's attention to the

constructed nature of reality and the ways in which the past is accessible to the present

through the medium of language. This brings the issue of nature and function of the

archive into play, of which more later on.

Like the narrator in Cat's Cradle, the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five is

apparently attempting to write a factual book about a real historical event, i.e. the

firebombing of Dresden in 1945. But this task proves to be far more difficult than

expected:

When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought

it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would to

do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a

masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big. But not

many words about Dresden came from my mind then—not enough of them to make a

book, anyway. And not many words come now, either, when I have become an old fart

with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. (2)

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Part of the problem of representation has much to do with the extent of

destruction brought about in the wake of the attack. Vonnegut's letter to his editor,

Seymour Lawrence, supports this idea:

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing

intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to

never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to

be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And

what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-

tee-weet? (19)

Either Irony or Silence: No Way Out!

The above discussionleads us to the discussion of irony as a strategy of

replenishment and an alternative to quietism. One of the most serious charges made

against postmodernism by Marxist critics such as Eagleton and Jameson is that its

obsession with irony is indicative of the complete absence of any political function in

postmodernism.

The challenge to which Eco refers is one faced by the postmodern author, who,

in virtue of his/her being bound by historical context, has to come after the innovations

of modernism. The same concern is also notoriously voiced by American critic and

writer, John Barth, who in his Literature of Exhaustion wonders how creative and

innovative writing may continue in the face of the knowledge that virtually all forms of

fiction have been "used up" by the moderns (138). John Barth views the contemporary

novel as in decline. His notion of exhaustion is not moral, physical or formal; rather, it

is one based on issues of content. He argues that formal exhaustion can be easily

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overcome, for example, by "printing Finnegan's Wake on a very long roller-towel"

(139). The kind of exhaustion to which he points out is concerned with how to create

something new, which while continuing to be a novel in the proper sense of the term,

would be able "nonetheless to speak eloquently and memorably to our still human hearts

and conditions, as the great artists have always done" (140).

However, Italian Critic and novelist, Umberto Eco, tries to answer these and

similar challenges by defending the status of irony as a new way of engagement with

the past, with the already said. To this end, he draws an extensive and much-quoted

analogy:

I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very

cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her 'I love you madly',

because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that

these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a

solution. He can say, ‘as Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly'.

At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is

no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what

he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.

If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of

love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will

have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be

eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony..

. But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love. (111)

Vonnegut implements irony at the level of both narration and presentation. The

most noticeable example of the use of irony in Slaughterhouse-Five concerns the phrase

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"so it goes." This phrase has been repeated more than a hundred times through the

novel, each time preceded by death in one form or other: from the Biblical story of the

destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the death of billions of body lice and flee and

bacteria due to the application of poison gas to the clothes of the American prisoners of

war. The utterance of such a phrase is apparently an effort to downplay the significance

of death and destruction. However, a closer look at the issue shows that as Farrell

argues, "the phrase prevents overlooking death, ignoring it, or closing one's eyes to it as

the Tralfamadorians recommend to Billy Pilgrim" (356). In other words, "The tired

weight of this repetition whenever anyone or anything dies in the book serves to remind

the reader of death's everpresence, with each instance of the phrase heaving mortality in

it utterance" (Tomedi 59).

Vonnegut's simple style also contributes to the role of irony in the novel. In fact,

this simplicity can sometimes be extremely misleading. In other words, this simplicity

may cause the reader to ignore the complexity of the reality portrayed by the author.

Peter Reed, however, postulates a defamiliarizing function for such an apparently

simple style:

Sometimes this simplicity, when applied to complex issues, shows

us our failure previously to have considered the possibility of other

perspectives . . . The contrived naiveté of the description is frequently

Vonnegut's device to defamiliarize the familiar or to deconstruct the official

myths created to obscure the true nature of events. ("Responsive" 52)

The use of irony, however, is not confined to the level of structure, but extends

to the level of the moral aspect of the novel as well. In the course of the novel, Billy

Pilgrim is abducted and transported to the imaginary planet of Tralfamadore. The

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Tralfamadorians seem to hold notions of time and causality leading them to some kind

of impotent and passive fatalism.

Ironically, however, this ironic gesture has been radically understood by critics

like Josephine Hendin. Based on an erroneous ascription of the Tralfamadorian

determinism to Vonnegut himself, she has contended that "Vonnegut celebrates the

themes of detachment and meaninglessness as devices for diminishing the emotional

charge of painful experience" (qtd. in Broer 8). Such an interpretation is blatantly

incompatible with Vonnegut's social activism and his argument that artists should

"serve society" by being "agents of change" and introducing new ideas ("Wampeters"

237). Elsewhere he takes a step farther, arguing that "writers are the most important

members of society, not just potentially but actually" (qtd. in Davis, "Kurt" 45). After

all, as Todd F. Davis convincingly argues, "Billy's response to Dresden does not

represent Vonnegut's own response" (ibid. 78).

Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonnegut’s Deconstructive Project:

War and the Linear Progression of time

As shown in the previous chapter, Vonnegut's stylistic innovations go hand in

hand with a deconstructive project aiming some of America's most overarching grand

narrative. There I postulated the prevalence, or at least the existence of a deconstructive

aspect in Cat's Cradle as a postmodern work of fiction. There I introduced the

deconstruction of some of America's most overarching narratives as one of the most

postmodern features of Cat's Cradle. In what follows, I shall try to establish the same

deconstructive project with reference to Slaughterhouse-Five. To this end, I have

chosen war and the linear structuration of time as two of the most crucial grand

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narratives whose deconstruction in Slaughterhouse-Five situates this novel in the

broader context of postmodern American fiction.

War is often conceived as a military conflict between two or more opposing

forces. Obviously, this definition ignores much of what usually goes into the making of

war as a phenomenon of human societies. War, as almost any other human

phenomenon, has more than one single facet of its own. In other words, in addition to

the military aspect of war, there are political, economic and ideological aspects to this

experience, changing it into an issue complicated enough to merit serious investigation.

Wars, regardless of their scale or origin, are often accompanied by the mythologization

of an individual or a group of people. This mythologization acts in, and often correlates

with, a yet more expansive narrative of ethnic or national superiority manifesting itself

in various forms of tribalism, or as is the case with most of modern instances of warfare,

nationalism. The relationship between nationalism as a grand narrative and Nietzsche's

philosophy was explored in the second chapter of the present study. Therefore, we shall

now concern ourselves with this aspect of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, thus

implying the deconstruction of nationalism as an ideology often implemented to justify

waging war against others.

Vonnegut begins his deconstruction of the grand narrative of war by one of the

novel's two subtitles: Children's crusade. Historically speaking, the Children's Crusade

was apparently an attempt to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims undertaken in 1212

by thousands of French and German children who perished, were sold into slavery in

North Africa, or were turned back.

Vonnegut uses this historical fact as the symbol of the plight of many American

soldiers who are sent to war without actually understanding why. In other words, the

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intellectual immaturity of American soldiers is likened to that of those children, who

under the illusion of a holy war, turn into the slaves of American capitalism.

Vonnegut offers a yet more incisive insight into the nature of war and literary

works concerning with it. In the first chapter of the novel, Vonnegut who cannot

remember so much of war goes to his war buddy, Bernard O'hare. However, when the

two sit down to share their war memories, Vonnegut comes to notice that Mary, O'hare's

wife, actually dislikes him. Vonnegut cannot find any justification for Mary's dislike

towards himself until Mary herself reveals it in an impassioned but highly suggestive

peroration:

"Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of

babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne

or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will

look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought

by babies like the babies upstairs." (14)

Mary acts as Vonnegut's literary muse, and Vonnegut dedicates this book to her.

Furthermore, Mary's impassioned criticism of war has profound implications for

literature as well. Mary represents the author when she argues that literary works

concerning with war often try to make it look wonderful despite its horrible and

inhuman aspects. But Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is significantly different from

other war novels in terms of content. Therefore, it has to be different in terms of form as

well. This is why Vonnegut chooses to write in a style wholly peculiar to himself. Long

characterizations, detailed descriptions, suspense and thrilling scenery are amongst the

most common features of novels of war. But Vonnegut, in keeping with his

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deconstructive project, disrupts all these expectations to create something wholly

original.

When deciding to share their memories, O'hare asks Vonnegut to assume the

task of writing the book, and Vonnegut accepts this task relying on what he regards as

his literary talents, calling himself "a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and

characterizations" (6). But as the novel goes ahead, BOTH the author AND THE

READER gradually come to understand that the Dresden experience is far more

complex than ordinary fictional techniques such as characterization or suspense could

possibly portray. Therefore, Vonnegut artistically ascribes this absence of

characterization to the effects of war in general:

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic

confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the

listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after

all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. (164)

Suspense is another important characteristic of novels dealing with the

experience of war. Vonnegut frustrates this expectation as well through stating the

beginning and end of his novel in the very first chapter: "It begins like this: Listen: Billy

Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet? (22 italics in

original).

Time is another overarching grand narrative which Vonnegut attempts to

deconstruct in Slaughterhouse-Five. Time is of such significance that Frank Kermode

defines plot, an important element of a work of fiction, as "the organization that

humanizes time by giving it form" (45). In sum, one can say that Kermode defines plot

in terms of time. Catherine Belsey even goes so far as to define a whole school of

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literature, i.e. classic realism, as "that form which characterized by . . . narrative leading

to closure" (65).

However, Slaughterhouse-Five deconstructs this narrative of all narratives

through its nonlinear plot and structure. In other words, the nonlinear structure of the

novel makes it impossible or extremely difficult for anyone to give a summary of its

plot. This structure has the effect of disorienting the reader, thus highlighting the

significance of time in experiencing the world. In fact, this structure implies that by

regarding time as linear progression, man often falls into a teleological trap. This

teleological stalemate is often associated with many of the narratives championed by

religious institutions according to which humanity is seen as the culmination of some

divine grand plan. Mark Leeds expresses this viewpoint in a more sophisticated fashion:

Though man tends to believe on a linear track to perfection,

Vonnegut's [notion of] time prompts the rhetorical question, "What makes

you think you're going anywhere?" ("The Vonnegut" 533)

Another danger posed by such a linear and progressive vision of time would be

that any atrocity would be justifiable as another step towards final salvation. In other

words, if time is thus viewed as a system of linear progression, meaning can be assigned

to it, and more importantly, tragedy like the massacre in Dresden can be explained as a

logical step in the process. But as Todd F. Davis notes, "Vonnegut staunchly rejects this

notion, and in doing so rejects perhaps the most totalizing myth in Western

civilization—the myth that time is chronologically structured" ("Apocalyptic" 158).

Linda Hutcheon, taking a more general stance, argues that " . . . the familiar narrative

form of beginning, middle, and end implies a structuring process that imparts meaning

as well as order" ("Politics" 59). Marc Leeds probably has this deconstructive nature of

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Slaughterhouse-Five in mind when he argues that "The slaughterhouse meat locker

becomes the sepulcher from which Vonnegut rises questioning the myths engendered in

the presentation of the American experience ("Beyond" 93).

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Slaughterhouse-Five and the question of the Archive

Another constructive approach to Slaughterhouse-Five would be to look at this

novel in terms of the relationship between history and literature, particularly fiction.

This relationship is defined mostly in terms of novel as a genre most appropriate for

historical representation. Therefore, in what follows, I shall concern myself in particular

with the relationship between history and novel, particularly what has come to be

known as historiographic metafiction. Aristotle makes an interesting distinction between

historians and poets which can be extended to include authors as well:

The difference between the historian and the poet is not that one

writes in prose and the other in verse. . . . The difference is that one tells of

what has happened, and the other of things that might happen. For this

reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious

attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths,

history treats of particular facts. (qtd. in Malpas 81)

Aristotle's distinction, its painstaking categorization notwithstanding, suffers

from a serious flaw. This distinction is too simplistic to allow for any interaction

between the two categories under discussion. In other words, it simplifies a highly

complex relationship into a naively uncomplicated polarization. But what has come to

be known as historiographic Metafiction, particularly prevalent amongst postmodern

writers, problematizes the very nature of this relationship by showing that the historical

and fictional spheres are far more interrelated than previously assumed.

The historical fiction has experienced a revival of some sorts within the

framework of postmodernist fiction. In fact, as Robert Scholes observes, the major

novels belonging to the category of postmodernist fiction like those written by Barth,

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Pynchon, Fowles, Reed, Coover and Vonnegut, "have tended strongly toward the

apparently worn-out form of historical novel" ("Fabulation" 205). This argument seems

to be valid insofar that it captures the return to a form which had, for a while at least,

been sent into virtual oblivion. However, it neglects the innovations made by such

postmodern authors within an already extant literary genre. In other words, it puts

writers as different as Cooper and Coover into one single category, thus ignoring the

major differences existing between them. The most crucial of such differences concerns

the issue of representation. Whereas for writers such as Sir Walter Scott or James

Fenimore Cooper the relationship between history and fiction is delineated within well-

defined boundaries of representation, for postmodern writers like Vonnegut and Coover,

as one commentator has argued, "story-telling has returned – but as a problem, not as a

given" (Hutcheon, "Telling" 233).

The above discussion leads us to the most significant link between history and

fiction, i.e. the issue of the archive. But before dealing with the relationship between

Slaughterhouse-Five and the archive, I attempt to offer a more or less comprehensive

definition of the archive so that the reader may easily comprehend what I have in mind

when speaking about the deconstruction of the notion of the archive in this novel.

Generally speaking, archive denotes a place or collection of records, documents, or

other materials of historical interest. The word "archive" comes from Greek Arkheion,

meaning town hall. This definition alongside the etimology of this word stresses the

physical, as opposed to the sociological aspects of the archive. Michel Foucault, Jacque

Derrida, and Paul ricoeur offer various perspectives on the nature of the archive.

Foucault's notion of the archive seems to be focused upon an abstract conception

based on which the archive is more socio-political than physical and spatial. Foucault

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places his definition of the archive in the realm of abstract socio-political forces,

arguing that the archive is, first and foremost, made of laws of enunciability:

The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that

governs the appearance of statements as unique events . . . The archive is

not that which, despite its immediate escape, safeguards the event of the

statement, and preserves, for future memories, its status as an escapee; it is

that which, at the very root of the statement-event, and in that which

embodies it, defines at the outset the system of enunciability. ("Archeology"

129 italics in original)

Unlike Foucault, who regards the archive as the collection of laws governing

enunciability, other theorists postulate a physical dimension for the archive as well.

Derrida, for example, takes up the etimological definition of the archive to define a

power he calls the Archontic power. Archons were the nine principal magistrates of

ancient Athens. On the basis of their public authority, they had the authority to keep

official documents at their home. Derrida uses this authority to define a kind of

archontic power which can be extended so as to include the contemporary information

revolution:

The archons are first of all the documents' guardians. They do not

only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate.

They are also accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have

the power to interpret the archives. (2)

Derrida's definition postulates two different but interrelated components for the

archive: the spatial and the hermeneutic. On the one hand, he defines the archive as the

actual physical place where official documents are kept. On the other hand, he

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postulates a socio-political nature for the archive by arguing that there are individuals

and institutions governing the archive and the form(s) it is allowed to assume. Similarly,

Paul Ricoeur postulates an institutionalized nature for the archive, arguing that the

archive simultaneously exists in the physical as well as the socio-political spheres. He

presents the viewpoint that "the archive is not just a physical or spatial place, it is also a

social one" (167). However, the significance of the archive in shaping our perception of

the past cannot be denied. In fact, as Francis Blouin argues, "what constitutes the

archive has become a question fundamental to how our knowledge of the past is

acquired and shaped" (296).

Vonnegut, however, takes a critical stance towards the archive and those with

archontic power in his own society. In fact, he deconstructs the archive and the

archontic power to create a critical account of what really happened in Dresden and how

it was presented to the public. In modern societies, it is obvious that the archontic power

is held by those who control the flow of information through their monopoly over media

and other means of communication. In other words, governments and multinational

corporations function as the archons of modern era. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut

systematically subjects this archontic power to a rigorous interrogation:

I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on

Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what

desirable results there had been and so on. I was answered by a man who,

like myself, was in public relations. He said that he was sorry, but that the

information was top secret still. I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I

said, “Secret? My God—from whom?” (13-14)

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This correspondence clearly demonstrates that the US government is far from

reluctant to use its archontic power, because it is the entity that has access to important

documents that might answer the questions raised by Vonnegut and many others. This

archontic power enables the US government to selectively use archival material in order

to manipulate U.S. perception of a historical event. Vonnegut is surprised because to

him and thousands of other people, the firebombing of Dresden is not a secret at all. The

event is real enough to him, because he saw it as an eye witness. Vonnegut also states

that 135,000 died in Dresden with "conventional weapons" whereas only 71,379 died in

Hiroshima with the use of a nuclear bomb ("Slaughterhouse" 188). Obviously, this is

something that the US government would be extremely reluctant to admit. Vonnegut's

interrogative position towards the archive is also expressed in one of his conversations

with William Rodney Allen:

Our generation did believe what its Government said—because we

weren't lied to very much. One reason we weren't lied to was that there

wasn't a war going on in our childhood, and so essentially we were told the

truth. There was no reason for our Government to lie very elaborately to us.

But a government at war does become a lying government for many

reasons. One reason is to confuse the enemy. When we went into the war,

we felt our Government was a respecter of life, careful about not injuring

civilians and that sort of thing. Well, Dresden had no tactical value; it was a

city of civilians. Yet the Allies bombed it until it burned and melted. And

then they lied about it. All that was startling to us. (qtd. in Allen 95)

This leads us to one of the most heatedly debated issue regarding the bombing of

Dresden. The number of Casualties has been estimated between 75,000 and 250,000

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people (Klinkowitz, "Keeping" 9). David Irving estimates the casualties numbered

somewhere around 135,000 and included, in addition to German civilians, non-German

refugees, foreign laborers, and prisoners of war (14). Frederick taylor acknowledges that

for many years he "knew only the legend of Dresden," having "learned of the city's

destruction principally through a work of fiction: Kurt Vonnegut's acidly surreal

masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five" (xi). regarding the actual number of casualties,

Taylor finds the 35,000 figure a more acceptable figure than the 135,000 David irving

suggests:

The macabre argument over the death toll at Dresden still continues.

Evidence comes and goes, but there is a basic divide between those who

agree that the figures were between twenty-five thousand and forty

thousand, and those—still including Irving—who insist in the face of the

documentary evidence that the deaths went into six figures, in some cases

into several hundreds of thousands. (446)

My purpose in discussing the ongoing debates around this issue is not to add my

own voice to the debate. After all, it is not my place or purpose here to present an

argument concerning the military ethics of the bombing of Dresden. The only reason

compelling enough to raise this issue is to demonstrate the complexities and ambiguities

inevitably associated with the archive and its interpretation.

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Interrogative Function of Language

Emile Benveniste introduces three different functions for language and linguistic

utterances, corresponding to the three modalities in which a sentence may be uttered:

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It is everywhere recognized that there are declarative statements,

interrogative statements, and imperative statements, which are distinguished

by specific features of syntax and grammar although they are based in

identical fashion upon predication. Now these three modalities do nothing

but reflect the three fundamental behaviours of man speaking and acting

through discourse upon his interlocutor: he wishes to impart a piece of

knowledge to him or to obtain some information from him or to give an

order to him. These are the three inter-human functions of discourse that are

imprinted in the three modalities of the sentence-unit, each one

corresponding to an attitude of the speaker. (110)

Classic realism, I wish to suggest, belongs to the declarative realm of language.

It purports to provide reader with some information through an often invisible narrator.

What is often regarded as propaganda belongs to the imperative category of language.

In other words, notwithstanding their declarative appearance, propagandistic works of

literature implicitly ask their reader to believe in a particular ideology. The interrogative

function of language, I believe, is correspondent with historiographic metafiction,

particularly with its challenging the way(s) in which events of the past are represented.

Here the issue of Vonnegut and his paradoxical relationship with the archive comes to

the fore. While interrogating history as presented by those holding the archontic power

in American society, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five contributes to the very archive it

purports to interrogate through offering another, although totally different perspective

on the bombing of Dresden. This argument concerning the ambiguous relationship

between Slaughterhouse-Five and the archive supports Hutcheon's notion that

"historiographic Metafiction . . . keeps distinct its formal auto-representation and its

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historical context, and in so doing problematizes the very possibility of historical

knowledge, because there is no reconciliation, no dialectic here—just unresolved

contradiction" ("Poetics" 106).

Slaughterhouse-Five: Memory, Testimony, History

I wish to conclude this chapter by looking at another issue Closely related to the

concept of the archive, i.e. the issue of memory. As Peter Middleton and Tim Woods

have argued, "Postmodernism is haunted by memory: memories of disaster, genocide,

war, the holocaust and so on" (81). But the question that persistently presents itself to

the mind is this: Are we completely in command of that which we remember or send to

oblivion? And if this is not the case, then who controls what should be remembered and

how?

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five deals with a historical event deeply entrenched

in the collective memory of American and German societies. This novel deals with the

concept of memory on both an individual and a collective level. On the individual level,

it self-consciously narrates Vonnegut's struggles to remember his war experience. For

example, While claiming the facticity of his text, Vonnegut also recognizes the

limitations of memory: "I'm writing this book about Dresden. I'd like some help

remembering stuff" (5).

On the collective level, it demonstrates how a written representation of a past

event can weave itself into the fabric of collective memory. Though incomplete and

sometimes imprecise, memory seems to be the only means besides physical objects and

traces through which it is possible to verify the existence of the past. Paul Ricoeur,

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recognizing this dilemma, argues for the unique functionality of memory in relation to

the past and its representation:

The constant danger of confusing remembering and imagining,

resulting from memories becoming images in this way, affects the goal of

faithfulness corresponding to the truth claim of memory . . . And yet, we

have nothing better than memory to guarantee that something has taken

place before we call to mind a memory of it. Historiography itself . . . will

not succeed in setting aside the . . . conviction that the final referent of

memory remains the past, whatever the pastness of the past may signify. (7)

Another problem associated with memory is the issue of documentation. Based

on this notion, Paul Ricoeur makes a useful distinction between memory and history. He

poses the argument that memory, as long as it is not shared by others, is constantly in

danger of being forgotten. In other words, This kind of memory dies with the death of

its bearer. But if this memory is presented in written form, it stands a good chance of

being preserved. Ricoeur introduces the concept of testimony as "the fundamental

transitional structure between memory and history" (21). Ricoeur refers to the transition

from verbal testimony to written document as "the moment of the inscription of

testimony" (146). Historiographic Metafiction like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, as

Linda Hutcheon argues, "self-consciously reminds us that, while events did occur in the

real empirical past, we name and constitute those events as historical facts by selection

and narrative positioning. And, even more basically, we only know of those past events

through their discoursive inscription, through their trace in the present" ("Poetics" 97).

Hutcheon herself summarizes the key concern of historiographers like Vonnegut: "How

can the present know the past it tells?" ("Politics" 69).

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In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut brilliantly succeeds in transforming a

personal memory into a collective one. This is why contrary to his prediction to the

effect that this novel would be a failure (22), Vonnegut's fictionalization of a traumatic

war experience is read by millions of Americans, and enjoys a high status as a cultural

icon. This great work of fiction constantly reminds the reader not to be afraid of

revisiting the past for the lessons it might still have to offer.

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109

Conclusion: Towards a critical reorientation

“If reason were banished from the face of the earth, no one would imagine

himself to be ignorant.”—Sa’di

So what? This is perhaps the most legitimate question to be asked regarding this

or any other similar project. To answer this question, I have to go back to a couple of

years ago, when I was studying as an undergraduate student at Shiraz university. One

evening, one of my friends named Hussein asked me to go to his room to discuss an

important matter which could not even wait until after dinner. I went to his room and

having promised the utmost secrecy, I was told by Hussein that Mojtaba, our mutual

friend, had become a consummate nihilist. I asked Hussein to explain more, and he told

me that he had seen Mojtaba reading books by atheists like Nietzsche and Vonnegut,

and even that he had heard him talking about God's death. Subsequently, Hussein

suggested that I'd better talk to him and bring him back to the "right path." I went and

argued with Mojtaba about people I had never heard of, and books which I had never

read. In his turn, Mojtaba promised to stop reading those misleading books, and I was

more than happy for being God's instrument to guide a single person to the "right path."

This personal experience clearly demonstrates how Nietzsche and Vonnegut

have often been unduly written off as mere pessimists. Therefore, in the course of this

study attempt was made to salvage their reputation endangered by the misapplication of

academic categorizations. To this end, Nietzsche's philosophy and his new morality

based on a redefinition of all values were introduced as the premise upon which a

postmodern humanism, however oxymoronic this term may appear, comes to rest. By

arguing that "there are no facts, only interpretations" (qtd. in Tongeren 397), Nietzsche

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110

set the stage for the rejection of the inherent superiority of fact over fiction, a theme

enthusiastically taken up by postmodern writers like Kurt Vonnegut.

If Nietzsche was the theoretician of this kind of postmodern humanism,

Vonnegut was certainly a practitioner, and a successful one at that. To demonstrate the

validity of this proposition, Nietzsche's distrust towards totalizing myths was explored

as the harbinger of the postmodern disbelief towards grand narratives. Based on this

theoretical framework, a deconstructive project was outlined for Kurt Vonnegut, and

was further explored with particular focus on Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.

The stories that Vonnegut has been telling for the last fifty years or so are best if

viewed as pragmatic responses to pragmatic challenges. In one of his autobiographical

sketches, Vonnegut regards both laughter and tears as "responses to frustration and

exhaustion," and introduces himself as preferring the former over the latter ("Palm"

327). Elsewhere he elaborates on this statement, arguing that "The biggest laughs are

based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears" ("Wampeters" 258). In

other words, humor in Vonnegut's writing serves, in his words, as "an analgesic for the

temporary relief of existential pain" (qtd. in Scholes, "Talk" 108). This goes a long way

towards explaining the sardonic and bitter humour prevalent even in his most

apocalyptic novels. In fact, as Todd F. Davis argues, "Vonnegut uses humor to face

what for many seems impossible to face: the lack of definitive control over human

existence" ("Kurt" 57).

Unfortunately, however, Vonnegut's warnings appear to have fallen on deaf ears,

leading him to the sad conclusion that American society has been plagued with such a

disappointing torpor that even "humor doesn't work anymore" ("Man" 129). Naturally,

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the resignation of this Horatian spokesman for a better and more humane world must be

looked upon with something more than ordinary concern.

In the face of the culture of deception promulgated by the Bush administration,

the threats posed by a nuclear standoff between East and West, and finally, despite all

the destruction wreaked upon the blue planet because of unrestrained technological

advances, Vonnegut remains committed to his postmodern humanism through engaging

in social activism, thus giving voice to the concerns of those who still "give a damn

whether the planet goes on or not" ("Man" 69). Vonnegut's only glimmer of hope

remains with those individuals of the human species who choose to act "decently in a

strikingly indecent society" (ibid. 106).

This study was an attempt to conceptualize the humanist elements of Kurt

Vonnegut’s works with particular reference to Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.

Future studies may focus on other works by the same author or other postmodern

writers to find and explicate such elements. Such a quest would be both worthy of

scholarly endeavours and useful to the whole human society in practical ways, as it

helps find ways to lead more human lives in accordance with the principles promoted by

Vonnegut and his postmodern humanism.

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112

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Page 128: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

پسا مدرنيسم، در گسترده ترين تعريف، منكر وجود هر گونه هويت واحد براي انسان به عنوان محور ادراك و

اين مكتب جهاني را به تصوير مي كشد كه در آن گفتمان، به جاي آنكه بازتاب دهنده ي واقعيت چنان . آگاهي است

از سوي ديگر، انسان گرايي ظاهرا در جهتي مخالف با پسا مدرنيسم گام بر مي دارد و . كه هست باشد، خالق آن است

تفكرات آرمان گرايانه ي رايج در عصر . د مي ورزدبيشتر بر انسان به عنوان محور شعور و آگاهي در جهاني با معنا تاكي

.روشن گري و تكرار آنها از سوي بسياري از متفكران دوران معاصر به روشني بازتاب دهنده ي چنين نگرشي هستند

با توجه به اين واقعيت، هر گونه تالشي در جهت تلفيق اين دو نوع نگرش به جهان هستي در قالب يك

پژوهش حاضر . ه و در عين حال اقناع كننده در نگاه اول محكوم به شكست به نظر مي رسدموضع اخالقي يك پارچ

تالشي است در جهت اثبات اين نظر كه چنين كوششي از سوي يكي از پر كارترين نويسندگان امريكايي، يعني كرت

نظريه ي ژان فرانسوا ليوتار در بر پايه ي. حظه اي نيز قرين توفيق بوده استوونگات صورت گرفته و به ميزان قابل مال

باب بحران روايي و نفي فرا روايت ها در عصر پسا مدرن، نگارنده اين استدالل را مطرح كرده است كه وونگات از طريق

ساختار شكني برخي از مهمترين فرا روايت هاي حاكم بر جامعه ي امريكا و استفاده از برخي تكنيكهاي روايت كه در

ز يك سو و تاكيد بر جنبه هاي اخالقي وجود انسان از داستانهاي پسا مدرن نيز قابل مشاهده هستند ا بسياري ديگر از

سوي ديگر، در عين وفا دار ماندن به سنت انسان گرايانه ي محوريت انسان، نگرشي پسا مدرنيستي را در قبال مسائلي

كه داراي اهميت اخالقي هستند اتخاذ ... يقت و همچون رابطه ي ميان علم و اخالقيات، رابطه ي ميان انگاره و حق

. نموده است

Page 129: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

 

ت انگليسي

ي

خويشتن

ته زبان و ادبيات

ه تهراننهاي خارجي

   

ونگات بر خ  

 رش

  صالحي

  راهنما

قادري سهي

مشاور محمد مرندي

 

سي ارشد در رشت

1389 ر

 

دانشگادانشكده زبا

و: گات بودن

نگااميد

استاددكتر بهزاد

استاددكتر سيد م

درجه كارشناس

 شهريور

د

رنج ونگا

پايان نامهه جهت دريافت

Page 130: The Suffering of Being Vonnegut - Vonnegut Against Himself

چكيده

پسا مدرنيسم، در گسترده ترين تعريف، منكر وجود هر گونه هويت واحد براي انسان به عنوان محور ادراك و

اين مكتب جهاني را به تصوير مي كشد كه در آن گفتمان، به جاي آنكه بازتاب دهنده ي واقعيت چنان كه . آگاهي است

اهرا در جهتي مخالف با پسا مدرنيسم گام بر مي دارد و بيشتر بر از سوي ديگر، انسان گرايي ظ. هست باشد، خالق آن است

تفكرات آرمان گرايانه ي رايج در عصر روشن گري و . انسان به عنوان محور شعور و آگاهي در جهاني با معنا تاكيد مي ورزد

 .تندتكرار آنها از سوي بسياري از متفكران دوران معاصر به روشني بازتاب دهنده ي چنين نگرشي هس

با توجه به اين واقعيت، هر گونه تالشي در جهت تلفيق اين دو نوع نگرش به جهان هستي در قالب يك موضع

پژوهش حاضر تالشي است . اخالقي يك پارچه و در عين حال اقناع كننده در نگاه اول محكوم به شكست به نظر مي رسد

ارترين نويسندگان امريكايي، يعني كرت ونگات صورت در جهت اثبات اين نظر كه چنين كوششي از سوي يكي از پر ك

بر پايه ي نظريه ي ژان فرانسوا ليوتار در باب بحران روايي و . گرفته و به ميزان قابل مالحظه اي نيز قرين توفيق بوده است

شكني برخي از نفي فرا روايت ها در عصر پسا مدرن، نگارنده اين استدالل را مطرح كرده است كه ونگات از طريق ساختار

 هاي روايت كه در بسياري ديگر از داستان مهمترين فرا روايت هاي حاكم بر جامعه ي امريكا و استفاده از برخي تكنيك

هاي پسا مدرن نيز قابل مشاهده هستند از يك سو و تاكيد بر جنبه هاي اخالقي وجود انسان از سوي ديگر، در عين وفا دار

ه ي محوريت انسان، نگرشي پسا مدرنيستي را در قبال مسائلي همچون رابطه ي ميان علم و ماندن به سنت انسان گرايان

. كه داراي اهميت اخالقي هستند اتخاذ نموده است... اخالقيات، رابطه ي ميان انگاره و حقيقت و