Conference Presentations by Joel Roberts
Journal Articles by Joel Roberts
Textual Practice, 2019
Thomas Pynchon’s fiction contains an under-acknowledged interest in blood. In particular, in The ... more Thomas Pynchon’s fiction contains an under-acknowledged interest in blood. In particular, in The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the ‘play within the play’ The Courier’s Tragedy points toward the necessity of understanding blood when reading the novel, as its plot turns on the inheritance rights of the bloodline. Gil Anidjar’s work on the extent to which the modern concepts of economy and race depend on a theological understanding of blood offers a way to comprehend this insistent if subtle persistence of blood in Pynchon’s work. Concentrating on Lot 49, this article argues that to understand political economy in Pynchon, we first must consider its bloody theological antecedent. I begin by tracing the ways in which the novel signals its understanding of political economy as a secularised iteration of what Anidjar calls the ‘Eucharistic matrix’. I then extend Anidjar’s work into a theory of narrative, arguing that in the failure of Oedipa’s redistributive fantasy at the end of the novel, both she and the text refuse recuperation into the narrative of the nation. In so doing, they side with a radical element of the Tristero, which seeks to establish a relationality that refuses the divisive logic of blood.
This article questions the idea that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest instigates new forms of... more This article questions the idea that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest instigates new forms of sincerity. We begin by scrutinizing the theoretical underpinnings of Adam Kelly’s influential reading of such ‘New Sincerity’. Firstly, we argue that this theory misconstrues Jacques Derrida’s notions of iterability and undecidability. It does so in order to corral their implications within an elitist understanding of the ‘literary’ text. Secondly, we argue that Kelly’s reading ignores how Infinite Jest’s supposed New Sincerity is geared exclusively towards the novel’s white male characters. Through close readings of the novel’s often celebrated AA scenes, and by drawing on the work of political and cultural theorist Denise Ferreira da Silva, we then show how this process works at the expense of black and female characters. By addressing how forms of racist and sexist exclusion constitute the novel’s apparent New Sincerity, we argue that this reading works to restore white men to positions of representative cultural authority.
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Conference Presentations by Joel Roberts
Journal Articles by Joel Roberts