Batwoman’s appearance on the cover of Detective Comics #854 engaged almost 60 years of debate about sexuality and the superhero. Originally invented in the late 1950s as to dispel the rumors of Batman and Robin’s homosexual relationship, Batwoman was resurrected by Greg Rucka in 2006 as a major player in DC’s yearlong event 52. This new Batwoman wasn’t interested in Batman, though: Kate Kane was gay. Initially dismissed by the press as a “lipstick lesbian,” DC’s decision to propel Batwoman to headliner status after Batman’s well-publicized death four years later signaled a dedication to the character beyond her use as a diversity prop. Giving Batman’s main title to a lesbian delightfully subverted years of panicked hand-wringing about homosexual representation in mainstream comics.

The historical fact of a queer superhero on the cover of Detective Comics is significant in itself, but Rucka and artist J. H. Williams III did not stop there. Rather than denying the sexual aspects of the superhero fantasy altogether, Batwoman’s body is constantly sexualized in highly aestheticized images that demand readers engage with the superhero fetish and other queer modes of sexual representation. Her origin story deliberately engages discrimination in male-dominated institutions: not only is Kate is a victim of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Batwoman’s arch nemesis Alice creates an intertextual relationship with Alice in Wonderland that questions the limits of sexual representation in literature broadly. Through close readings of images and narrative, this paper will demonstrate the ways Batwoman: Elegy (the name for the first collected story arc) subverts the dominant modes of representing the female body in superhero comics that rely on the heteronormative sexual fantasy and the male gaze and, as a result, presents the superhero narrative as an ideal forum for the representation of queer sexuality.

McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1992. Print

NUTSHELL

Defines pomo not as “a construction of postmodernism, but a plurality of constructions” (3)

CONTEXT

Is there even such a thing as postmodernism? Where is the line between modernism and postmodernism?

Modernism and postmodernism are simply two different constructions of postmodernism? (56-57)

Pomo doesn’t seek to explode all literary history, it’s usually quite specifically targeted in its subversion (i. e. Pynchon and modernist reading) (83). Therefore it needs a certain literary history (parasitic, perhaps?)

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Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2^nd. ed. Chicago, U Chicago P: 1983. Print.

NUTSHELL

Narrative technique is rhetoric! Rhetorical technique can help us understand narrative!

“rhetorical inquiry is universally applicable, no fiction can fail to yield interesting stuff when we look at it through this lens” (405) Afterword

There is rhetoric in Fiction (technical issues)  and storytelling can be rhetorical

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Bakhtin – Concluding Remarks – Chronotope

• “A literary work’s artistic unity in relationship to an actual reality is defined by its chronotope. Therefore the chronotope in a work always contain within it an evaluating aspect than can be isolated from the whole artistic chronotope only in abstract analysis. In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations are inseparable from one another, and always colored by emotions and values. Abstract thought can, of course, think time and space as separate entities and conceive them as things apart from the emotions and values that attach to them. But living artistic perception (which also of course involves thought, but not abstract thought) makes no such divisions and permits no such segmentation. It seizes on the chronotope in all its wholeness and fullness. Art and Literature are shot through with chronotopic values of vary degree and scope. Each motif, each separate aspect of artistic work bears value.” (243)
• (Chronotopes) “are the organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel…the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied. It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the means that shapes narrative” (250)
• The chronotope gives shape and body and experience (representation) to time (250) “provides the ground essential for the showing-forth, the representability of events. And this is so thanks precisely to the special increase in density and concreteness of time markers—the time of human life, of historical time—that occurs within well-delineated spatial areas.” (250)
• “The chronotope, functioning as the primary means for materializeing time in space, emerges as a center for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. All the novel’s abstract elements—philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyses of cause and effect—gravitate toward the chronotope and through it take on flash and blood, permitting the imaging power of art to do its work. Such is the representational significance of the chronotope” (250)
• Different chronotopes associated with different genres 251
•  Literary image, and therefore language, is “fundamentally” chronotopic. Goes back to Lessing and Laocoön, because “Those things that are static in space cannot be statically described, but must rather be incorporated into the temporal sequence of represented evensts and into the story’s own representational field” (251)
• Lessing addresses time in literature, but doesn’t deal with “assimilating historical reality into the poetic image”
• Chronotopes are “mutually inclusive” 252— chronotopes themselves can be in dialogue, but their conversations will not enter the worlds within each chronotope.
• Chronotopes extend to the author (see notes on the fool), reader, performer, listener, too. 252
• Out of the actual chronotopes of our world (which serve as the source of representation) [also referring to the chronotopes of the reader/author/listener] emerge the reflected and created chronotopes of the world represented in the work (in the text) 253
•  “We must never confuse…the represented world with the world outside the text (naïve realism); nor must we confuse the author-creator of a work with the author as a human being (naïve biographism); nor confuses the listener or reader of multiple and varied periods, recreating and renewing the text, with the passive listerner or reader of one’s own time (which leads to dogmatism in interpretation and evaluation).” 253 BUTTT they are completely interconnected—in dialogue. (dialogic)
• Authorial chronotope: Not within the world of the text, but also not really the biographical person—“we meet him (that is, sense his activity) most of all in the composition of the work” 254 – things like p breaks and chapters and grammar- the beginning and the end.
• Chronotopes allow us to understand the totality of a work – the author and the moment of creation, the author as a fove within the text, the world within the text, the listener/reader…”thus we perceive the fullness of the work in all its wholeness and indivisibility, but at the same time we understand the diversity of the elements that constitute it” 254
• (The above also tells us about representing time and represented time and how they change.
•  Chronotopes are TANGENTIAL. In the mathematical sense (never entering, but indisputably connected)
• “The represented world, however realistic and truthful, can never be chronotopically identical with the real world it represents” Author included 256
• chronotopic situations of the reader – as “renewer” of a work gestured toward but not really addressed. 257
• NEED THE CHRONOTOPE BECAUSE WE CAN ONLY EXPRESS ABSTRACT THOUGH BY SOMEHOW ADAPTING IT TO OUR SPATIO-TEMPORAL EXPERIENCEEEEEEEEEE (258)

White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1985

CHARACTERS

• Jack Gladney – main character, chair of College-on-the-Hill’s Department of Hitler Studies. Afraid of death, some good old fashioned modern-life ennui
• Babette – Jack’s wife, mom to two of the kids who live with them. Takes Dylar to “cure” her fear of death. Makes her forget things.
• Murray Jay Sisklund – wants to make Elvis studies, does America
• Willie Mink – creator of Dylar, made Babette sleep with him. Jack tries to kill him to cure his own fear of death, but in the process (and being shot himself) decided to save them both and finds purpose again
• Heinrich – Jack’s son. Obsessed with information and waves/radiation.
• Wilder – Babette’s youngest child, sort of the symbol of innocence but also stupidity/lack of progress (can’t speak)
• Denise – Babette’s daughter, concerned about her drug use

TRAITS

First person POV, classic pomo (satire/irony, etc.), tonal shifts, corporate name dropping

THEMES

Risk society, Corporatization/Consumerism, breakdown of family, drug culture, the academy (as farce), human-made disasters

Armstrong, Nancy. Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.

NUTSHELL:

• Realism is defined by its relationship to a certain form of visual imagery.
•             >“By ‘realism,’ I mean the entire problematic in which a shared set of visual codes operated as an abstract standard by which to measure one verbal representations against another” (11)
•  Photography and literary realism worked together to emphasize a form of mimesis based on their mutually created, interdependent set of visual imagery (realism described photographically, the photograph turned to fiction for its source)
•             >“repetition of photographic images produced a shadow archive composed of…image-objects, neither image nor object, yet the ultimate source of meaning for both” (27)
•             >“In referring to the real world, I am suggesting, realism necessarily referred to something like a composite photograph, especially when a photograph of that person, place, or thing had not yet been taken.” (27)…”’Realism’ not only taught readers how to make such a matche between image and object, it also filled them with a sense that is was imperative to do so” (27)
• This system of visuality created the process of identification which allows for the rise of Western individuality. (In relation to science and classification, differentiation and identification) 17-21
• The real way to challenge the iconophobia of Marxism/PoStruc (commodity fetishism) and Cultural studies (identity politics) is not to deny the image but instead to examine the “history of mediation” (30) by which those images are produced.

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O’Neill, Patrick. Fictions of Discourse: Reading Narrative Theory. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1994. Print.

NUTSHELL

Zeno Principle: “Narrative as a discursive system is always potentially subversive both of the story it ostensibly reconstructs and of its own telling of that story”  (3). That means narrative tells a story but it also does not tell a story. Narrative should efface itself [be a transparent container for the what] but also foreground itself [good stories are told interestingly] ! “a discursive paradox.” (3-4) 

“Narrative, as portrayed by narratology, itself also a narrative, is in the end essentially an ironic and thus ludic genre, an affair of message and metalinguistic commentary with each message and each commentary being relativized by the next higher levels in the narrative hierarchy.” 155 

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Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin, 1953

CHARACTERS

• John – main POV, around 14, gentle but angry, want to be saved, feels damned bc of homosexual desire
• Gabriel – John’s father, anointed of God, originally married to Deborah, who was barren, had an illegitimate child, Royal, with Esther. Royal was killed when he was around 18 in a bar fight. Angry, feels anointed but keeps fucking others over.
• Elizabeth – John’s mother, bore John from Richard out of wedlock. He killed himself after being falsely accused of a crime. She still loves Richard. Married Gabriel later. Had three more children – Royal II and two girls (Sarah is one)
• Florence – Gabriel’s sister. She hate him, calls him out on his crap. Protective of Elizabeth and John
• Elisha – object of John’s affection, preacher’s nephew. Instrumental in John’s “salvation”’

TRAITS

Semi-autobiographical, realism, spiritual hyperrealism?, shifting POV, en of Harlem Renaissance

THEMES

Religion, identity, spiritual fulfillment, family trauma, family legacy, legitimacy/illegitimacy, homosexuality, repression, redemption

BELOVED, Toni Morrison, 1987

CHARACTERS

• Sethe – main character, mother of Howard, Buglar, Beloved, and Denver; dil of Baby Suggs, married to Halle, lover of Paul D.
• Denver – youngest daughter of Sethe, born while Sethe was running North, only one left with Sethe now
• Howard & Buglar – Sethe’s sons, left home quickly.
• Beloved – Sethe’s 3^rd child, eldest daughter. The only child who actually died when Sethe tried to kill her children rather than be returned to schoolteacher. Haunts the house, returns.
• Halle – Sethe’s husband, kind, driven mad after seeing Schoolteacher’s nephews rape/”steal milk”  from Sethe
• Paul D. – One of the “Sweet Home Men” only survivor, spent time in jail after trying to kill one of his slaveholders, escaped and wandered, only to end up at Sethe’s house.
• Baby Suggs – Halle’s mother, he bought her freedom. Powerfully spiritual. Obsessed with colors in her last days.
• Sweet Home – the farm Sethe and Halle served as slaves. The original owners, the Garners, were generally kind and  not cruel. Problem happens when Mr. Garner dies, “Schoolteacher” comes to take over. He’s cruel and violent against the slaves and denies the few freedoms they do have
• 124 – Baby Sugg’s home, now Sethe and Denver’s home. Bought by Mr. Garner for Suggs, now haunted by Beloved.

TRAITS

The fantastic, ghost story, slave narrative, breaks into dream poetry, fractured telling, shifting POVs, postmodernism?

THEMES/IMAGES

• Colors
• Silence/”rememory”
• Trauma
• Masculinity/Femininity/Sexuality
• Embodiment/disembodiment
• Family (Daughters/Mothers, esp.)

A Brief Life La Vida Breve , Juan Carlos Onetti, 1950

CHARACTERS

Brausen – main character, narrator, script-writer, works at MacLeod Publicity in Buenos Aires

Gertrudis – Brausen’s wife. Sick, had tumor removed from breast

Julio Stein – Jewish? Coworker “friend” of Brausen, encouraging Brausen to write script

Miriam/Mami – older woman, Julio’s lover and sugar mama?

Díaz Gray – a doctor in the script Brausen is imagining. Practices in Santa Maria, some call “The First Macondo” 

TRAITS

frame narrative, personal POV, jumping POV, fractured narration, postmodernism?

THEMES

Fantasy, narrative as escape, trauma, caretaker exhaustion, Fiction/Realism ~ question of realism: what is real is realistic fiction?

House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende, 1982 

CHARACTERS

Rosa del Valle – beautiful, angel? Green hair, almost translucent skin. Esteban’s first fiancée. Dies of accidental poisoning.

Clara del Valle – clairvoyant and telekinetic; Esteban’s wife. Goes mute after watching Rosa’s autopsy

Esteban Trueba – miner, becomes rich eventually. In loe with Rosa, marries Clara, ends up loving her, has lots of

Blanca Trueba – Esteban and Clara’s daughter, in love with Pedro Tercera García. Has a daughter with him.

Alba Trueba – Possibly Isabel Allende? Well-loved of Esteban, even after all his craziness. Dates her dad for a bit.

TRAITS

Magical realism, family saga, first-person shifting POV, roman a clef?

THEMES

Nation/Family; trauma and love. Magical Realism. History of nation=history of family. Communism/revolution vs. fascism/military. Personal responsibility. Forgiveness/vengeance.

What is the spectacle?

• expectation, excess, audience and actors complicit in what is desired and what is to come (15-16)
• in spectacle, signs are clear, easily deciphered. Time is momentary—immediate. Slave to a rhythm (23) (wrestling is spectacle, as opposed to boxing, “a science of the future”)
• like “diacritic writing” where signs punctuate, commenting on action (rhythm again) (23)
• ancient religion, purification/justice

Myth and Realism

“the writer’s realism” is “an essentially ideological problem” “a form can be judged…only as signification, not as expression. The writer’s language is not expected to represent reality, but to signify it” (137)

»>Can the visual “represent” ? What happens when mimetic representation (visual image) and signification (language) collide?

Myth & bourgeoisie: In the modern world, the bourgeoisie has been naturalized…it exists but refuses to be named (138) “meaning flows out of [them] until their name becomes unnecessary” a “hemorrhage of meaning” “effected through the idea of a nation” 139

The bourgeoisie “transforms the reality of the world into an image of the world, History into Nature” (141) {History>REAL>anti-physis; Nature>IDEOLOGY>pseudo-physis} (142)

The bourgeoisie society loves myth - because its ideological process (naturalization) fits with the function of myth. The world [history] gives myth a historical reality. Myth gives the world a naturalized [eternal?] image of that reality. “The world enters language as a dialectical relation between activities, between human actions; it comes out of myth as a harmonious display of essences” (142)

Because of this myth is depoliticized speech (143) by making things “innocent” or natural, “things appear to mean something by themselves” (143) People’s relationship with myth is based on USE not TRUTH, they “depoliticize according to their needs” (144)

THe opposite of myth is language which remains political. … action, transforms reality. But there are problems with this on the Left, which is why it’s mostly conservative (146-149)

Rhetorical forms of myth

• inoculation (150)
• privation of history (151)
• identification (or exoticization) of the other (151-152)
• tautology (because that’s just how it is) (152)
• Neither-Norism (relieves both sides of weight) (153)
• Quantification of Quality (153)
• Statement of Fact/Prover (naturalization, common sense) (154)

“Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types” 165 essentialize then weighed, ordered to a stasis

“Myths are nothing but this ceaseless, waiting solicitation, this insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, external yet bearing a date, which was built of them one day as if for all time” (165)