Memorious Discourse: Reprise and Representation in Postmodernism

This book zeroes in on postmodern representation, which the author defines (with a wink at Borges's Funes the Memorious) as memorious discourse. This wide-ranging discussion of contemporary writers and theorists from Nabokov and DeLillo to Levinas and Derrida argues that postmodern representation remembers and recycles former representations, and draws a picture that latches onto other pictures to bring its object to life. Memorious Discourse identifies five areas in recent theory and fiction where the problems of postmodern representation come to light forcefully: the postmodern memoir and personal literature broadly, the use of names, the posthuman, the issue of reality and the complex bearings of postmodern ontology and the sublime's revival. Christian Moraru is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.