Code: 04937293

Latent Destinies

Name: Latent Destinies
Brand: Duke University Press
SKU: 04937293
Price: 110.62 EUR
Availability: InStock

by Patrick O'Donnell

Language: English
Binding: Hardback
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2000
More about this

110.62 €

RRP: 122.96 €

You save 12.34 €

Low in stock at our supplier
Shipping in 14 - 18 days

Potřebujete více kusů?Máte-li zájem o více kusů, prověřte, prosím, nejprve dostupnost titulu na naši zákaznické podpoře.

Add to wishlist

Light in Nature: North Carolina Museum of Art
29.68 € -5 %
Pre-order

Give this book as a present today

Order book and choose Gift Order.
We will send you book gift voucher at once. You can give it out to anyone.
Book will be send to donee, nothing more to care about.

Book gift voucher sample Read more

You get 273 loyalty points

Book synopsis

"Latent Destinies" examines the formation of postmodern sensibilities and their relationship to varieties of paranoia that have been seen as widespread in this century. Despite the fact that the Cold War has ended and the threat of nuclear annihilation has been dramatically lessened by most estimates, the paranoia that has characterised the period has not gone away. Indeed, it is as if - as O'Donnell suggests - this paranoia has been internalized, scattered, and reiterated at a multitude of sites: Oklahoma City, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Bosnia, the White House, the United Nations, and numerous other places. O'Donnell argues that paranoia on the broadly cultural level is essentially a narrative process in which history and postmodern identity are negotiated simultaneously. The result is an erasure of historical temporality - the past and future become the all-consuming, self-aware present. To explain and exemplify this, O'Donnell looks at such books and films as "Libra", "JFK", "The Crying of Lot 49", "The Truman Show", "Reservoir Dogs", "Empire of the Senseless", "Oswald's Tale", "The Executioner's Song", "Underworld", "The Killer Inside Me", and "Groundhog Day". Organised around the topics of nationalism, gender, criminality, and construction of history, "Latent Destinies" establishes cultural paranoia as consonant with our contradictory need for multiplicity and certainty, for openness and secrecy, and for mobility and historical stability. Demonstrating how imaginative works of novels and films can be used to understand the postmodern historical condition, this book will interest students and scholars of American literature and cultural studies, postmodern theory, and film studies.