Intratextuality, Trauma and the Posthuman in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge

Collado Rodríguez, Francisco (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: In Bleeding Edge Pynchon uses again a female unconventional detective, as he did in The Crying of Lot 49, with the ultimate aim of evaluating the condition of America. However, whereas Oedipa had to deal with an understanding of American society in terms of science and religion, in Bleeding Edge Maxine is at pains to understand a society ruled by the new paradigms of posthumanity and trauma. By focusing on the binary life/death, the article evaluates Pynchon’s portrayal of current society as posthuman and disrupted by a new type of social stagnation related to the control of information flow, a situation that demands the role of an active protagonist, in line with later theories in the field of trauma studies. The textual analysis points to information, terrorism, and web addiction as the new dangers that Maxine has to cope with if she wants to pull society back to motion.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2015.1121860

Año: 2016

Publicado en: Critique - Bolingbroke Society 57, 3 (2016), 229-241
ISSN: 0011-1619

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.288 - Literature and Literary Theory (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FFI2015-63506

Tipo y forma: Article (PostPrint)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)