Memorious Discourse

"Christian Moraru's new book on postmodernism zeroes in on postmodern representation, which the critic seizes as a literary and cultural memory receptacle - as "memorious discourse." He argues that, counter to the orthodoxies that have taken hold in postmodern studies, postmodernism is not ahistorical, without cultural memory, or politically apathetic. With a wink at Borges's short story "Funes the Memorious," he contends that this kind of representation cannot but operate digressively, and conspicuously so, through other representations, and is a picture that must latch onto other pictures to bring its object to life. While other types of discourse cover up, gloss over, or play down what they have borrowed - and therefore owe - the postmodern eagerly acknowledges its textual and cultural debt. Moreover, it turns this indebtedness into an unexpected source of creativity and originality." "In his wide-ranging discussion of contemporary writers and theorists, Moraru notes that postmodernism characteristically re-presents. That is, it actively "remembers" and, to use a musical term, "reprises" former representations. These need not be infinite in number, as in Borges, but must be and