HOME ARTICLES CRIME FICTION CRIME FILMS 21st-CENTURY CRIME
Crimeculture is pleased to be able to offer four new discussions of postmodern and future noir. Two substantial pieces are reproduced here: "Future Noir", a chapter from the PhD thesis of Dr Jamaluddin Bin Aziz, "Transgressing Women: Investigating Space and the Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers" (January 2005, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University; now a Lecturer in the School of Humanities, University Science of Malaysia); and "Postmodern Noir Investigations and Disintegrations of Identity: Denis Johnson's Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly", by René Dietrich, who recently finished his graduate studies in American literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany. The shorter pieces are written by two final-year undergraduates: Robert Coppin, who earned a first-class honours degree from Lancaster University in June 2005, wrote "Lonely Young Men: A Baudrillardian Analysis of the Disaffection in the Novels of Bret Easton Ellis", as his final-year dissertation; and Dan Holmes, a student in the American Studies Department of the University of Wales Swansea, analysed Auster's New York Trilogy in comparison to Chandler's hard-boiled fiction as part of his work for a final year Crime Ficiton module.
Section 1
From Science Fiction To Future Noir: The Voyage Begins
Technology and Gender Divisions: From Science Fiction to Future Noir
Science Fiction and The Transgressive Female Characters
Future Noir and Postmodernism : The Irony Begins
Men/Machine Interface: The Body Snatched - The Paranoia Begins?
Section 2
Cyberpunk, Cyberspace and Cyborg : The Final Destination?
The Post-apocalyptic Woman
Section 3
The Doppelganger : Psychoanalysis and Cyborg Imagery
Revisiting Female Desire and Fatal Sexuality: A Real Trip in Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality and the Loss of ‘Male’ Agency or Autonomy
Mindplayers and Strange Days: Is It The Same Old Story?
Sections 1& 2
Introduction: Investigations in Postmodern Noir Fiction
A Theoretical Approach to Personal Identity in Postmodern Noir Fiction: Postmodern Features of Noir Fiction
Personal Identity in Postmodernism and the Narrative Identity Response
Section 3 Denis Johnson: Resuscitation of a Hanged Man
Lost in the Ambiguities of the Postmodern
Leonard English in Provincetown
The Lost Investigator and the Missing Person
The Loss of Narrative Control in the Paranoia of False Narratives
The Disintegration of Identity through the Loss of Difference
Section 4 Philip K. Dick: A Scanner Darkly
The Split Investigator in a Society of Unstable Oppositions
The Obscure Identity of the Split Investigator
Disruption of Perception and Text as Loss of Narrative Control Disintegration of Identity as Destruction of Difference and Substance
Conclusion: Disintegration of Identity in the Narrative Logic of Postmodern Noir Fiction
Readers interested in Auster might also want to look at the paper (included in our previous selection of articles) by Todd Natti, from the University at Buffalo, "The Text is Suspect: The Author, the Detective and the Subjective in Auster's City of Glass"; those interested in future noir might also read: Beyond the Symbolic Order: "William Gibson, Cyberpunk and the Noir Discourse", by Filomila Papakonstantinou, University of Nottingham. We would very much like to expand our coverage of this kind of crime fiction: if you would like to contribute in this area, please contact Lee Horsley