In the Name of God

Th
he Sufferring of Being
B
Voonnegut:
Vonneegut agaiinst Him
mself


Univversity of Tehran
Faculty of
o Foreign
n Languaages

Th
he Sufferring of Being
B
Voonnegut:
Vonneegut agaiinst Him
mself

By
Omid Sallehi

Supervisoor
Dr. Behzad
B
Ghaaderi Sohi

Readerr
Dr. Seyyyed Mohammad Maranndi

A Thessis Submitteed to the Graaduate Studdies Office iin Partial Fuulfillment of the Requirrements forr
a Master off Arts Degreee in Englissh Languagee and Literaature

August 20010

ABSTRACT
Postmodernism, in its broadest definition, denies the existence of any unified
human subject as the centre of perception and consciousness. It portrays a defragmented
world in which discourse creates reality rather than reflecting it as it is. Humanism, on
the other hand, apparently moves in the opposite direction by putting much emphasis on
the human subject as the centre of consciousness in a meaningful world. The utopian
aspirations so prevalent during and after the Enlightenment Age and their reiteration by
many in the contemporary era clearly reflect such an attitude.
Given this fact, any effort to integrate these two ways of looking at the world into a
unified, and meanwhile, cogent moral position is apparently doomed to failure.
Vonnegut Against Himself is an attempt to show that such an effort has been made with
a certain amount of success by one of America's most prolific authors, namely Kurt
Vonnegut Jr. In light of Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of narrative crisis and rejection
of grand narratives in the postmodern era, I have contended that By deconstructing
some of America's most important grand narratives and using some world-building
strategies in the realm of fiction (characteristic of many other postmodern works of
fiction) on the one hand, and emphasizing the moral aspects of human existence on the
other, Vonnegut has remained faithful to the humanist tradition of the centrality of the
human subject while maintaining a postmodern attitude towards issues of ethical
significance such as the relationship between science and ethics, fiction and truth, etc.

IV

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the Department of foreign languages at Tehran university for the
opportunity it provided for me to complete my thesis. I also wish to express my
indebtedness to Dr. Behzad Qaderi, Dr. Beyad and Dr. Marandi, each of whom gave me
a different sense of the function of literature in society as a whole. I wish to be grateful
to Mohammad-Ali Qaznavi for bearing with my almost pathological obsession with
Vonnegut and Nietzsche. Finally, I wish to preserve my last and deepest appreciation
for the coauthor of the comic book of my life, without whose help this thesis could not
be brought to completion.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: Research Preliminaries ...................................................................... 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1
Research Significance ................................................................................................... 3
Definition of Key Terms ............................................................................................... 5
Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 6
Research Methodology ............................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER II: Human Subject: From Birth to Disruption ..................................14

Kant, Descartes, and the Rise of the Modern Subject ................................................16
Sigmund Freud and the Beginnings of a Disruption................................................... 22
Nietzsche, the Fictionality of the Subject, and a Negotiated Morality ....................... 26
The Apollonian versus the Dionysian: Towards a Dialectic of Nietzsches Philosophy
.................................................................................................................................... 29
Nietzsche and the Illusion of Truth............................................................................. 33
Nietzschean Ethics? .................................................................................................... 36
Nietzsche and Nationalism: Towards a Postmodern Disbelief ................................... 41
Nietzsche and the Modern Subject ............................................................................. 42

CHAPTER III: Cats Cradle: Theory behind Fiction .......................................... 46

The Postmodernism of Cats Cradle ........................................................................... 47
Lyotard and the Politics of Disbelief .......................................................................... 53
Cats Cradle and the Grand Narrative of Religion .....................................................61
Cats Cradle and the Illusion of a Telos ..................................................................... 65
VI

Cats Cradle and the Mirage of Scientism .................................................................. 69

CHAPTER IV: Slaughterhouse 1945: Pilgrims Progress, Symptomatic of Excess

.................................................................................................................................... 78
Slaughterhouse-Five and the Paradox of Authenticity ............................................... 79
Either Irony or Silence: No Way out .......................................................................... 82
Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonneguts Deconstructive Project: War and the Linear
progression of Time .................................................................................................... 84
Slaughterhouse-Five and the Question of the Archive ............................................... 89
Slaughterhouse-Five and the Interrogative Function of Language ............................. 94
Slaughterhouse-Five: Memory, Testimony, History .................................................. 95

CONCLUSION: towards a Critical Reorientation................................................ 98

WORKS CITED ..................................................................................................... 101

VII

CHAPTER I:

Research Preliminaries

Introduction

Both World War II (1939-1945) and the Vietnam War (1954-1975) came to play
an important role in shaping America as it stands today. The latter in particular created a
real distrust of official facts as presented by the military and the media. Furthermore, as
Hellmann notes, "the ideology of the 1960s had licensed a revolt against homogenized
forms of experience" (8). The senseless violence and destruction caused by the Second
World War, the political witch-hunt led by Mccarthy and his likes, the execution of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for their alleged role in passing secret information regarding
nuclear weaponry to the Soviet Union in 1953 despite serious questions concerning the
fairness of their trial and international pleas for clemency, all contributed to a sense of
alienation, which as Hoffmann notes, "made the existential particularly attractive after
the second World War" (202).
In addition, the rise of what afterwards came to be known as the 1960's
counterculture in the United States raised a series of ethical and aesthetic challenges for
the post-war generation in America. The origins of these challenges can be easily traced
back to a decade earlier, when a group of American artists and writers known as the
Beat Generation, inspired by Eastern philosophy and religion gained unprecedented
popularity for their unconventional forms of representation and their break with
1

conventional social values (Abrams 21). Furthermore, the traumatic experiences of the
two wars, particularly the Second World War, led many to the conclusion that language
in its traditional form could in no way represent what actually had happened. This
provided the impetus for the creation of a number of innovative techniques to take the
language out of the limitations imposed by classic realism, itself a product of industrial
capitalism (Belsey 6), so that it could serve as the medium through which the
contemporary experience of loss and disbelief could be expressed. What has come to be
known as postmodern flight from realism indicates the artists' and writers' consensus
over the fact that representing new and unique experiences requires new
representational techniques.
Given the above account, literature both as an academic discipline and as a field
of human experience did (and could) not take a neutral stance towards these major
developments. Freudian psychoanalysis and his concept of the unconscious, Jacque
Lacan's concept of an inaccessible reality, and last but not least, post-Saussurean
linguistics played a crucial role in illuminating the formative and self-reflexive (as
opposed to the reflexive) nature of language and the constructed nature of represented
reality. Christopher Butler points out to this very constructedness of reality when he
observes that "We live, not inside reality, but inside our representations of it" (21).
Freud's concept of the unconscious, postcolonial studies and feminist criticism,
in spite of all the differences existing between them, made the Cartesian concept of a
unified and thinking subject, the Kantian notion of the free exercise of reason and the
Hegelian concept of a dialectic-progressive vision of human history extremely difficult
to defend. Roland Barthes's notion of the difference between a readerly and a writerly

text, between work and text, seriously challenged the realist assumption of a simple
one-way relationship between the author and the reader (Nicol 44).
These developments brought about a major shift towards self-consciousness in
literature. In other words, although the postmodern writer had not succeeded in
liberating himself from the prison of language and discourse, at least he was conscious
of his captivity and could deal with it with a sense of irony (Eco 111). While classic
realism claimed to have opened the window of literature onto the realm of real life,
these writers substituted the mirror for the window. In other words, while classic
realism ostensibly used literature as a transparent window through which the reader
could have an objective view of reality, postmodernist fiction, by talking selfconsciously about itself, illustrated the constructed nature of reality and the selfreferentiality of language and literature. Indeed, far from disengagement from reality,
postmodernist fiction, as I hope to suggest in due course, strove to present reality as
faithfully as possible.

Research Significance

At our class of American literature I gave a brief presentation outlining

Vonnegut's career as an author. At the time, I had the nagging premonition that my
presentation was Greek even to some of the most intelligent students. The reasons for
such a feeling were not far to seek. First, any comprehensive survey of Vonnegut's
career within the space of a class presentation prepared in less than two weeks was
completely out of the question. Second, I did not have access to various primary and
secondary sources as I now do. In addition, Reading the Harry Potter series and

Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, took a heavy toll on my time, but
meanwhile provided me with invaluable insights into one of the most neglected aspects
of literature in the Iranian academia, namely fantasy literature.
It goes without saying that achieving an accurate understanding of literature
involves much more than merely reading so-called literary masterpieces.
Kurt Vonnegut is an author who, while showing traces of fantasy literature in his
works, has a message fraught with social and philosophical implications for the whole
human race.
Except for some of Vonnegut's works, there is not, to my knowledge, even a
single book in the libraries of Iran's major universities directly dealing with his works,
indicating the extent to which this author and his works have been neglected in the
Iranian academia. This is partly due to the fact that anyone who tries to speak to his
fellow human beings in a simple and direct style is often doomed not to be taken
seriously. This makes access to research sources far more difficult, but provides the
researcher with the impetus to raise questions rather than giving him a know-it-all
feeling of complacency.
Vonnegut and his works, however, have fared rather well in the United States,
particularly in the 1990s. If one judges an author's reputation in terms of scholarly
interest and production, the 1990s can be seen as a decade of rejuvenescence for Kurt
Vonnegut. Leonard Mustazza's Forever Pursuing Genesis: the Myth of Eden in the
Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1990), William Rodney Allen's Understanding Kurt Vonnegut
(1991), and Jerome Klinkowitz's Biography: Kurt Vonnegut's America, along with
numerous monographs and journal articles attest to Vonnegut's return to the scholarly
spotlight after a long period of undeserved obscurity.

In 1994 alone, the Greenwood Press published The Critical Response to Kurt
Vonnegut, edited by Leonard Mustazza, and The Vonnegut Encyclopedia: An
Authorized Compendium, by Marc Leeds.
The sheer number of critical reviews and books about Vonnegut and his works
indicates the extent to which the conundrums posed by Vonnegut have garnered critical
and scholarly attention. To cap it all, Vonnegut remained prolific even during the last
years of his life, and expressed his commitment to his social milieu through criticizing
much of what has passed under the name of democracy and human rights across the
globe.
Contemporary culture is moving at an almost incomprehensible speed. The
exponential multiplication of the opportunities and lifestyles available to the inhabitants
of Europe and North America has brought about a situation in which spatial and
temporal boundaries shrink almost into nothingness. Conventions, customs and ways of
life once serving to distinguish one place from another, have now turned into matters of
choice and taste for an internationalized and cosmopolitan consumer.
Issues of ethical significance are not exempt from the influence of such
developments. These developments raise a series of formidable challenges before
hitherto taken for granted moral values. It seems quite obvious that traditional moral
values, if they are to meet these challenges in a constructive way, have to adapt
themselves to these changes in the first place. In other words, any good old definition of
right and wrong simply does not do, and it seems as if a new morality has to be defined
through combining some of the elements of the traditional morality with a pragmatic
view on life and existence.

Kurt Vonnegut's fiction, I believe, presents such a pragmatic ethics. In the two
works under consideration, namely Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut
offers a meliorist fiction in the context of a seemingly gloomy future and a nightmarish
past.

Definition of Key Terms

Grand narratives: According to Lyotard, these are the governing principles of

modernity, and produce systematic accounts of the world, its development in the course
of history, and man's status in it. Christianity, Enlightenment, Humanism, Scientism and
religion are amongst the most important of such totalizing systems. Lyotard, of course,
distinguishes between grand narratives of speculation and those of emancipation.
However, for the sake of clarity, this distinction has not been observed.
Humanism: A cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance that
emphasized secular concerns as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art
and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome.
Human subject: Man as defined in terms of an essential nature or substance as
distinguished from his/her nonessential attributes.
Morality: A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct. At the risk of
oversimplification, morality and ethics have been used synonymously in order to avoid
much unnecessary complication and confusion.
Postmodernism and Postmodernity: Although the former denotes a stylistic
current and the latter refers to a specific historical period, these two terms have also
been used synonymously in the interests of clarity and avoiding confusion.

Postmodernist fiction: I have limited my definition of this term to a body of

fiction written in the united States between 1960 and 1980, sharing particular themes
such as the relationship between truth and falsity, the interrogation of history, etc.

Literature Review

Given Vonnegut's unique and enduring place in contemporary American

literature in general, and American fiction of the 1960's and 1970's in particular,
presenting a comprehensive list of critical works investigating different aspects of his
writing is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Therefore, in what follows several
major publications are listed, which either deal directly with one or more critical aspects
of Vonnegut's writing, or concern themselves with concepts and theories necessary for
an adequate understanding of Vonnegut's works as they stand in relation to the social
and cultural background in which they have been created.
Brian McHale's Postmodernist Fiction (1987) is an all but comprehensive
inventory of strategies implemented by postmodernist fiction writers to lay bare the
processes of world-building in fiction. There he argues that the shift from epistemology
to ontology is the hallmark of postmodernist fiction making it distinct from modernist
fiction in which the epistemological dominance forms the basis upon which other
components of the fictional world come to rest (11-12). In this book, McHale presents a
linear and progressive version of the change of dominant from epistemology to
ontology, a point of view which McHale himself later modifies in a later book entitled
Constructing Postmodernism. Especially relevant to the subject of this thesis is the sixth

chapter of this book in which the relationship between postmodernist fiction and the
realm of history is explored in more detail (84-99).
Constructing Postmodernism: In this book (published in 1992) McHale
practically rejects his early linear and progressive account of the move from
epistemology to ontology for a pluralistic account in which various constructions of
postmodernism engage in a dialectic interaction. The interface between postmodernist
fiction and science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) is explored more fully with
reference to specific texts and critics. "Postmodernism is not a found object, but a
manufactured artifact" (11). Beginning from this constructivist premise, Brian McHale
develops a series of readings of problematically postmodernist novels - Joyce's Ulysses,
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's
Pendulum, the novels of Joseph McElroy and Christine Brooke-Rose, avant-garde
works such as Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless, and works of cyberpunk sciencefiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker and others.
Although mainly focused on "high" or "elite" cultural products - "art" novels Constructing Postmodernism relates these products to such phenomena of postmodern
popular culture as television and the cinema, paranoia and nuclear anxiety, angelology
and the cybernetic interface, and death, now as always (in spite of what Captain Kirk
says) the true Final Frontier.
A Rhetoric of The Unreal: In this book (first published in 1981), Christine
Brooke-Rose traces the historical continuity among the varieties of modern "unrealism,"
from the "classic" fantastic of Poe's "The Black Cat" and James's The Turn of the Screw
to such contemporary forms as the "new" science fiction (Vonnegut, McElroy) and the
nouveau and nouveau roman. What is missing from A Rhetoric of the Unreal is the

extension of this story to include (American) postmodernist fiction, for, just at the point
where the story arrives at postmodernism, Brooke-Rose abruptly abandons her narrative
paradigm of continuity and takes up instead a different paradigm, one based on the
parasitism of postmodernism on historically prior modes. She seems unable to imagine
how the principle of hesitation, upon which all the previous varieties of unrealist poetics
had been based, might be extended to postmodernist fiction, and it is this failure of
imagination that explains the abrupt change of paradigms at the end of A Rhetoric of the
Unreal. Ironically, what Brooke-Rose lacks in her theory of unrealist fiction she might
readily have found in her own practice of it. Notwithstanding this failure, A Rhetoric of
the Unreal is of major importance as the theoretical manifesto of a practitioner.
Darko Suvin in The Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) introduces the
concept of cognitive estrangement. By "estrangement" he means virtually what Bertolt
Brecht (1898-1956) and his followers had in mind when talking about defamiliarization.
This point is, as we shall see later, the COMMON denominator of science fiction and
what has come to be categorized under the rubric of postmodernist fiction. Suvin
introduces the concept of novum (a new idea, apparatus, etc) as the cause of
discontinuity between the fictional and empirical world.
Robert Scholes qualifies this definition and proposes that any old discontinuity
will not do. This discontinuity should be present at the structural level of the fictional
world as well as the narrative level. This qualification goes a long way towards
identifying the border between science fiction on the one hand, and any other form of
fantasy on the other, which may have no affinities with, and no basis in, the rational
structures of thinking.

Metafiction: In this book (first published in 1984), Patricia Waugh traces the
origins of literary self-consciousness from the nineteenth century up to the present time.
She studies different forms of self-consciousness which have gone into the making of
literature, and particularly fiction, as we know them today.
Damien Broderick analyzes the postmodern self-referentiality of science fiction
narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive encyclopedia. He shows how, for
rich understanding, sf readers must learn the codes and vernacular of these imaginary
worlds, while absorbing the lived-in futures generated by the overlapping intertexts of
many sf writers. His book, Reading by Starlight includes close readings of cyberpunk
and other postmodern texts, and writings by such sf novelists and theorists as Brian
Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, Christine Brooke-Rose, Arthur C. Clarke, Samuel R. Delany,
William Gibson, Fredric Jameson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Vivian Sobchack, Darko
Suvin, Michael Swanwick, Tzvetan Todorov and John Varley.
Metafiction: In this book (first published in 1995), is a very informative
collection of writings on the subject of self-consciousness in fiction and in criticism,
Mark Currie focuses on the breakdown of the border between criticism and fiction as
part of the crisis in metalingual objectivity. It includes an introduction which charts the
evolution of literary self-consciousness alongside issues in literary theory, particularly
in the relationship between historiographic self-consciousness and the return to
historical perspective in the new historical criticisms of the 1980s.
Literary Theory, an introduction: This is undoubtedly one of the turning points
in literary theory despite doing little justice to some of the thoughts it represents. In this
Book (first published in 1983), Terry Eagleton presents a thorough survey of the critical
ideas which predominated before the resurgence of interest in history and politics. It is

10

very entertaining and instructive on the subjects of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis

in literary theory.
A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction: In this book (first
published in 1988), Linda Hutcheon traces the origins of postmodernism in art and
literature. This book offers a rich and complex discussion which is of much help in
gaining a clear and profound insight into Vonnegut's works, especially Slaughterhouse
Five.
Black Humor Fiction of the 60s: In this book (first published in 1973), Max F.
Schulz tries to give an inclusive, and meanwhile, exclusive definition of black humor
before contextualizing it in the American fiction of the 1960s. Having presented a
relatively comprehensive definition of the term "black humor", Schulz then sets out to
investigate its various manifestations in the writings of authors such as John Barth,
Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coovver, Bruce J. Friedman, and last but not least, Kurt
Vonnegut. In the third chapter assigned to the black humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Schulz
argues for a delicate balance of inconclusiveness in Vonnegut's novels, which he calls
"the unconfirmed thesis of Kurt Vonnegut." Tonie Tanner presents a similar argument
in his City of Words (1971).
Robert A. Hipkiss, in The American Absurd: Pynchon, Vonnegut and Barth
(1984) examines the problems of purpose and morality in Vonnegut's novels in the
context of other writers like Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett who postulate an absurd
and amoral world. He argues that Vonnegut expresses his fatalistic and pessimistic
views on human life through putting his characters in nightmarish situations. As we
shall se below, this view is strongly challenged by Lawrence R. Broer.

11

In Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (1989), Broer offers a

psychoanalytic study of Vonnegut's novels
beginning with Player Piano and going through Bluebeard, emphasizing the
importance of Vonnegut's actual experience for the construction of his fictions. Broer
argues, for example, that the Tralfamadorian view of reality is the very antithesis of
Vonnegut's position that artists should be treasured as alarm systems, and as biological
agents of change.
Kurt Vonnegut: Fantasist of Fire and Ice: David H. Goldsmith in this survey of
Vonnegut's works up through Slaughterhouse Five, argues that pilgrims beset by
obstacles search for purpose and messiahs in a world that both offers and frustrates
meaningfulness. Jerome Klinkowitz presents a study of Vonnegut's work in the context
of his utterances as a public figure concerned with social, political, civic, and spiritual
issues. Clark Mayo Considers Vonnegut's use of an outer space alien's perspective to
examine social and religious values and practices. Donald E. Morse discusses how
Vonnegut's novels reflect the major traumatic public and private events that have gone
into imagining being an American during the twentieth century. He focuses upon how
Vonnegut deals with the Great Depression, World War II, nuclear weapons, the
Vietnam War, changing social institutions, marriage, the family, divorce, growing old,
experiencing loss, and anticipating death.

Research methodology

This project is based on more than eight months of library research. A

combination of primary and secondary sources has been consulted in order to insure the

12

authenticity of the research findings, a comprehensive list of which can be found at the
bibliography section. In most cases, however, priority has been given to the primary
sources, and the secondary sources have been used as complements to them. For works
with more than one edition, attempt has been made to use the best edition in terms of
both accessibility and authenticity. In cases where an excerpt or argument originally
presented in a primary source has been quoted from a secondary one for one reason or
another, the validity of the second source's reference to the primary one has been
accurately established on a case-by-case basis. In addition, wherever the electronic
edition of a book or any other printed material has been consulted, the electronic version
has been accurately collated with the printed version to avoid any confusion regarding
page citation.
In her influential book entitled Postmodernism and the Social Sciences, Pauline
Marie Rosenau investigates the relationship between postmodernism and various
branches of humanities such as history, literature, social sciences, etc. In defining
postmodernism, she divides the postmodern camp into two major parts, namely the
sceptical and the affirmative postmodernists. She argues that while The sceptics see the
postmodern world as one of chaos, fragmentation and meaninglessness, affirmative
postmodernists (affirmatives) attempt to engage in non-dogmatic and local projects, and
often are not uninterested in adopting ethical norms, although of a totally different kind
from those of modernity. Based on this argument, I have situated Vonnegut in the latter
camp, arguing that although sharing with radical postmodernists a critique of modernity
and its claims to the attainability of objective truth, he tries to offer an ethical
substitution for the apparently collapsed metanarratives of modernity.

13

In addition to this preliminary chapter, the present study comprises four other
chapters as well. The second chapter deals with the origins and significance of the
apparent conflict between Enlightenment humanism on the one hand and
postmodernism on the other. In addition, the relationship between postmodernism and
its intellectual precursors will be investigated with particular reference to Freud's
psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's philosophical ideas. To this end, the genealogy of
the postmodern antisubject position will be investigated with particular reference to
these two theoretical frameworks. Such an investigation becomes more of a necessity
when this antisubject position is understood as the cornerstone of what has come to be
known as the collapse of metanarratives in the postmodern era.
The third chapter deals with the practical implications of these debates with
particular focus on Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963). Here I'll elaborate on the argument
that while helping usher in the postmodern phase of American fiction in terms of both
form and content, Cat's cradle presents a humanist solution to what Ihab Hassan calls
"current shibboleths" (xv). To this end, Vonnegut's deconstruction of some of the most
important grand narratives of American society such as scientism, religion, the
American dream, etc. will be investigated. In addition, I shall try to demonstrate that by
using Metafiction techniques, Vonnegut emphasizes the metaphorical nature of truth,
thus undermining claims to objectivity and universality made by totalizing systems such
as religion, science, etc.
The fourth chapter deals with the same issue, this time with particular focus on
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). This chapter revolves around the argument that Vonnegut,
while offering to share a nightmarish experience of the contemporary world, does not
succumb to a wholly pessimistic view of life, this traumatic experience notwithstanding.

14

Here I will argue for an interrogative function of Slaughterhouse-Five in relation to an

historical event as a new strategy to cope with a nightmarish experience, namely the
firestorming of Dresden during the Second World War. Here again, the relationship
between truth and falseness is investigated, this time in terms of historical knowledge
and the ways in which the past becomes accessible to the present.
A short reflection on the legacy of Vonnegut as the prophet of hope in a
postmodern society. Here I have attempted to show that In spite of a thirty-year span
between Vonnegut and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the issues with which
he has, both consciously and conscientiously, concerned himself are still relevant to the
contemporary world.

15

CHAPTER II:
HUMAN SUBJECT: FROM BIRTH TO DISRUPTION

It has now become almost a clich to say that from Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
onward, an irreversible separation has taken place between subject and object in the
Western psyche (Eagleton, "Literary" 45). This duality in thought, I believe, has
evolved into a subject-object dichotomy from which the Enlightenment philosophers
like Kant and Descartes have derived their conception of the human subject as the
autonomous centre of meaning and consciousness. Some major differences
notwithstanding, these two philosophers share the view that there is an entity to be
called human subject, whose existence can be established through the free exercise of
the power of reason, the establishment of universal moral principles, and methodical
doubt in order to arrive at a genuine foundation for thought and experience.
The rediscovery and study in the Renaissance period of the art, literature and
civilization of the ancient Greek and Rome, also known as "Humanism" rests on similar
philosophical views (See also Mayer). The philosophical tradition of Humanism sought
to define thought, experience, perception and consciousness in terms of a unified human
subject as their fulcrum. This view along with its underlying assumptions unavoidably
had far-reaching implications for the realms of both ethics and fiction. In terms of ethics
and the choosing of ethical values, universality (or at least universalizability) came to
play a crucial role in defining the appropriateness of ethical choices, and even shaping
the criteria used to evaluate such choices. Especially prevalent in this period was the
belief that there exists an external world, completely independent from human
perception and consciousness, waiting to be known and acted upon through human
16

knowledge and action. Language was seen as a mirror faithfully reflecting the external
world as it stood. The claim to objectivity and universality made by modern science also
rested on the assumption that there is a one-sided relationship between the knower and
the known, through which the knower (man) is able to know and act upon the known
(the universe) without being shaped or even modified by it.
During the Middle Ages the Bible was regarded as the highest authority across
the whole Christendom defining man's relationship with an omnipotent and omnipresent
being called God and his status in the universe (Melehy 14). The Bible was considered
as God's revelation to man of eternal and immutable truths. Simply put, God, as
portrayed in the Holy Scriptures, spoke and refused to be spoken to. This brought about
such a rigidity in the Christian faith that for long centuries, translating the Bible into
European vernacular languages was regarded as a manifestation of heresy punishable by
death. John Wycliffe (1328?-1384), William Tyndale (1494?-1536), and Miles
Coverdale (1488-1568) paved the way for the Protestant Reformation during the
sixteenth century of the Roman Catholic Church through their reformist theories and
English translations of parts or even the whole Bible.
This attribution of the Bible and its teachings to God laid the foundations for a
theory of authorship according to the generalized version of which the author was
gradually shoved into a godlike role of creating meaning. The most memorable classical
expression of such a viewpoint in the Renaissance period was presented by Sir Philip
Sidney:
The poet doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things
either better than nature bringth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never
were in nature as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such

17

like; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the
narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own
wit. (qtd. in McHale, "Postmodernist" 27-8)
Furthermore, the Bible's narrative style and its teleological account of human
history from creation to the Judgment Day had a formidable influence on the way events
were organized and accounted for in the western mind.

Kant, Descartes, and the Rise of the Modern Subject

These and other factors led many to the conclusion that human history was a
linear progress from savagery to civilization and progress. This linear and teleological
history, of course, implied an autonomous, goal-oriented, rational and unified human
subject. These notions remained almost intact, and continued well into the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, when Descartes, Kant, Hegel and others sought to find
something other than the divine law for the evaluation of man's behaviour.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) poses the view that unlike physical and
empirical knowledge, metaphysical issues such as the existence of God, the freedom of
the will and the eternity of the soul cannot be proper subjects for scientific and rational
inquiry. Despite this sceptical attitude towards metaphysical knowledge, Kant accepts
these issues as postulates for a moral life. This is one of the manifestations of belief in
what Lyotard calls "grand narratives", of which more later on. Thus, Kant can be
regarded as an intellectual sceptic, but meanwhile as a moral conformist as well.
The Kantian ethics is expounded in his classic work entitled Critique of
Practical Reason (1788) and the earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
(1785). Kant's ethics is based on the principle of categorical imperative, one formulation

18

of which is: "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law" (qtd. in Hill 198).
His last great work, The Critique of Judgment, deals with aesthetic judgment and
the existence of teleology or purposiveness in nature. This is a turning point in the
history of philosophy, since as the Copernican astronomy had explained the movements
of the celestial bodies partially with reference to the observer's movements, Kant had
accounted for the existence of a priori synthetic knowledge by stating that in knowing,
things confirm to the mind and not vice versa. In fact, in facing the world, the Kantian
mind is like someone riding a merry-go-round whose revolution causes different images
to be observed by him. Malpas might have been right when he suggests that this link
between the Copernican revolution in philosophy, the focus on the self in poetry and the
onset of modernity is not coincidental (65).
But a word of caution seems in order here. This synthetic theory of the mind is
hardly original with Kant. As early as the fourth century before the Christian era, Plato
had referred to this duality of appearance versus reality, this time with a slightly
different vocabulary. Plato's concept of the world of ideas, I believe, is another version
of the same proposition. This concept, presented in the form of the allegory of the cave
states that what the human mind perceives is at one remove from the innermost reality
of the thing itself. For instance, when a carpenter makes a door or a window, he just
imitates the idea of a door or a window. The so-called world of ideas is the place
wherein the true reality of things lies, and the external world as seen by us is nothing but
an imitation of that pure reality.
Kant attempts to find something inherent in the human mind and will to fill the
gap caused by the demolition of the authoritative status once occupied by religion:

19

While the Baconian investigator sets out to elicit the secret laws of
nature, clearing his mind of the idols of prejudice in order to see more
clearly what is actually there, Kant argues that there is nothing there' that
has not been put there by the already-existing categories of thought. Reason
does not observe nature; it constitutes it. With its strict separation of means
and ends, its absolute distinction between the instrumental world of nonrational nature (things') and the sovereign authority of rational humankind
(persons'), Kant's transcendental idealism' completes the theoretical
demolition of religion, relocating its usurped authority within the human
mind and will. (Davies 120)
Descartes, also known as the father of modern rationalism, in his Meditations on
First Philosophy, subjects all his sensory and empirical knowledge to a methodical
doubt in order to arrive at a transcendental foundation of existence by means of which
the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and the existence of an external world
can be established. In fact, Descartes was looking for a center in terms of which changes
in perspective could be explained. Melehy calls this hypothetical centre a "geometrical
zero point" (93). This apparently indubitable foundation is expressed in the dictum
"Cogito ergo sum", meaning "I think; therefore, I am" (Descartes 103).
Descartes begins his argument by the premise that all his knowledge and
experiences may have been caused by illusion, madness or sickness. At the end, he is
persuaded that this is not the case, and construes this act of being persuaded as an
irreducible sign of the reality of the external world and the existence of a thinking "I".
The Meditations concludes with the declaration that "For as God is no deceiver, it
follows necessarily that I am not deceived" (168). In fact, through proving the existence

20

of an act of thinking, Descartes, influenced by linguistic determinism, deduces the

existence of a thinker as a matter of course. In other words, just as in grammar every
predicate has a subject, Descartes puts the act of thinking in the role of a predicate
requiring a subject to make sense.
Ironically enough, Descartes, at the end of his argument, reasserts the notion
which he had set out to challenge, i.e. that of a benevolent and transcendent deity. In
fact, Descartes, as Frederick Jameson correctly argues, has had a formative role in
shaping the modern Western subject:
With Descartes, we . . . witness the emergence of the subject, or in
other words, of the Western subject, that is to say, the modern subject as
such, the subject of modernity. ("Singular" 43)
The rise in Europe of the romantic movement during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries with its emphasis on individual expression and rejection of the
neoclassical notions of unity, objectivity, rationality and truth, anticipated much of the
postmodern antagonism towards the subject in subsequent eras. This antagonism led
many postmodernists to "consider the subject to be a fossil relic of the past, of
modernity, an invention of liberal humanism, the source of the unacceptable objectsubject dichotomy" (Rosenau 42).
Transcendentalism, which can be rightly regarded as the American brand of
romanticism, asserted the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcended the
empirical and the scientific, and was knowable only through intuition. Furthermore, the
French and American revolutions turned the last years of the eighteenth, and the whole
nineteenth century into a period of political upheaval and intellectual radicalism.

21

The subject-object dichotomy mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, with

its implications for a theory of human subjectivity, contributed to an essentialism, i.e.
the metaphysical theory according to which the essential properties of an object can and
should be distinguished from those that are accidental to it. In the postmodern era,
however, this subject-object dichotomy was seriously challenged in favour of more
pluralistic accounts of human existence. Given the affinities between the subject-object
and the author-reader dichotomies, this challenge inevitably influenced the role and
even the concept of author(ity). Simply put, as the former was challenged in the
postmodern era in favour of a more interactive relationship, the latter was also
challenged in favour of a relationship with the reader acquiring the status of a co-creator
of meaning along with the author. It was Based on such a dynamic relationship that
Roland Barthes announced "the birth of the reader" at the cost of "the death of the
author" ("Death" 148).
The Cartesian subject, as the reader might have come to notice, has been
presented as a watertight entity with sharply defined and clear-cut boundaries separating
him from, and giving him a vantage point from which to look at the external world. This
definition of the human subject carries a wide range of political, racial, ethnic and
gender implications. Barrett reformulates this view in a more sophisticated form:
Let us imagine the celebrated Cartesian subject. He is made in the
image of his inventor. He is white, a European; he is highly educated, he
thinks and is sensitive, he can probably even think in Latin and Greek; he
lived a bit too soon to be a bourgeois, but he has class confidence; he has a
general confidence in his existence and power; he is not a woman, not black,
not a migrant, not marginal; he is heterosexual and a father . . . It is entirely

22

clear to us that this model of the subject is centred, and unified, around a
nexus of social and biographical characteristics that represent power. (90)
With a bit of intellectual audacity, one can even claim that the Cartesian subject,
to all intents and purposes, has been presented in a vacuum. In other words, defining the
human subject only in terms of his or her thinking ability implies the exclusion of the
racial, ethnic, political and ideological ingredients which have, for better or worse, gone
into his or her making. Descartes, in a politico-theological sleight of hand, presents the
human subject in the image of his creator, presumably a metaphysical deity. Michel
Foucault heavily criticizes such an apparently ahistorical notion of the human subject by
arguing that such a definition of the subject has "emerged about the same time as the
English empiricism, French rationalism, and faith in the Reformation, all of which
emphasized the importance of the individual" ("Author" 143).
The Psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche's opposition to what
he saw as the herd morality, his concern over the grave consequences of the nihilism
caused by the self-destruction of Christianity and the subsequent fall of scientism from
grace, and last but not least, Edward Said's critique of the distorting effects of the
projection of the Western grand narrative of imperialism upon Oriental societies, did
much to contribute to the demise of, or at least, revision in the theory of subjectivity.
After all, as Michel Foucault has rightly noted, the theorization of man is not as old as it
might seem at first glance:
One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the
most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a
relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area
European culture since the sixteenth century one can be certain that man is

23

a recent invention within it. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows,
man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."
("order" 386-87)
Before dealing with these theories and their implications for an ethics of
literature, a word of caution seems in order. While Freud's psychoanalytic theory and
Nietzsche's critique of western morality coincide with the onset of what has come to be
known as modernity, Said's critique of Western imperialism and the image of the Orient
presented by it is offered in a postmodern context and based on Lyotard's concept of
narrative crisis. This highly significant difference notwithstanding, contribution to a
disruption of the theory of a unified human subject can be regarded as their common
denominator. Therefore, any attempt at separating these theories from their historical
contexts would be tantamount to disregarding the historical differences which have
shaped these theories in the first place. In the interests of brevity, however, I shall limit
the scope of my discussion only to Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's
philosophy, while recognizing and fully appreciating the value of postcolonial critiques
of the theory of human subjectivity, Edward Said's included.

24

Sigmund Freud and the Beginnings of a Disruption

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is undoubtedly one of the creative minds of the
modern era. His psychoanalytic theory profoundly influenced twentieth-century
thought. Thomas Pynchon's talk of the invention by Freud of a "new science of mind"
bears witness to the immensity of this influence (383). But before dealing with this
influence, particularly in terms of the unity of the human subject and its wide-ranging
implications for modern ethics, a few words concerning the general outline of his
psychoanalytic theory seem in order.
Freud's most significant contribution to the demise of a unified notion of a
totally conscious subjectivity was the postulation of an unconscious part for the human
psyche. Based on this view, there is an unconscious level of the psyche operating
independently from the conscious level and acting as a repository of forgotten or
repressed psychosexual drives. This is part of our mind to which all our thoughts,
memories, and wishes are relegated. According to Freud, Dreams, parapraxes (minor
slips of the tongue), and jokes are amongst the most important of our access points to
the unconscious (Eagleton, "Literary" 136-37).
Freud also proposed a tripartite structure for the human psyche according to
which the human psyche was divided into three distinct, but meanwhile interrelated
spheres: the id, the superego and the ego. The first two divisions constitute the
unconscious part of the psyche, and the third division is the one most in touch with
external reality. The id is the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious, and
serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate gratification of
primitive needs. It knows no limitations whatsoever, and is not satisfied with anything
short of the unqualified gratification of all instinctual drives.

25

In contrast to the id, there exists yet another unconscious division of the psyche,
namely the superego. But the similarity between these two parts begins and ends at their
unconscious origin. This part of the human psychic system operates as its moral police,
negotiating a psychological balance through controlling the irrational drives of the id.
The superego is formed through the internalization of moral standards of parents and
society, and censors and restrains the ego. At the risk of oversimplification, the
superego can be interpreted as Freud's version of conscience.
The ego is the third component of the psyche in Freud's theory. In fact, the ego
is torn between a demanding and insatiable id on the one hand, and an upbraiding
superego on the other. Based on this model, far from being a product of stable and given
set of characteristics, the individual's identity is a process resulted from a form of
negotiation between these three parts of the human psyche, the domination of each of
which determines the individual's pattern of behaviour at a specified point in time and
space.
It goes without saying that Freud's ideas, with all their originality, could (and
did) not take shape in a vacuum. Only a few years before he proposed his
psychoanalytic theory, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82) had revolutionized the study
of biology with his theory of evolution based on natural selection. Darwin's
evolutionary theory had substituted the Judeo-Christian story of creation with an
apparently scientific history of evolution. In addition, Darwin's notion of survival and
reproduction instincts was reformulated in Freud's psychoanalytic theory as the
unconscious drives.
Following Freud's contention that man's inner self, and not God or any other
metaphysical being, operates as the center of his unconscious drives, philosophy and

26

psychology parted company with more than good grace. In the final analysis,
psychoanalysis was a human effort to find another ground for thought and experience
other than the metaphysical foundations hitherto presumed to play such a crucial role.
Psychoanalysis, in fact, was a new model to explain human behaviour with reference to
his or her inner processes of thought and consciousness rather than to external forces
and agents. As Richardson notes, "As the hereditarians and environmentalists reached
stalemate, psychoanalysis emerged as a new explanatory model, a means of resisting a
biology that threatened to sweep all before it" (27). Psychoanalysis demonstrated that
human beings were rather less in control of their thoughts and emotions than previously
believed. It presented the conscious mode of the psychic system as just the tip of the
iceberg, thus significantly changing the image of the human subject from a finished and
retouched product into a becoming process. In fact, by dethroning man from the status
of a wholly rational and conscious being, Freud as the father of psychoanalysis
contributed to a new kind of humanism while undermining much of what was
commonly presumed as such. Tony Davies aptly summarizes Freud's legacy of this new
kind of humanism:
Freud saw himself as . . . a humanistic rationalist of the old school,
dispelling error and superstition and throwing the murkiest corners of the
psyche open to the sunlight of scientific reason. But his demonstration of the
fragility of conscious selfhood, its enslavement to irrational drives and
unformulated wishes over which it has little control, removed the
philosophical supports of enlightened rationality and punctured its illusions
of sovereignty. (60)

27

Furthermore, by postulating an unconscious level of the human psyche, Freud's

psychoanalytic theory challenged the hitherto unchallenged notion of a coherent, unified
and integrated modern subject. In other words, he eliminated the self-conscious subject
and substituted it with a decentred, self-deceptive and heterogeneous subject who, more
often than not, was unaware of his/her unconscious motives, fears, hopes and wishes
(Flax 59). Terry Eagleton uses this notion of a decentred subject to offer a critique of
postmodernism:
The postmodern subject is a dispersed, decentred network of
libidinal attachments, emptied of ethical substance and psychical interiority,
the ephemeral function of this or that act of consumption, media experience,
sexual relationship, trend or fashion. ("Illusions" 71)
This notion, however, suffers from a number of flaws. First of all, Eagleton
incorrectly equates the postmodern subject's decentered identity with his/her emptiness
of ethical substance and psychical interiority, thus implying that postmodernism in
general, and the postmodern subject in particular, look down their noses at issues of
ethical significance. Furthermore, this is a bird's-eye view that ignores in its onedimensionality the constitutional tension between idea and reality or realizability, here
of the unique centered character that Eagleton gives universal validity. Such a static
position also ignores the historical circumstances that determine the ideal of character
and its conditioning by time and social change.
Furthermore, the last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the
emergence of the Decadence movement in Euro-American aesthetics. M. H. Abrams
rightly relates this phenomenon to wider social and cultural developments:

28

The emphases of the decadence on drugged perception, sexual

experimentation, and the deliberate inversion of conventional moral, social,
and artistic norms reappeared, with modern variations, in the Beat poets and
novelists of the 1950s and in the counterculture of the decades that
followed. (55)
The term fin de sicle often used to refer to this period is born out of a
biologization of time, indicating an aesthetic cul-de-sac (ibid.; and Richardson 21),
which, I believe, had dynamics of its own making to offer. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(1844-1900) was one of the few intellectuals who sought to put this apparent impasse to
creative, and meanwhile critical use. Until the end of his intellectual life, i.e. when
madness closed around him in 1889, Nietzsche bravely refused to conform to what he
saw as the herd morality, and sought to make an artistic artifact out of what he regarded
as the meaningless chaos of a life without God.

Nietzsche, the Fictionality of the Subject, and a Negotiated Morality

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know": this is Lady Caroline Lamb's unqualified
verdict against Lord Byron (1788-1824), English romantic poet (qtd. in Owen 1). This
harsh judgment, although not about Nietzsche, typifies the Anglo-American response to
him and his philosophy until recent times. The reasons for such feelings ranging from
mild apathy to outright disgust are not far to seek.
Like many other intellectuals, Nietzsche has been gang-pressed into supporting
positions, some of whose implications he has not even survived to witness. In other
words, just as there are significant differences between Marx and Marxism, Nietzsche

29

and Nietzscheanism are as different as one can imagine. Poststructuralism,

postmodernism, atheism, Marxism, nihilism, anarchism, vegetarianism, national
radicalism, Nazism and anti-Semitism are just a few "ism"s which have, explicitly or
implicitly, regarded Nietzsche and his philosophy as their source of inspiration.
Unfortunately enough, in the absence of a coherent and integrated interpretation of his
philosophy, these claims have gone unchallenged for a sufficiently long time for these
(mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations to acquire the irrefutable status of eternal
wisdom. The lack of an integrated and context-oriented interpretation of his ideas has
made him like Moulavi's elephant in the dark. In other words, each of these "ism"s has
taken one or several constituents of his philosophy out of their original context without
having a coherent understanding of the whole.
This

philosophy,

or

more

accurately,

its

misinterpretations

and

misappropriations, have lent support to some ideologies which have been implemented
to justify some of the most horrendous atrocities perpetrated under the name of lifeaffirmation, the overman, the master morality, the last man, and other key concepts in
Nietzsche's philosophy in the course of human history.
Before the Nazi inhabitation of the Nietzsche archive, Nietzsche's sister, in a
probably ill-advised effort to spread her brother's ideas to a wider population, attempted
to bring herself to the good graces of men like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler
(Wicks 125). Elizabeth Nietzsche (1846-1935) assumed editorship of Nietzsche's corpus
following his collapse into insanity in 1889. Her political sympathies, however, may
have been influenced by her marriage to Bernhard forster, an anti-Semitic political
leader. But in the long run, this effort proved extremely damaging to Nietzsche's
reputation and his philosophical ideas. This was how an incisive philosophy was made

30

to serve some of the most absurd and dangerous ideologies forged in history. In fact,
academic negligence on the one hand, and politico-ideological misappropriations on the
other, have formed a vicious circle causing Nietzsche's philosophy to be rejected before
it is even appropriately understood. Nietzsche's ideas have been dexterously
decontextualized, radically distorted, and then unfairly implemented to justify any
imaginable barbarity. Nietzsche's concept of the will to power, for example, although
comprising the power over oneself as a key component, has been interpreted in such a
way as to authorize any form of illegitimate quest for power over others. To make
things even worse, many of Nietzsche's critics from various camps vociferously and
vehemently criticize Nietzsche on the basis of these very decontextualized and distorted
ideas, without even bothering to put these ideas back in the context in which they have
originally been presented.
However, during the second half of the twentieth century, when Nietzsche's
reputation in the English-speaking world was at its lowest ebb, Walter Kauffman, an
migr professor of philosophy at Princeton University sought to make Nietzsche's
ideas accessible to the English-speaking world through the translation of his works into
English. Like any project of such a magnitude, this enterprise could not limit itself to
translation, and inevitably engaged itself with the field of interpretation as well.
Following the publication of his translations, many in the Anglo-American world began
to ask themselves a profoundly disturbing question: if this is what Nietzsche has
actually said, then what all the fuss has been about?
Kaufmann sought through his scholarly translations to re-establish Nietzsche's
damaged reputation. He attempted to comprehensively establish Nietzsche's remoteness
from the Nazism and other irrationalist ideologies that had claimed him as their

31

forebear. That said, Nietzsche's philosophy, with all its valuable insights, has not been
able to recover completely from more than a half-century of undeserved and unfounded
association with German imperialism. It is indisputable that Nietzsche's ideas can be
appropriated in such a way as to give validity to violent and cruel ideologies as that of
the Nazis, but the same is true about Christianity, egalitarian politics and the liberal
humanism providing the basis for the so-called civilizing mission of colonial
imperialism.
Kaufmann's enterprise, however, has inevitably contributed to the AngloAmericanization of Nietzsche and his philosophical ideas, and if we accept the view that
postmodernism is a largely Anglo-American phenomenon (as I readily do), Nietzsche's
philosophy can be seen as playing a highly significant and formative role in shaping
some of the most important ideas associated with postmodern philosophy and reflected
in postmodernist writing, exemplified among others, by Kurt Vonnegut.
I will begin my discussion with a general outline of Nietzsche's distinction
between the apollonian and the Dionysian impulses of the human mind and its
implications for a theory of human subjectivity. In addition, the case is made for some
kind of correspondence between this distinction and Freud's psychoanalytic theory. A
general outline of Nietzsche's ethics and his position with regard to such issues as truth,
morality and Christianity will follow, leading us to the conclusion of this chapter,
namely the relationship between these positions on the one hand, and Nietzsche's
antagonism towards the notion of a unified human subject on the other.

The Apollonian versus the Dionysian: Towards a dialectic of

Nietzsche's philosophy
32

In The Birth of Tragedy, published when Nietzsche was just twenty-seven years
old, he introduces one of the most crucial binary oppositions of his philosophy, namely
that of the Apollonian versus the Dionysian. Nietzsche believed that the Greeks before
Socrates were not only a beautiful people; they were essentially gave free reign to their
instinctual drives and emotional expression, causing them to acquire a matchless
psychological health. He looked at Classic Greece and its culture and civilization as an
ideal against which various aspects of contemporary culture and civilization could be
measured.
But before dealing with his notion of Greek culture and the reasons for its
beauty, let us see why the Greeks have chosen to develop the tragic form in the first
place. In other words, let us deal with the apparent contradiction between the beauty of
the Greek race on the one hand, and its chosen form of expression on the other. The key
to understanding this apparent contradiction, Nietzsche believes, lies in the creative
capacities of suffering. Tragedy is the supreme example of a form of art which provides
invaluable insights into the hitherto unexplored depth and terror of human experience.
In Nietzsche's view, the Greeks developed a tragic art simply because they had the
capacity to "envisage life as an endless cycle of creation and destruction" (Spinks 14).
In fact Nietzsche argues that this ability to cope with this contradiction between beauty
and destruction has contributed to the emergence of the genius of Greek culture:
Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for
what is hard, terrible, evil, problematic in existence, arising from wellbeing, overflowing health, the abundance of existence? Is it perhaps possible
to suffer from overabundance? Attempting and challenging, sharp-eyed

33

courage that craves the terrible as one can crave the enemy, the worthy
enemy, against whom it can test its strength? ("Birth" 3-4)
Nietzsche divides the Greek history into three major periods, each of which is
defined in terms of the relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies
(Wicks 28-9). But before investigating this three-fold style of analysis in greater details,
it is worth mentioning that this type of analysis is not wholly original with Nietzsche. In
fact, it is a common feature of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the
German analytic tradition. This tripartite division was inspired by the three-fold form of
the logical syllogism which Kant had implemented in order to structure his theory of
knowledge (Wicks 158). Schiller, for example, divided human development into the
sensory, aesthetic, and intellectual phases, strikingly similar to Nietzsche's analysis
described below. Hegel too, divided the world of art into the symbolic, classical, and
romantic periods. Finally, Marx divided economic history into feudal, capitalist, and
communist phases (ibid.).
In the pre-classical period, according to Nietzsche's analysis, the feral and unruly
Dionysian energies came to overshadow the more composed and orderly Apollonian
impulses, giving rise to rather unrefined and animalistic cultural groups. These groups
had almost no limitation in expressing the crudest and the most rudimentary forms of
their instinctual drives. The classical era is marked by an optimal balance between these
two apparently opposing forces, allowing the Greeks to develop and express their
natural impulses derived from the Dionysian energies in a more sophisticated and
creative fashion, enabling them to extricate themselves from the more crude and
unsophisticated aspects of these energies. Using Hegel's concept of a dialectical
relationship between opposites, one can argue that this golden age of balance and

34

harmony is the upshot of a dialectical interaction between the Apollonian and the
Dionysian energies, in which the Dionysian energies offer some kind of thesis, later to
be modified by the antithesis of the Apollonian energies, forming through their
interaction a harmonious balance as their synthesis. This similarity notwithstanding,
there is a basic difference between Hegel's concept of dialectical interaction and
Nietzsche's notion of the balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies.
But as Michael tanner observes, unlike Hegel, who encumbers his argument by a
necessarily progressive and rationalistic vision of the formation of the synthesis,
Nietzsche deliberately leaves the binary opposition between appearance versus inner
reality unresolved to make his point (10).
An analogy can also be drawn between this division of human energies into
Apollonian and Dionysian on the one hand, and Freud's division of the psychic system
into the conscious and the unconscious levels on the other. Just as the mental health of
an individual depends to a large extent on a well-balanced relationship between these
two components of the psychic system, the health and vigor of a culture, in Nietzsche's
view, requires a balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian energies: something
allegedly achieved by the Greeks in the classical age.
The post-classic period is, first and foremost, characterized by an unhealthy
repression by the Apollonian energies of the Dionysian impulses, often to the detriment
of the latter, hence of human vitality and creative forces of life. In this stage of relative
stagnation, theory overwhelmingly supercedes action. This antagonism towards theory
anticipates the postmodern distrust of all sorts of theories as mere imposition of specific
perspectives on the universe.

35

Closely related to this theory is Nietzsche's criticism of the classical definition of

man as the "rational animal." Nietzsche believed that such a definition unduly
prioritized man's rational part over his driving force of life, thus downplaying the
significance and power of instinct as the driving power of life itself.
As mentioned at the beginning of the present chapter, Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
has often been identified as the founder of rationalistic thinking. This does not mean
that before Socrates no rational being lived under the Sun, but that Socrates, by
introducing knowledge as the way towards salvation, contributed to the development of
a subject-object dichotomy which came to be used as the basis for a rationalistic mode
of thinking in the Western philosophical tradition. Nietzsche's view on this Socratic
influence on our present-day attitude towards knowledge and truth is worthy enough to
be quoted ad verbum:
Our entire modern world . . . recognizes the theory-driven person
of whom Socrates is the archetype and forefather as the ideal, as someone
who is armed with the highest powers of knowledge, and who works in the
service of science. All of our education strategies have essentially this ideal
in view; every other type of existence has to drag itself up from the
sidelines, as a merely permitted, and not really desired, type. (qtd. in Wicks
29)
This excerpt clearly illustrates Nietzsche's position with regard to rationalistic
modes of thinking. Nietzsche heavily criticized the dichotomies of science versus myth,
subject versus object, truth versus metaphor, and philosophy versus poetry:
He who recalls the immediate consequences of this restlessly
progressing spirit of science will realize at once that myth was annihilated

36

by it, and that, because of this annihilation, poetry was driven like a
homeless being from her natural ideal soil. If we have been right in
assigning to music the power of again giving birth to myth, we may
similarly expect to find the spirit of science on the path where it inimically
opposes this mythopoeic power of music. (qtd. in Wicks 38)
The only grounds acceptable to Nietzsche for distinguishing between statements
are the strength, authenticity and beauty with which they are uttered (qtd. in Davies 37).
In spite of his profound and serious misgivings about the creative lie, Nietzsche always
ridiculed the love of knowledge as an ideal enterprise (Megill 54-8).

Nietzsche and the Illusion of Truth

Nietzsche's antagonism towards the Socratic rationalistic mode of thinking

anticipates much of what is at stake in the rejection by some radical postmodernists of
the whole notion of theory and theorization. If, as Baudrillard asserts, the secret of
theory lies in the nonexistence of truth (qtd. in Rosenau 77), then it follows that
Nietzsche's opposition to this mode of thinking can have far-reaching implications for
discussions of truth and morality so prevalent amongst postmodernists belonging to
both the radical and the moderate camps. This brings us to the discussion of Nietzsche
and his take of the concept of truth, and its implications for a pragmatic and
nonessentialist morality, advocated by many postmodernists.

Nietzsche and the Concept of Truth

37

Rather than accepting truth as something transcendent and immutable, Nietzsche

attempts to offer a history of its constitution and origin. Talking about a history of the
constitution and origin of truth may strike some as surprising, but this is one of the most
challenging aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. We commonly assume truth to be
expressive of an objective and value-free statement about the universe and its
phenomena. In other words, truth in this sense is thought to represent a timeless and
immutable touchstone by means of which we come to establish a relationship between
thought and experience. Furthermore, much of what is offered as philosophy rests on a
supposedly evident distinction between truth and value. According to this distinction,
values are concepts used by a culture to regulate itself, varying in different times and
places, while truth is regarded as a timeless and unchanging transcendent concept
establishing an objective relationship between thought and experience.
Nietzsche's first step in offering a critique of the history and constitution of truth
was to reject the hither-to given distinction between truth and metaphor. At first glance,
these two terms seem to be as much incompatible with each other as one might wish. As
noted above, truths are thought to offer an objective relationship between thought and
experience. Metaphors, on the other hand, are presumed to offer insights of a
completely different kind. For instance, when Shakespeare says "life's but a walking
shadow", he is actually superimposing a metaphoric language (walking shadow) on a
presumably real experience (life). In fact, Shakespeare offers a dramatic and vivid
image of a real experience through poetic language. This language creates a perspective
upon the world that does not exist in the world. Therefore, the relation between literal
and metaphoric has, more often than not, been defined in terms of a binary opposition in

38

which the latter is presented as a subordinate type of subjective expression, while the
former stands for objectivity and pure truth.
Nietzsche traces the origins of this allegedly tendentious binary opposition to
Plato and his concept of the world of ideas. As noted above, Plato believed that this
world and its phenomena are only shadows of a higher reality, namely that of the world
of ideas. The world of ideas, in Plato's philosophy, is where the truth of a thing resides.
This very argument, I believe, has evolved into condemnation by Plato of any kind of
literature not specifically concerned with moral or national issues. This argument gives
him carte blanche to dismiss poets from his ideal republic.
Nietzsche, however, believed that by inventing the concept of spirit and the good
in itself, Plato had committed a dogmatist's mistake, namely that of mistaking a
subjective perspective on life for an absolute and objective ideal ("Beyond" 32). Far
from believing in the existence of an ideal and transcendent value called "truth",
Nietzsche saw what is commonly regarded as truth as a way of establishing the
coherence and validity of a particular way of life. This is commonly known as
Nietzsche's perspectivism, according to which "there can only ever be imperfect
interpretations and never absolute truths about the world" (Robinson 21).
Another implication of Plato's notion of an ideal truth is that the value of a
particular judgement is often measured in terms of its alleged truth or falseness.
Nietzsche, however, in Beyond Good and Evil refutes this notion by arguing that the
falseness of a judgement does not necessarily mean that it has no value at all (35-6).
Nietzsche was of the opinion that the weak often preserve themselves by constantly
lying, cheating, flattering, camouflaging and other such means. In the interests of
survival, keeping false appearances seems to be something of a necessity and not so

39

objectionable after all. In other words, the Nietzschean perspective on life is not a moral
one (Wicks 42).
Nietzsche uses another argument to justify his critique of the notion of an ideal
and transcendental concept like truth. He contends that there is no clear-cut and sharplydefined line of demarcation between truth and metaphor. Based on this notion, truths are
merely metaphors whose illusory nature has been forgotten through long usage and
habit, probably in the interests of preserving the coherence of human interactions. In
other words, Nietzsche argues that there is no truth in the absolute and unqualified sense
of the word, and that what we come to accept as such is merely another perspective
(amongst many others) which help us impose a sense of coherence and meaningfulness
on an otherwise irrational and chaotic existence:
What, then, is truth? A movable army of metaphors, metonymies,
anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been
subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration,
and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as
firmly established, canonical and binding; truths are illusions of which we
have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn
by frequent use and have lost all sensual vigour, coins which, having lost
their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins. ("On Truth"
146)

Nietzschean Ethics?
The above discussion takes us to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy, namely,
the relationship between this philosophy and ethics. For many, talking about Nietzsche's

40

ethics seems something like a puzzling oxymoron. The misinterpretations of his ideas
and their undeserved association with the ideology of German imperialism partly
account for suspicions of this kind. But Nietzsche could (and did not) take an indifferent
position with regard to ethical challenges as one of the most crucial aspects of human
existence. Here again, I begin my discussion of Nietzsche's ethics by a surprising
observation: that Nietzsche subjects ethics to the same genealogical anatomy as truth. In
other words, Nietzsche offers a genealogical analysis of ethics and ethical values in an
attempt to extricate himself from another given, namely that of the objective and
intrinsic preference of these values over their opposites in the form of binary
oppositions with rigid and inflexible boundaries.
In his critique of ethics and ethical values, Nietzsche concentrates specifically on
Christian ethics as the prevalent ethics of contemporary Western culture. But his
critique can be extended to include a more than significant body of ethical doctrines,
more often than not, with religious underpinnings.
In On the Genealogy of Morality, first published in German in 1887, Nietzsche
presented the argument that Judeo-Christian ethics had been forged as a strategy of
survival by a powerless caste (the Jews) in an attempt to gain power over their
oppressors (31). In other words, far from reflecting timeless and transcendental values,
this ethics was just another particular perspective on existence in order to give
dominance to human(e) traits such as meekness, submissiveness, and the abandonment
of sensual and worldly pleasures previously regarded as worthless. This ethics was,
according to Nietzsche, a clever stratagem on the part of the so-called slaves in order to
guarantee their survival against the so-called masters. In fact, the slaves had turned their
weaknesses into praiseworthy virtues in a systematic attempt (1) to gain a greater share

41

of power, and (2) to give meaning to an otherwise unjust and unfair deal called life. But
Nietzsche saw this and other similar moralities as an obstacle towards the affirmation by
human beings of life. He believed that by postulating the existence of another world-tocome that will redeem earthly experience, Judeo-Christian and other similar moralities
make their followers less able to cope with earthly life.
Nietzsche responded to this situation by the introduction of the ubermensch
(variously translated as "superman" or "overman") as his ideal human being into his
philosophy. Nietzsche believed that the bermensch, through subjecting his values to a
thorough reevaluation, is able to extricate himself from moralism and the fiction of free
will.
The prefix "uber" (meaning over) merits more attention. This prefix can be
interpreted in two different, but meanwhile complementary ways. "uber" connotes
"over" in the sense of height and elevation. It suggests the realization of mankind's
highest self into an experience of being that is the upshot of overcoming moralism. This
"uber" can also be taken to denote "across" or "beyond", and this is the essence of
Nietzsche's characterization of man as a bridge we have to pass across in order to
achieve an ideal form of life and its affirmation. This latter meaning is expressed by
Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the following excerpt:
Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman a rope over
an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous
looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying staying-still. What is
great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man
is that he is a going-across and a going-down. ("Thus" 43-4)

42

As this excerpt clearly shows, contrary to the humanist tradition of

anthropomorphism which sees man as the final goal, Nietzsche sees him as a transition
point leading to a yet more sophisticated being, namely the superman. In this sense,
Nietzsche has often been regarded as the doyen of philosophical antihumanists (Davies
35). Of course, the relationship between humanism and antihumanism, like most other
binary oppositions, is not one of pure negation. In other words, each of the two sides of
this opposition has close affinities with the other which it purports to negate. Nietzsche
is not an exception to this general rule. He serves the humanist goals of intellectual
emancipation and enlightenment, articulated around a recognizable ethic of human
potentials and limitations.
Another component of Nietzsche's critique of the notion of an absolute morality
consists of his attack on the notion of a transcendent being as the sole determinant of
right and wrong. He believed that man's belief in such a transcendent entity was caused
by his inability to create new values for himself. In other words, in the absence of a
creative will to create these new values, man clings to faith in such an entity in search of
other "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not"s (Nietzsche, "Gay" 289).
Nietzsche saw the theocentrism of Judeo-Christian morality as the culmination
of the descent of divine types. Of course, his critique was not an indiscriminate offense
against all divine types, but was specifically pointed towards a particular conception of
God, namely the Christian conception:
The Christian conception of God . . . is one of the most corrupt
conceptions of God that has ever been attained on this planet; it represents,
perhaps, the low watermark in the descending development of divine types.
God devolved into the contradiction of life, instead of its transfiguration and

43

eternal Yes! God is the expression of hostility against life, against nature,
against the will to life. God is the formula for every slander against this life,
for every lie about the next life! God is nothingness turned into a god, the
will to nothingness pronounced holy! (qtd. in Wicks 55)
The Gay Science, published in German in 1882 is a work of five books and
nearly four hundred aphorisms, containing some of Nietzsche's most radical critiques of
the theocentric ethics so prevalent in his time. Despite its funny and sometimes
colloquial style, this work is highly challenging, and presents a more or less accurate
image of the scope and ambition of Nietzsche's intellectual project. In this work,
Nietzsche offered, for the first time, his notorious notion of the death of god:
The greatest recent event that God is dead, that the belief in the
Christian god has become unbelievable is already beginning to cast its first
shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes the suspicion in
whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some sun seems
to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt;
to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more
mistrustful, stranger, older. But in the main one may say: The event itself is
far too great, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension
even for the tidings of it to be thought of having arrived as yet. Much less
may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really
means, and how much must collapse now that this faith has been
undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown in
it; for example, the whole of our European morality. (279)

44

This passage clearly illustrates the elitist nature of Nietzsche's notion of the
death of God. While claiming that this event is gradually dawning over Europe,
Nietzsche admits that only a few are privileged with the ability to comprehend the full
significance of this event and its wide range of implications for issues of a moral stamp.
Indeed, this highly elitist notion is compatible with Nietzsche's opposition to equality
before God as the spurious illusion of the masses. Nietzsche's definition of a higher type
of man clearly indicates his profound hostility to the notion of equality before God.
Another constructive approach to gain a more accurate understanding of
Nietzsche's notion of the death of God would be to relate this argument to a major
component of Freud's psychoanalytic theory, namely the Oedipus complex. Freud
argued that the child, at a certain stage of his/her development, has a sexual desire
towards the parent of the opposite sex, and looks at the parent of the same sex as a rival
to be overcome. The realization of this scenario is quite consistent with an individual's
sense of personal autonomy, but since the realization of this scenario is not practicable
under normal circumstances, the child finally learns to accept his/her role and abandon
his/her desire for the parent of the opposite sex. As Robert Wicks has argued, just as
when one is free from the dominating forces of his/her parents, one is able to creatively
engage in forging one's own values and to regard oneself as a unique person, the death
of God proclaimed by Nietzsche gives the individual the ability to create his/her own
values in a higher level of cultural consciousness (58). In other words, while Freud
presents personal autonomy in terms of individual development, Nietzsche uses the
notion of God's death at a higher level of cultural consciousness.

Nietzsche and Nationalism: Towards a Postmodern Disbelief

45

Another important point concerning the excerpt quoted above is that Nietzsche
apparently extends the alleged collapse of the belief in the Christian God to other
totalizing systems of thought, and contends that with the collapse of faith in God, such
systems no longer have the prestige and validity that they previously enjoyed. However,
he acknowledges that the appeal to a transcendental or higher world or being is
inseparable from the decline of the creative will, hence the persistence of totalizing
systems of belief such as scientism, patriotism or revolutionary politics that identify
absolute value in terms of abstract concepts such as nation, progress, freedom,
democracy or universal rights.
The issue of nationalism and national identity is a case in point. Like any other
totalizing system of belief, nationalism creates a series of binary oppositions in order to
define itself in terms of one of the sides of these oppositions. It forges a sense of
belonging by attaching emotional significance to a specific geographical territory or a
particular historical construction of a group of people. Nationalism consolidates this
sense of belonging through the use of a national anthem (often expressive of loyalty to
the national identity and commemorating the heroic past), a national flag (as a symbol
of national pride and identity), and abstract concepts such as patriotism.
In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche tries to demonstrate that the feeling of
possessing a distinct national identity often manifests itself in the form of nationalistic
ideologies. Naturally enough, however, these ideologies cannot and are not meant to
constantly coincide in a conflict-free environment. Conflicts arise and war becomes an
allegedly necessary evil for the protection of national identity and national interests.
Nietzsche regards this enthusiastic feeling of belonging as the depletion of
natural energies that could otherwise be put to appropriate cultural use ("Human" 481).

46

But Nietzsche sees these surges of nationalistic sentiments just as a transient

countercurrent which futilely resists the integration mechanism which works inexorably
towards the final amalgamation of all the world's people. In the final analysis, it can be
said that By postulating the collapse of such totalizing systems as nationalism,
Nietzsche attempts to dissolve God's shadow following his death, or more accurately,
his murder. Interestingly, this argument anticipates Lyotard's concept of narrative crisis
in the postmodern era, of which more later on.

Nietzsche and the Modern Subject

Nietzsche extended the scope of his critique of the Socratic rationalistic
thinking, itself based on a subject-object dichotomy, to the notion of a coherent human
subject. Nietzsche challenged the notion of a thinking and feeling human subject with
the ability for logical and causal reasoning (Rosenau 44). Perhaps one can claim him as
one of the precursors of the postmodern antisubject position. Nietzsche's critique of one
of the most important tenets of humanism in his own time was based on its association
with subject, Christianity and transcendence. It was only by positing the existence of a
coherent and unified human subject that Judeo-Christian and other similar ethical
systems could impose their universalistic values on individuals. The notion of subject,
according to Nietzsche, imposes the ideal of being on the fact of becoming, thus stifling
the creative naturalness of strength.
Nietzsche also uses his critique of truth and metaphor to offer a challenge to the
concept of the self. One of the most important flaws of metaphysical thought, he
believes, is that it presupposes a substance or subject behind appearances, bestowing
meaning on these appearances. Nietzsche explains this presupposition in terms of a

47

linguistic determinism. This notion seems to require a more detailed explanation. "I
think, therefore I am": this is Descartes's famous argument in defending the notion of a
coherent and unified human subject. But Nietzsche argues that this argument is merely a
formulation of our grammatical habit, namely that of postulating a doer for what is
done. Simply put, Western linguistic systems portray the world in subject-predicate
terms in such a way that we always see everything in terms of a performer-performance
dichotomy:
The spirit, something that thinks: where possible even absolute, pure
spirit this conception is a second derivative of that false introspection
which believes in thinking: first an act is imagined which simply does not
occur, "thinking', and secondly a subject-substratum in which every act of
thinking, and nothing else, has its origin: that is to say, both the deed and the
doer are fictions. ("Will" 264)
Nietzsche challenged the commonplace assumption so prevalent in metaphysical
systems of thought like those of Descartes and Rousseau, according to which the subject
"I" is the precondition of the predicate "think" ("Beyond" 47). For Nietzsche, the
problem with this way of conceiving the relationship between the doer and the deed is
that the latter is seen as an effect of a sovereign and independent subject with the ability
to recognize the world as a self-evident entity, i.e. as a thing in itself. Far from seeing
the doer and the deed as two distinct entities, Nietzsche regards the former as containing
merely an interpretation of the latter, and thus not as belong to the deed itself. Based on
this view, Nietzsche arrives at the startling conclusion that the doer and the deed are
fictions whose creation had been made possible through our linguistic structures in the
first place ("Will" 264).

48

Interestingly, Nietzsche's critique of the notion of a unified and transcendent

subject anticipates the death of the subject declared by many postmodernists. Jameson,
for example argues that "one of the key themes in contemporary critical theory that is
enthusiastically taken up by postmodernism is the death of the subject itself the end of
the bourgeois monad or ego or individual" ("Postmodernism" 15).
What, then, is the consequence of such a view for issues of ethical significance?
Nietzsche believes that once the distinction is made between actions on the one hand,
and an independent and responsible self on the other, it becomes possible to judge
people in moral terms, i.e. according to their adherence to certain social and political
norms. In this sense, Christian morality, for which the idea of free will seems to be selfevident, turns into an elocution of judgement rather than a rhetoric of emancipation.
To sum up, from Socrates onward, a rationalistic mode of thinking has come to
dominate Western thought, based on which there is an autonomous human subject with
full awareness of his/her actions. This notion, with occasional modifications and
revisions, has come to be recognized as the cornerstone of major philosophies and belief
systems up to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Freud's
psychoanalytic theory and Nietzsche's wholesale attack on morality in the traditional
sense contributed to the demise of this theory.
Freud's psychoanalytic theory demonstrated that far from a unified and totally
self-conscious entity, the human subject is actually made up of fragments of forgotten
memories, fears and hopes which have gone into his/her making since his/her
childhood. He strove to offer a model of the psychic system in which the irrational was
regarded as important in terms of force as, if not more important than, the rational in

49

terms of form. In other words, he tried to show that the human subject was not, after all,
as self-controlling and rational as previously believed.
Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of the distinction between truth and metaphor, of
the separation of subject and object, of totalizing systems of thought and belief, and
finally of the theocentrism of traditional morality played a crucial role in undermining
the philosophical foundations of a unified and coherent subject. Foucault believed that
Nietzsche was the founder of the uniquely sceptical philosophy now called
"postmodern." He argues that "Nietzsche marks the threshold beyond which
contemporary philosophy can begin to start thinking again; and he will no doubt
continue for a long while to dominate its advance ("Order" 353-54). The main point of
Nietzsche's critique of traditional morality, as Robinson observes, is that "moral beliefs
usually have a dubious historical pedigree, and hide their less attractive motives and
purposes" (73).
In sum, both Freud and Nietzsche saw religion as illusory, and engaged in a
human effort to find another foundation for thought and experience other than the
divine. These efforts paved the way for the establishment, or at least the promulgation
of nonessentialist and nonuniversalist types of morality based on pragmatic
considerations rather than dogmatic categorizations. This forms the essence of the
postmodern humanism of which, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, Vonnegut is
one of the most eloquent exponents.

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CHAPTER III:

Cat's Cradle: Theory Behind Fiction

"God doesn't care what becomes of us, and neither does nature, so we'd better
care. We're all there is to care." Kurt Vonnegut
"If Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's masterpiece, Cat's Cradle is a close
runner-up" (Tomedi 39). While sharing some characteristics with mainstream
postmodernist fiction, it has also some common features with science fiction, causing
many to ignore Vonnegut's serious message for the whole human race by simply
categorizing this and other fictions written by him as absurdist, or sf at best. Of course,
this observation should not be viewed as denigrating the status of sf and its
contributions to the growth of responsible and committed literature, but rather, it
indicates the extent to which academic categorizations can be misleading if not properly
applied.
Part of the problem is caused by what Larry McCaffery calls "the . . . collapse of
hierarchical distinctions between high and low art, between official high culture and
popular or mass culture, in the postmodern period" (qtd. in McHale, "Constructing"
225).
This chapter seeks (1) to establish the status of Cat's Cradle as a postmodern
work of fiction, (2) to exonerate this work and its author from accusations of nihilism
and pessimism often pointed at them, and (3) to illustrate that by deconstructing some of
the most important metanarratives of American society, this work of fiction can be
regarded as the harbinger to one of the most sustained critiques of the project of
modernity, i.e. Lyotard's notion of a narrative crisis in the postmodern era. To this end, I
51

begin my discussion of this work of fiction by looking at the ways in which it can be
regarded as a postmodernist fiction. A brief account of Lyotard's notion of
metanarratives and their demise in the postmodern era will follow, and then I shall
discuss how Vonnegut, by deconstructing religion and scientism as two of America's
most important grand narratives, attempts to offer a humanist solution to the challenges
that a postmodern and rapidly advancing society like that of the united States may
present.

The Postmodernism of Cat's Cradle

In terms of both form and content, there are a number of elements linking Cat's
Cradle to mainstream postmodernist fiction. In what follows, I shall try to explore some
of these elements with specific reference to Cat's Cradle in more details.
At the beginning of Cat's Cradle we are told by the narrator that he is going to
write a factual book concerning the events of August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (14). The nuclear attack on Hiroshima in 1945
is common historical knowledge, and it should not come as a surprise if an author
chooses to write a historical novel based on this historical event. In fact, Vonnegut
chooses irving Langmuir (1881-1957), American Nobelist in surface chemistry as the
model for one of the major characters of his novel, Felix Hoenikker. But what McHale
calls the "non-contradiction restraint" on the tradition of historical fiction begins and
ends just at this point ("Postmodernist" 87). By this restraint, McHale means that
"historical . . . persons, events . . . can only be introduced on condition that the
properties and actions attributed to them in the text do not actually contradict the official
historical record" (87).

52

If we take the traditional form of historical fiction practiced by writers such as

Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper or Leo Tolstoi as the norm against which to
evaluate other works in the same vein, then a fantastic historical fiction is necessarily
something of an anomaly. But Vonnegut, by offering a mixture of the fantastic and the
historical, attempts to foreground the artificiality and Fictionality of the fictional world,
while offering a critique of the way in which science has been made to contribute to one
of the most horrific experiences in human history, i.e. the use of nuclear weapons
against a sovereign state. This indicates that As Peter Reed observes, "The fantastic
offers perception into the quotidian, rather than escape from it" (77). In other words,
these fantastic elements "give Vonnegut a chance to show what is happening here in
ours; it is a way of exposing negative influences that might make things turn out a little
differently, or a means of pointing out what is really going on" (Tomedi 121).
The narrator's quest for factual information, on the other hand, sets up one of the
most important themes of Cat's Cradle, i.e. the futility of any quest for wholly objective
truths. Postmodernism has often been accused of irresponsibility by practically effacing
"all sense of the difference between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, serious and
non-serious discourse" (Norris 2). But as Gerhard Hoffmann observes, "Postmodern
narrative is indeed the most philosophical narrative in the history of the genre" (163).
Furthermore, as Todd F. Davis rightly argues, "the reality of Postmodernity lies in its
awareness of the constructed nature of truth and the ensuing efforts to allow voices,
once silenced by the modern monomyth of one essential "truth," to speak from the
margins" ("Kurt" 14). This argument is highly reminiscent of Nietzsche's view
regarding the metaphorical and interpretive nature of truth mentioned in the previous
chapter.

53

"Call me Jonah" (11), reads the first sentence of the novel. This raises issues
regarding the narrator's identity, itself one of the most important preoccupations of
postmodern philosophy. This sentence also echoes the famous first line of Melville's
Moby Dick, whose narrator, Ishmael, becomes the only survival of Ahab's idiotic quest
for the white whale (Tomedi 45). Similarly, John/Jonah, the narrator in Cat's Cradle
survives an apocalypse to tell the tale. Furthermore, near the end of the novel, the
narrator describes the "fearful hump" of Mount McCabe as a "blue whale" (214).
The Narrator's name also contains a highly suggestive allusion to the story of
Jonah, an eight-century bc Hebrew prophet. According to the Old Testament, God
commands Jonah to "go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their
wickedness has come up before me" (1:2). But Jonah attempts to escape from "the
presence of the Lord" (1:3-10). A tempest arises, mariners cast Jonah overboard on his
own request, and he is swallowed by a "great fish" (1:17). Jonah prays from the belly of
the fish (2:1-9), is subsequently vomited out . . . upon the dry land (2:10), and is
commanded to return to Nineveh . . . and "proclaim to it the message that I tell you"
(3:2). Jonah Preaches (3:3-4), the people repent (3:5-9), and God, seeing their works,
spares them (3:10).
If we carry this analogy to its logical conclusion, America turns out to be the
Nineveh of the contemporary age, and the fictional Jonah is the prophet who is to rescue
it from its impending dark fate. But whether it would be too late for the people (the
American people) to correct their ways remains to be seen. In fact, as Richard Giannone
observes, "Vonnegut implies through his novelistic use of Jonah that science has led us
so far astray that the enormous cry of Old Testament prophecy is needed to correct the
course of life" (56).

54

The use of metafictional techniques is another element linking Cat's Cradle to

mainstream postmodernist fiction. Patricia Waugh defines Metafiction as "a term given
to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its
status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and
reality" (2). Indeed, the use of metafictional techniques is hardly original with
postmodernist writers. As early as the second half of the eighteenth century, Tristram
Shandy begs his reader's attention by appealing to such techniques: "bear with me and
let me go on and tell my story in my own way" (15). But what distinguishes the
postmodern use of Metafiction, as Malcolm Bradbury judiciously argues, "is its relation
to the public and social fictions that surround it, and its attempt to find a mode of
discovery and exploration within them" ("Intimations" 204).
Classic realism, by referring to historical events and personages, attempts to
authenticate the fictional world, and thus hide the ontological joint between fact and
fiction. Coleridge's notion of the willing suspension of disbelief clearly reflects such an
attitude. But postmodernist fictions like Cat's Cradle exactly underscore such
ontological joints, thus problematizing the relationship between fact and fiction.
"Nothing in this book is true" ("Cat's" 4). This epigraph practically turns coleridge's
notion of the willing suspension of disbelief into the willing suspension of belief. In
other words, this epigraph foregrounds the fictionality of the world of the novel, thus
challenging the camouflage strategies used by classic realist fiction in order to conceal
the constructed nature of the fictional world in particular, and that of the language in
general. But as Roland Barthes observes, "These facts of language were not perceptible
so long as literature pretended to be a transparent expression of either objective calendar
time or of psychological subjectivity . . . as long as literature maintained a totalitarian

55

ideology of the referent, or more commonly speaking, as long as literature was realistic"
("To Write" 138). Patricia Waugh means virtually the same thing when she argues that
"far from dying, the novel has reached a mature recognition of its existence as writing,
which can only ensure its continued viability in and relevance to a contemporary world
which is similarly beginning to gain awareness of precisely how its values and practices
are constructed and legitimized" (19).
In other words, through the use of metafictional techniques, postmodernist
writers such as Vonnegut attempt to illustrate that contrary to the common assumptions
of classic realism, "Novels do not depict life, they depict life as it is represented by
ideology" (L. Davis 24).
The term "postmodern" has often been associated with hybridity. Genetically, a
hybrid is defined as the offspring of different parents or stock. Almost since its
inception as a distinct literary genre, the novel has been looked upon as a serious art, not
to be mixed with other non-serious, and allegedly inferior types of discourse. But the
theories of Jacques Derrida and other deconstructionists contributed to the demise of
binary oppositions, one of which is held between serious (allegedly superior) and nonserious (allegedly inferior) types of discourse.
This elimination of such binary oppositions accounts for another important
characteristic of Cat's Cradle also shared by many other postmodern works of fiction,
i.e. the inclusion of elements borrowed from often marginalized literary genres such as
science fiction. Given the accessibility of such forms to a wider audience, their use may
be regarded as a positive development:
These forms not only are entirely appropriate as vehicles to express
the serious concerns of the present day, but are forms to which a wide

56

audience has access and with which it is already familiar. The use of popular
forms in serious fiction is therefore crucial for undermining narrow and
rigid critical definitions of what constitutes, or is appropriately to be termed
"good literature." Their continuous assimilation into serious fiction is also
crucial if the novel is to remain a viable form. (86)
A more simplified version of the same argument is presented by Farrell, who
argues that "Like other examples of postmodern art, such as Andy Warhol's paintings of
soup cans, Vonnegut's writing blurs the line between high and low culture" (ix).
Vonnegut himself describes his novels as "mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny
chips; and each chip is a joke" (Allen 91).
In his seminal study of the structure of science fiction as a literary genre, Darko
Suvin introduces the idea of a novum. He defines novum as a confrontation with, and a
contradiction to the empirical givens of this world, "a strange newness" (4). Robert
Scholes qualifies this definition by arguing that fabulation, by which he means science
fiction, "offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know,
yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way" ("Structural" 29).
In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut introduces the ice-nine as a novum in order to create
a world radically different from ours. As Vonnegut himself says, Langmuir had shared
the idea of a form of ice which could remain frozen at room temperature With H. G.
Wells, the famous British sf writer, but Wells showed no interest, and Vonnegut used
the idea in Cat's Cradle (qtd. in Tomedi 42).
In addition to the elements mentioned above, there are some other elements
linking Cat's Cradle to mainstream postmodernist fiction. Cat's Cradle consists of 127
chapters, the length of some of which is even less than one single page. This strategy

57

helps remind the reader of the Fictionality of the text. In other words, in a text that deals
primarily with harmless untruths (foma) which govern our lives, Vonnegut tries to
demonstrate that his novel is just as manmade as are the reasons we invent for living.
Like our experience of everyday life, each chapter, as Vonnegut himself notes, is
nothing but "one day's work, and each one is a joke" ("Man" 128).
In addition, Vonnegut introduces the island of San Lorenzo as a Caribbean
country adjacent to the united States, thus disrupting the reader's geographical
knowledge. In doing so, Vonnegut creates what McHale calls a "zone" ("Postmodernist"
45). This zone is created through the superimposition of a new geographical space on an
already familiar one. Cat's Cradle was written just one year after the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Albert E. Stone sees this geographical similarity as a significant point. Focusing
on Frank's portion of ice-nine which freezes the ocean first in San Lorenzo, he poses the
argument that the fictional Third World Caribbean country accomplishes what the
Cuban Missile Crisis closely fails to achieve (63).
Having introduced some of the most crucial elements linking Cat's Cradle to
mainstream postmodernist fiction in terms of both form and content, I shall now discuss
the philosophical and theoretical linkages between this work of fiction and
postmodernist philosophy. To this end, Lyotard's notion of the incredulity towards
metanarratives in the postmodern era and its two most important critiques will be briefly
introduced, followed by an account of how Cat's Cradle, by deconstructing some of
these metanarratives belonging to American society, anticipates much of what is at
stake in Lyotard's theory of the narrative crisis in the postmodern era.

Lyotard and the Politics of Disbelief

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Whence have we come? Whither are we going? what are we here for anyway? In
other words, what is the meaning of life? These are some of the most important
questions facing humanity since times immemorial. It is in response to such
philosophical challenges that various systems of belief have sought to present a
meaningful account of the universe and the ways it works. Eclecticism seems to be the
norm for all, or at least a significant majority of such systems. In other words, each of
these systems seeks to offer an all-embracing account of existence.
In his seminal study entitled The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, Jean-Francois Lyotard (1928-98) offers his theory of the demise of grand
narratives and metanarratives in the postmodern era. He makes a distinction between
grand narratives as the governing principles of modernity on the one hand, and
metanarratives as the legitimizing structures of science on the other. I, however, use
these concepts synonymously in order to avoid a great deal of unnecessary
complications. Furthermore, Lyotard makes a rather nuanced distinction between
narratives of speculation and those of emancipation (35-6), a distinction which I have
not observed for the same reason.
Based on such a definition, religion, scientism, nationalism etc. can be regarded
as the major grand narratives of modernity, which, according to Lyotard, have been
seriously challenged in the postmodern era. Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle exemplifies such a
challenge. But before dealing with Cat's Cradle and its deconstruction of some of
America's most crucial grand narratives, a closer look at Lyotard's theory and its most
important critiques seems useful.

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Lyotard famously defines Postmodernism as a distrust towards the

metanarratives of the past, of the epistemological narratives inherent in our collective
cultural memorynarratives that help us define and make sense of the past (xxiv).
Elsewhere he succinctly defines the postmodern as "an incredulity toward
metanarratives" (72).
The status of knowledge constitutes the backbone of Lyotard's theory. The basis
of his argument is that "the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is
known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern
age" (3). Lyotard makes the case for a change in the status of knowledge in the
postmodern era:
Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will
be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production.: in both cases, the
goal is exchange. (4)
Elsewhere, he laments the separation of scientific activities from human
concerns:
Research and the spread of learning are not justified by invoking a
principle of usefulness. The idea is not at all that science should serve the
interests of the state and/or civil society. The humanist principle that
humanity rises up in dignity and freedom through knowledge is left by the
wayside. (31)
Finally, He divides knowledge into narrative and scientific categories, arguing
that "scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always
existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge,
which I will call narrative" (7).

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Like Michel Foucault, Lyotard relates the concept of knowledge to the notion of
power by posing two fundamental questions: "who decides what knowledge is, and who
knows what needs to be decided" (9)? In keeping with such a viewpoint, Lyotard holds
the political institutions of a society responsible for the formation and establishment of
such narratives: The institutions of a society, especially the politically charged ones,
are not content to simply knowthey also legislate. That is, they formulate
prescriptions that have the status of norms" (31). Madan Sarup, however, preserves this
legislative role for those governing principles rather than political institutions, arguing
that "Narratives (popular stories, myths, legends and tales) bestow legitimacy upon
social institutions . . . They thus define what has the right to be said and done in the
culture in question" (135).
It was perhaps a practical consequence of his theory that Lyotard, as
Dave Robinson notes, "rejected his earlier commitment to the political
certainties of Marxism and the French Communist party" (Robinson 42).
Again to quote Robinson, "According to Lyotard, the Marxist grand
narrative ignores the libidinal drives of human beings, or in Nietzschean
terms, their Dionysian nature" (ibid.). Other totalizing accounts do not fare
much better in Lyotard's philosophical scheme. They too are subjected to
the same epistemological and ontological challenges as the grand narratives
of Marxism and Communism. Of course, Lyotard is not alone in making a
case for the collapse of grand narratives of modernity. Douglas Kellner, for
example, argues that "the tradition of modern philosophy was destroyed by
its vacuous and impossible dreams of a foundation for philosophy, an
absolute bedrock of truth that could serve as the guarantee of philosophical

61

systems" (240). Glenn Ward also challenges various so-called grand

narratives by arguing that "forms of knowledge build themselves up on
certain centres and origins that have no basis in reality" (29).
Lyotard's critique and other similar theories are, more than anything else,
pointed at the project of modernity as defined by its alleged progress towards
transcendental ideas such as truth, enlightenment, justice, etc. There are, however,
important challenges to Lyotard's theory of the final collapse of grand narratives, to
which I shall now turn. But it should be noted that most of such criticisms are applied to
the whole postmodernism as a distinct project, but since postmodernism, at least in its
philosophical dimensions, has come to be identified with Lyotard's theory, these
critiques do have implications for this theory as well as for postmodernism as the
philosophical system based on this theory.
The first critique of this and other similar theories concerns the relationship
between postmodernism as a philosophical system on the one hand, and capitalism as
the allegedly dominant world system on the other. Again, the Hegelian concept of
dialecticism may be of much help as an analytical tool. Simply put, Hegel believed that
the dialectic process between a thesis and an antithesis finally leads to the formation of
a well-balanced synthesis. Hegel saw the final realization of justice and freedom as a
sign of recognition as the final synthesis, and implied that his own period was the
culmination of such an optimal balance.
The Hegelian concept of an optimal synthesis forms the common basis of the
capitalist and Marxist critiques of postmodernism. In other words, if the idea of history
as a progressive entity is taken to be true, then it necessarily follows that the realization
of such an ideal might not be so far-fetched after all.

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Some advocates of the capitalist system, based on a positive attitude towards

such a system argue that capitalism has offered the final synthesis, and that
postmodernism has nothing to offer to add as an antithesis. Based on such a viewpoint,
the capitalist system is the last station in the progress of history towards an ideal.
Francis Fukuyama represents such a viewpoint. In his The End of History and the Last
Man (1992), he presents the viewpoint that the Western liberal democracy is the highest
ideal attainable by mankind. Indeed, Fukuyama himself is aware of the limitations of his
defense for liberal democracy as the most ideal system in terms of scope and
generalizability, and in a proleptic sleight of hand attempts to ward off such criticisms
by arguing that "While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal
democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primitive forms of rule like
theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved
upon" (xi).
This prolepsis notwithstanding, one could still criticize such a viewpoint on the
basis of its implied particularism. Simply put, Fukuyama is practically arguing that
history has ended gloriously for all who mattered (the people of the Western world), and
if others are still in the grips of totalitarian theocracies or military dictatorships, this is
their own problem. Neither Lyotard nor Fukuyama, do not seem to feel the slightest
qualm over the fact that "allegiances to large-scale, totalizing religious and nationalist
beliefs are currently responsible for so much repression, violence, and war in Northern
Ireland, Serbia, the Middle East, and elsewhere" (Butler 14). Furthermore, the so-called
war against terror led by the Bush administration in the name of the spread of freedom
and democracy indicates the persistent appeal of grand narratives even in the Western
world. This challenge has been reiterated in a more refined vocabulary by some radical

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elements in the postmodernist camp who argue that "While claiming to better the human
condition, humanism has misled humankind into Marxism, National Socialism, and
Stalinism" (Foucault, "Enlightenment" 168-69). Foucault equates humanism with the
whole project of modernity, thus holding it responsible for what he sees as man's falling
prey to such totalizing accounts (grand narratives) like Marxism and Stalinism.
Fukuyama, however, looks at the issue from an absolutely euphoric standpoint, arguing
that far from collapsing and being demolished, the grand narratives of modernity (or at
least its secular grand narratives)have experienced a revival of sorts in Western liberal
democracies. Obviously, this view runs contrary to Lyotard's notion of the collapse of
grand narratives in the postmodern era.
Terry Eagleton offers another mind-provoking critique of postmodernism in
general, applicable to Lyotard's theory as well. This critique is offered from a Marxist
perspective. Based on this view, the ubiquity of the capitalist system has led many to
take it so for granted that it has acquired the irrefutable status of the holey Trinity:
It is as though almost every other form of oppressive system
state, media, patriarchy, racism, neo-colonialism can be readily debated,
but not the one which so often sets the long-term agenda for all of these
matters, or is at the very least implicated with them to their roots. The power
of capital is now so drearily familiar, so sublimely omnipotent and
omnipresent, that even large sectors of the left have succeeded in
naturalizing it, taking it for granted as such an unbudgable structure that it is
as though they hardly have the heart to speak of it. ("Illusions" 22-3)
Lyotard, however, responds to this and other similar criticisms through
subjecting the capitalist system to the same critique as grand narratives of modernity,

64

this time from a different perspective. He argues that the capitalist system has replaced
the grand narratives of modernity with those of profit and efficiency. In other words,
contrary to modernity's grand narratives which attempt to have the last word, the
capitalist system seeks to have the next one instead, and apparently does not mind
fragmentation and hybridity as long as they can be made to lead to more profit and
efficiency. Of course, Lyotard is wholly aware of the shortcomings of such a system and
argues that such a system rests on a choice of a terroristic nature: "be operational . . . or
disappear" (xxiv).
The third challenge posed against postmodernism in general and Lyotard's
theory in particular is that postmodernism is heavily implicated in what it seeks to
challenge. In other words, the postulation of the death of grand narratives, as Peter
Osborne rightly argues, "is itself grander than most of the narratives it would consign to
oblivion" (qtd. in Eagleton, "Illusions" 34). To put it simply, "Postmodernism
universalize[s] its case against universals" (ibid. 49 my own brackets). However, this
argument does not seem to be so valid, because to disrupt a meeting, one has to attend
it; the tools one uses to break up a house are the same tools one uses to build it
(Eaglestone 184).
The fourth challenge mainly posed by Habermas postulates an unfinished nature
for the project of modernity. Based on this view, the project of modernity is still a viable
choice insofar as it is construed as a process rather than a product. Habermas argues that
the project of modernity "expresses the conviction that the future has already begun: it
is the epoch that lives for the future, that opens itself up to the novelty of the future" (5).
In other words, far from being a clear break with modernism, postmodernism is simply
a continuation of the ever-unfolding project of modernity. Consequently, talking about

65

the death of grand narratives and the failure of the project of modernity seems to arise
from an immature and hasty way of judgement.
The above account, however, should not be taken to mean that Lyotard rejects
all narratives out of hand; on the contrary, he believes that civilized life is not possible
without narratives of one kind or another. For example, while he believes that certain
metanarratives like that of the enlightenment have disappeared, he admits that "recourse
to narrative is inevitable," arguing that even scientific disciplines with an allegedly nonnarrative basis rely on narrative in one form or another in order to represent, and more
than that, to justify their own existence (28). But he explicitly denies that in virtue of the
alleged collapse of grand narratives people are less civilized than before, posing the
view that "Most people have lost the nostalgia for the lost narrative. It in no way follows
that they are reduced to barbarity" (41).
Being fully aware on the undeniable and essential role played by narratives in a
civilized life, Lyotard attempts to find a substitution for that whose death he has
announced. To this end, he also makes another distinction between good and bad
narratives. This distinction is made in terms of their usefulness and potential to serve
human ends. The gist of his argument is that narratives are bad when they become
philosophies of history while little narratives associated with local creativity are
beneficial (146). Thus he places the local above the universal. This view is reiterated by
many postmodernists, who, according to Rosenau, offer "micro-narratives as
alternatives to history" (66). Elsewhere, He elucidates more fully his notion of these
local narratives:
We no longer have recourse to the grand narrativeswe can resort
neither to the dialectic spirit nor even the emancipation of humanity as a

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validation for postmodern scientific discourse. But . . . the little narrative

(petit recit) remains the quintessential form of imaginative invention. (60)
Lyotard's commitment to finding another alternative to the grand narratives of
modernity attest to their undeniable appeal. Imagination and creativity forms the basis
of Lyotard's theory. In other words, he places the ordinary people in the role of active
creators rather than passive consumers of narratives. In keeping with this viewpoint, he
construct a model based on which people both shape and are shaped by the narratives
which they themselves bring into existence in the first place. He even steps farther by
arguing that each of these two (people and the narratives) are nothing than the product
of the other. But again, the people seem to play the more formative role:
In a sense, the people are only that which actualizes the narratives:
once again, they do this not only by recounting themes, but also by listening
to them and recounting themselves through them; in other words, by putting
them into play in their institutions. (23)
Having introduced a hopefully brief and general outline of Lyotard's theory, it
should be easier now to see how Cat's Cradle as a postmodern work of fiction
anticipates this theory and its implications for issues of moral significance through
deconstructing two of the most important grand narratives of modernity, I,e. religion
and scientism.

Cat's Cradle and the Grand Narrative of Religion

Religion is amongst the major so-called totalizing accounts of existence

Vonnegut sets out to challenge in Cat's Cradle. However, since religion in the common
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sense of the term denotes a personal and/or institutional system based on belief in, and a
reverence for a transcendental and absolute truth the pursuit of which brings eternal
happiness and bliss, any discussion about religion inevitably brings to the fore issues
such as the relationship between reality and illusion, truth and metaphor, etc.
Furthermore, almost any form of religion involves some sort of ethical system based on
which the proper relationship between man and the alleged spiritual reality, and also
that between man and other people is defined. In what follows, therefore, I shall first
present a short account about how religion, through the postulation of a series of other
smaller narratives, creates a totalizing scheme in which all the parts serve a common
goal, namely that of reinforcing the whole system.
One of the major characteristics shared by most religions is their
anthropocentrism, i.e. the belief that man is central to the universe insofar as he is the
focus of spiritual guidance. In other words, Despite the alleged opposition between
Humanism as an intellectual movement on the one hand and religion on the other,
through placing mankind at the centre of their spiritual concerns, most religions
practically engage in a humanist project whose aims are defined on the basis of
mankind's potential to achieve emancipation through communication with a higher
spiritual reality. Obviously, rather than denoting a specific philosophical and intellectual
movement, this kind of humanism denotes a concern with the interests, needs and
welfare of humans, attached from any ideological or theoretical consideration.
In Cats Cradle, Vonnegut sets religion in its organized and institutionalized
form as his main target of criticism. He especially attacks the absolutism shared by
many religions, i.e. the claim of holding the key to a greater divine truth. To this end, he
uses a fake religion called Bokononism in order to expose the illusory character of all

68

religions, particularly in terms of their absolutism. The narrator's quest leads him to the
impoverished island of San Lorenzo where a former American mariner named McCabe
and Lionel Boyd Johnson, a former sightseer, attempt to create a utopia after their own
fashion. To achieve this, McCabe and Johnson divide the material and spiritual affairs
between themselves, McCabe leading the economy and the laws, and Johnson assuming
responsibility for people's spiritual needs by designing a new religion called
Bokononism (127).
After a while, however, this arrangement proves to be inefficient to eliminate the
suffering of the people of San Lorenzo. Religion turns into "the one real instrument of
hope" (172). Therefore, McCabe and Johnson agree that the latter and his religion
should be outlawed "in order to give the religious life of the people more zest, more
tang" (173). This clearly demonstrates that religion is nothing more than an illusory
construct to provide people with a source of hope. In fact, religion achieves this goal
through blinding people to the bitter and harsh reality. As Julian Castle, the
philanthropist millionaire tells the narrator, "truth was the enemy of the people, because
the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide people with better
lies" (172). Herein lies the necessity of lying about reality. This is highly reminiscent of
Marx who famously called religion the opium of the masses.
This function of all religions in general, and of Bokononism in particular, is
illustrated by one of Bokonon's calypsos in which he clearly states the illusory nature of
his religion:
I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we all could be
happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And
I made this sad world A par-a-dise. (90)

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As the reader might have noticed, this religion is based on lies. However, what
distinguishes Bokononism from other religions is the fact that it admits of being based
on lies. In other words, a Bokononist, by definition, admits that his/her religion is
nothing more than a bunch of lies in order to make reality more tolerable. Todd F. Davis
rightly sees Bokononism as a parody of Christianity as one of America's overarching
grand narratives. As he argues, "Bokononists must always be aware that, because the
basis for their living is mere fabrication, any flirtation with absolutism would be absurd"
("Apocalyptic" 157).
Vonnegut apparently prioritizes considerations of usefulness over those of
truthfulness in dealing with religion. This is, as the reader hopefully recalls, reminiscent
of the Nietzschean challenge based on which truth does not have any inherent priority
over untruth (metaphor). In the fourth chapter of Cat's Cradle, he quotes the first
sentence of the books of Bokonon: "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are
shameless lies" (14). Based on this notion, the narrator begins his unfinished book about
the end of the world by a Bokononist warning: "anyone unable to understand how a
useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either" (ibid.).
Elsewhere, the narrator quotes The disclaimer of the first book of Bokonon: "Don't be a
fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma! Foma, of course, are lies" or
'harmless untruths" (265). This disclaimer clearly parodies the realist assumptions
forming the basis of traditional novel. This parodic disclaimer highlights the ontological
joint between the fictional and the real world, thus fusing creation with critique to
replace what had become a matter of course with what now becomes a matter of
discourse (Stewart 19 my own italics).

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There is, however, an apparently inexplicable paradox regarding Bokononism.

This paradox consists of "the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the
heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it" (284). In other words, far from being an
ideal religion, Bokononism is as absurd as any other religion. Shorn of political
commitment, it sets the stage for the world's ultimate destruction. As Zoltan AbadiNagy observes, "by adopting a dogma of uncontrolled irresponsibility, the San
Lorenzans become helpless prey who could have been capable of stopping the tragic
course of events that lead to the end of the world" (89). As Klinkowitz writes, "the lies
of this new religion are purgative, yielding happiness, balance, and comfort"
("Vonnegut" 62).
This blas attitude towards life causes Bokononism to fall from the other side of
the roof. In other words, although Bokononism is relatively successful in blinding the
people to the harshness of reality, like other religions, it fails the test of facing reality.
Its inability to cope with naked reality is so blatant that Mona tells john that Bokonon
himself would never follow his own advice (for self-destruction as the last straw)
because he knows that it is "worthless" (273). Vonnegut thus demonstrates the futility of
adhering to the grand narrative of religion.
However, this should not be taken to mean that Vonnegut dismisses religion in
any form. In fact, Vonnegut sees religion as an ideal seriously corrupted and
overshadowed by dogmatic interpretations. In his opinion, religions are implicated in
dogma so heavily that they have neglected their own humanist ideal:
I suggest that we need a new religion . . . An effective religion
allows people to imagine from moment to moment what is going on and
how they should behave. Christianity used to be like that. Our country is

71

now jammed with human beings who say out loud that life is chaos to them,
and that it doesn't matter what anybody does next. ("Palm" 198-99)
He then continues to offer a new definition of religion as "heartfelt moral code"
(ibid. 202 italics in original). In other words, he criticizes religion in its organized form,
advocating instead a simple moral code accessible to all people. It is in keeping with
this humanist line of thought that he sees the world as containing "enough love . . . for
everybody, if people will just look" ("Cat's" 18).
A more sophisticated version of this argument is presented by Ambassador
Horlick Minton at the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy memorial on the island of San
Lorenzo. He urge the attendants to "think of peace. Think of brotherly love. Think of
plenty. Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise"
("Cat's" 256). If we take Vonnegut's social activism and his humanitarian concerns into
account, we can see Minton as the author's spokesman expressing the same concerns.
Assuming this to be the case, it can be argued that Vonnegut again appeals to the
humanist project of modernity, integrating some elements of this project into his
deconstructive project. This appeal, I believe, places Vonnegut in the oxymoronic camp
of postmodern humanism, which, as Todd F. Davis observes, "affirms humanistic
values while maintaining a postmodern perspective" ("Kurt" 29).

Cats Cradle and the Illusion of a telos

Closely related to, and heavily influenced by the grand narrative of religion is the notion
that the world in which we live is a goal-oriented one. Based on such a viewpoint, the
fact that there exist a great number of regularities in the world proves beyond any doubt
that this world has a teleological orientation independent from human needs and desires.
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Vonnegut, however, challenges this notion in Cat's Cradle. He begins this

challenge right from the very title of his book.
Cat's Cradle is the name of a children's game in which a string is looped on the
fingers to form an intricate pattern between a player's hands that can be successively
varied or transferred to another player's hands. Newt, Dr. Hoenikker's youngest child,
further illuminates the relevance of such a title to the content: "a cat's cradle is nothing
but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands and little kids look and look and look at
all those X's . . . And what do they see? No damn cat, and no damn cradle (166
italics in original).
Vonnegut uses the image of a cat's cradle to demonstrate the meaninglessness of life,
turning this image into a metaphor to refer to illusions and comforting lies that people
make up in their imaginations out of the chaos and meaninglessness of life, just as the
cat's cradle is made out of the disordered tangle of string. For instance, when
John/Jonah, after learning about the Harrison C. Connors's cruelty towards Newt's
sister, Angela, protests that he thought the marriage was a happy one, Newt replies, See the
cat? See the cradle? (179). A few pages later, the same comment is made by Newt, this
time about religion (185).
The image of the cats cradle also refers to another illusion, namely the illusion that
Dr. Hoenikker is interested in his children. But as we go ahead, this conviction proves to
be no more than an illusion. The recollections of Martin Breed, the brother of the
research director at General Forge can be a good illustration of this point:
But how the hell innocent is a man who helps make a thing like an atomic
bomb? And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn't even
bother to do anything when the best- hearted, most beautiful woman in the

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world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding . . .
Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less
interested in the living. (52-3)
As noted earlier, the image of the cat's cradle is a metaphoric construct referring to the
illusions by means of which people make up meaning for their own existence.
Furthermore, when jack, the owner of the hobby shop, tells the narrator about his
attempt to restore order to his life after his wife had left him he uses the same image:
"I'm still trying to pull the strings of my life back together" (74).
This creative creation is in complete agreement with Lyotard's notion of the petit recit
as an alternative to the grand narratives of modernity whose demise he had postulated.
Interestingly, this idea of devising a telos for existence, at least in its crude form, can be
traced back to Immanuel Kant:
Since the philosopher cannot presuppose any individual purpose
among men in their great drama, there is no other expedient for him except
to try to see if he can discover a natural purpose in this idiotic course of
things human. In keeping with this purpose, it might be possible to have a
history with a definite natural plan for creatures who have no plan of their
own. (12)
Both Kant and postmodernists seem to have lost all hope of finding an
individual telos for human existence. There are, however, two major differences
between Kant's position and that of postmodernists like Vonnegut and Lyotard. The first
difference is that whereas Kant still believes that human beings have no plan of their
own and have to be blessed with one from a higher source of existence, postmodernists
like Lyotard and Vonnegut apparently reject any notion of a goal-oriented world in

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favour of one in which everyone is responsible for defining the telos of his/her own
existence. Furthermore, while Kant regards the task of finding a natural purpose for
human existence as belonging to philosophers and intellectuals, postmodernists believe
that this is a burden to be carried by each and every inhabitant of the planet. As noted
above, Lyotard's notion of the little narrative (petit recit) is an attempt to promulgate
such a creative belief.
Vonnegut, however, attempts to offer such a creative vision in his fiction. In
Cat's Cradle he presents a parody of the Book of Genesis, thus illuminating the need for
such a creative impulse:
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His
cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud,
so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living
creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.
God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man
blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely. "Everything
must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly," said man. "Then I leave it to
you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away. (273)
As the above excerpt shows, unlike the biblical cosmology according to which
God is concerned with the human affairs from first to last, Vonnegut portrays a universe
in which God has created human beings, and then has left them to their own devices.
Furthermore, the last sentence of this excerpt echoes the Nietzschean notion of God's
death. Like Nietzsche, Vonnegut seems to mean by God the traditional morality whose
basis is mainly to be found in religious teachings. Furthermore, the last calypso of the
books of Bokonon, painted in the ruins of San Lorenzo's castle, points out to the folly of

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scolding God: "He'll just smile and nod (274). Elsewhere Vonnegut makes more explicit
his point regarding a society in which instead of relying on pre-established grand
narratives, people would try to get their own small tales told. He argues that people 'are
never stronger than when they have thought up their own arguments for believing what
they believe. They stand on their own feet that way" ("Hocus" 147).

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Cats Cradle and the Mirage of Scientism

Having outlined the way(s) in which Vonnegut strives to deconstruct the grand
narrative of religion in Cat's Cradle, I shall now bring my discussion to bear upon
scientism as another grand narrative of American society. But before dealing with this
issue in more details, I should clarify my exact meaning when referring to a
phenomenon called scientism.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language offers two different
definitions of the word "scientism": (1) the collection of attitudes and practices
considered typical of scientists, and (2) the belief that the investigative methods of the
physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry. A closer look at
these two definitions demonstrate a very subtle, but meanwhile significant difference
between them. While the former refers to a collection of attitudes and practices, the
latter covers a more particular system of thought. My sense of the term, however, is
closer to the second definition, i.e. the concept of an excessive reliance on science and
its achievements as a panacea for all the evils of the world, pluss a science alienated
from all ethical considerations. Therefore, I redefine scientism as excessive reliance on
an amoral form of science. Having clarified this point, I shall now continue my
discussion by investigating the relationship between science and religion, and in doing
so demonstrating how Kurt Vonnegut, as a postmodern humanist, attempts to show the
inefficiency of both science and religion to play the role of "open sesame" for the evils
of the contemporary world.
The subject-object dichotomy mentioned in the previous chapter played a crucial
role in shaping what has now become to be known as modern science. In other words,
modern science is mainly based on the assumption that the relationship between the

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knower (man) and the known (the universe) is one of strict separation and distinction.
Based on such a view, the knower influences, but is not influenced by, what he/she is
supposed to know. In other words, by defining a one-sided relationship between the
knower and the known, modern science practically transfigured from a simple act of
knowing into a system of value-creation.
Religion was another important factor in shaping the concept of modern science
as it stands today. Given the apparently long-held opposition between religion as a
metaphysical explanation of the universe and its phenomena on the one hand, and
science as a material and allegedly objective instrument of knowing and acting upon the
universe on the other, this observation may strike the reader as a surprise. But as
Rosenau argues from a historical perspective, "science attacked the arbitrary authority
of church and monarch, both of which based their legitimacy on theology. Modern
science established its reputation on objectivity, rigorous procedures of inquiry, the
material rather than the metaphysical" (9). As rosenau's argument clearly shows,
modern science comes to define itself in terms of its apparent opposition to religion and
religious teachings. This argument is highly redolent of Foucault's notion of the
interdependence between the two sides of an opposition ("Power" 156).
This story, however, is not one of mere progress. Simply put, in setting itself up
against religion, science aspired to become a revolutionary agent of change. In the long
run, however, this aspiration proved to be nothing more than a mirage, because in
attempting to extricate mankind from what it saw as the shackles of religious dogma and
superstition, science had practically advanced another particular monopoly of truth
through expanding its scope of authority even farther than that held by its allegedly
dogmatic and irrational predecessor. In Hegelian terms, it can be said that far from

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establishing a proper dialectical spirit between themselves, science and religion have
engaged in a fight over the monopoly of truth, as a result of which the human aspect of
both was gradually sent to oblivion. As Dave Robinson observes, "Religion and science
both made grandiose claims that Nietzsche thought could never be justified" (22). The
result of such a futile struggle for supremacy instead of a cooperative effort was, as
Nietzsche had correctly anticipated, the promulgation of nihilism and despair (qtd. in
ibid.). Tzvetan Todorov explains this similarity between science and religion:
Scientism, in effect, involves basing an ethics and a politics on what
is believed to be the results of science. In other words, science, or what is
perceived as such, ceases to be a simple knowledge of the existing world
and becomes a generator of values, similar to religion; it can therefore direct
political and moral action. (23)
In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut subjects this particular notion of science to criticism.
He creates in Dr. Hoenikker and his children an image of a science empty of ethical
substance. There are numerous instances in the novel to support this hypothesis. One of
these instances is told by Newt in a letter he writes to the narrator, in which he confesses
that his childhood was not happy with a father whose specialty was not people but
science (21). Another more telling example is given in the same letter:
After the thing [in an experiment] went off, after it was a sure thing
that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to
Father and said, "Science has now known sin." And do you know what my
Father said? "What is sin?" (ibid. my own Brackets)
These examples indicate the extent to which issues of moral significance have
been neglected by modern science as represented by Dr. Hoenikker. Dr. von

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Koenigswald, who apparently represents the author's ideal of a humanist, adopts an

ironic stance towards the issue of the alienation of science from any human
consideration: "I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel
better, even if it's unscientific" (148). Through the use of irony, Vonnegut attempts to
show that science has evolved into a dehumanized sphere of activity. The ice-nine, as
Broer argues, is a "symbol for the coldness and lovelessness Bred into Felix Hoenikker,
who, caring only for his work, passes the effects of coldness to all those around him"
(58).
Scientism, however, in the sense of blind worship of science is not limited to Dr.
Hoenikker. Even Papa Monzano, the San Lorenzan dictator at his deathbed asks John
and Franklin to teach people science, calling it "magic that works" (147). The workers
at General Forge seem to be more than satisfied with the robotlike function assigned to
them by "faceless voices on scientists on Dictaphone records" (34).
Furthermore, this blind worship of science as a panacea for all the evils of
human society is not limited to the fictional level. There was, as Vonnegut himself
admits, a time when he himself was suffering from the same illusions regarding the
power of science as some of his characters did:
I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything
worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was
twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother [a physicist who worked for
General Electric], would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty
and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to
make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was

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twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.

("Wampeters" 161)
In fact, as peter Freese observes, "it is this very belief in the infallibility of
science and the unending progress of technology that makes more humane religions
[like Bokononism] necessary" (161). Another important point which has to be born in
mind regarding Dr. Hoenikker is that he, as Funika Nagano rightly observes, "was not a
mad scientist who intended to destroy the world, but a childish and innocent man who
played with the laws of nature" (129). In other words, as Leonard Mustazza argues,
Hoenikker's invention may be the result of innocent curiosity, but his lack of morals
leads to the world's end because of his short-sighted children (79). Of course, this shortsightedness is not limited to Dr. Hoenikker's three children, but as Vonnegut himself
says, they are "as short-sighted as almost all men and women are" (164). Elsewhere,
Vonnegut turns this particular notion into a general conviction: "It's a law of life that if
you turn up something that can be used violently, it will be used violently" (qtd. in
Allen 97). This may explain why there are never villains in his stories ("Fates 31).
These and other similar arguments lead us to the subtle distinction between
immorality as the deliberate violation of moral principles on the one hand, and
amorality as simply indifference towards right and wrong on the other. In other words,
Hoenikker and his children, while not particularly set against moral principles, do not
seem to possess the slightest notion regarding the nature of such principles either.
Lawrence R. Broer has an interesting point to make regarding the simultaneity between
Dr. Hoenikker's attempt at playing a game of cat's cradle with his youngest child and the
nuclear attack on Hiroshima:

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While both activities originate from an impulse more playful than

devious, cat's cradles [made-up illusions with no basis in reality] like atom
bombs can become the deadliest of adult realities, especially if their use is
determined by such warped and childishly irresponsible people as the
Hoenikker children prove to be. (60 my own brackets)
To Sum up, in the course of this chapter, I have been seeking to
present and substantiate the argument that while expressing his disbelief
towards totalizing accounts of existence such as religion and scientism
mostly associated with the project of modernity, Kurt Vonnegut attempts to
bridge the supposed gap between postmodernism and humanism through the
integration of the key values of modernity such as love, brotherhood, peace,
etc. in his fiction.
Cat's Cradle was written at a time when the cold War ideologies of Capitalism
and communism were dragging the world towards the brink of a nuclear confrontation.
Furthermore, the assassination of John F. Kenedy in Dallas, Texas, in November 22,
1963 marked the culmination of feelings of insecurity and uncertainty in the United
States. By that time, the Vietnam war had also transfigured itself into a military conflict
protracted long enough to generate feelings of frustration and national disgrace for
many Americans. All these developments indicated the fact that a last stage in national
innocence was over forever (Ruland and Bradbury 373). It was in such a context that
Vonnegut wrote his stylistic Cat's Cradle as a manifesto of his postmodern humanism.
There are, as I have tried to demonstrate in this chapter, numerous elements
linking Cat's Cradle with mainstream postmodernist fiction in terms of both form and

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content. On the other hand, Todorov distinguishes between three kinds of humanism:
historical, moral, and theoretical (29-30).
The historical brand of humanism deals with the study of the Greek and Roman
civilizations in the Renaissance period. Theoretical humanism, according to Todorov, is
a "doctrine that grants the human being a particular role . . . of initiating one's own act
or some portion of them, of being free to accomplish them or not therefore of being able to
act at one's will" (ibid.).
The third kind of humanism is eloquently introduced, and faithfully practiced, by Kurt
Vonnegut. He defines a humanist as a person who behaves decently without any expectation of reward or
fear of punishment after his/her death. Simply put, humanism is "nothing more than a handy synonym for
good citizenship and common decency" ("Dr. Kevorkian" 12). He summarizes this definition into

two basic rules: "Ye shall respect one another" ("Fates" 160), and "God damn it, you've
to be kind" ("Mr. Rosewater" 129). Of course, this moral humanism is not separate from
the theoretical humanism postulated by Todorov. In other words, without a freedom of
sorts for human beings to act out their will, talking about respecting others, kindness,
and in short, talking about moral responsibility would be next to delirious nonsense.
The most important linkage between Cat's Cradle and the mainstream
postmodernist fiction is the deconstruction of religion and scientism as instances of
overarching grand narratives governing the society as a whole. In so doing, Vonnegut
attempts to promulgate a simple and pragmatic morality. In fact, as Simon Malpas
shrewdly observes, "If the grand narratives of modernity are premised upon the
development towards truth and justice, their obsolescence marks a condition in which
pragmatism takes over from [traditional] ethics" (40 my own brackets). In other words,
as Tod F. Davis observes, "What distinguishes Vonnegut from other metaphysicians is
his incredulity toward final answers and his unflagging determination to find pragmatic
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responses to profound questions" ("Kurt" 7). And to quote Davis again, "Vonnegut, like
other postmodernists, believes that claims for objectivity and neutrality no longer hold
water; rather, he acknowledges that observations and inventions and actions of all sorts
are subjective in nature, carrying ethical and political implications" (ibid. 9).
Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between three different groups of thinkers:
"those who know where the truth lies, those who have renounced seeking it, and those
who stubbornly pursue it" (169). The first position is associated with dogmatists and
fundamentalists who regard themselves as holding the only objective yardstick to tell
truth from falsness. The second position is associated with radical relativists for whom
everything goes. The third position is associated with affirmative postmodernists like
Vonnegut, who while nurturing serious doubts towards claims for objectivity and
absolute truth, still attempt to find truth in a dynamic tension between the humanist
values of modernity on the one hand, and postmodern doubt on the other.
Vonnegut Elsewhere offers a humanitarian and egalitarian critique of the most
ubiquitous of all narratives, i.e. the capitalist system:
So let's divide up the wealth of the world more fairly than we have
divided it up so far. Let's make sure that everybody has enough to eat, and a
decent place to live, and medical help when he needs it. Let's stop spending
money on weapons, which don't work anyway, thank God, and spend
money on each other. It isn't moonbeams to talk of modest plenty for all.
They have it in Sweden. We can have it here. Dwight David Eisenhower
once pointed out that Sweden, with its many Utopian programs, had a high
rate of alcoholism and suicide and youthful unrest. Even so, I would like to
see America try socialism. If we start drinking heavily and killing ourselves,

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and if our children start acting crazy, we can go back to good old Free
Enterprise again. ("Wampeters" 170)
This, I believe, is a more than cogent response to critics like Terry Eagleton who
criticize postmodernism for what they see as its silence towards capitalism in virtue of
its pervasiveness ("Illusions" 22). Vonnegut offers, or attempts to offer, humanist
solutions to postmodern challenges. Robert Merrill recognizes the value of such
human(e) attempts regardless of their outcome:
The attempt to promote such a meliorist fiction reveals once again
the humane sanity that has always distinguished Vonnegut and his work. It
reveals a principled resistance to the nihilistic seductions of postmodernism,
which more and more contemporary novelists have instinctively or
consciously recognized as a moral and aesthetic dead end. (186.)
This is again a satisfactory response to those like Eagleton who argue that "Only
recently has postmodernism brought itself to deal with ethical issues" ("Illusions" 53).
But there is still a more serious charge against postmodernism in general, and
postmodernist fiction in particular. Postmodernism has often been charged with
accepting the capitalist representation of the past at face value. In other words, it has
been argued that postmodernism attempts to offer a sustaining critique of a past which
has already been defined and arrogated by the capitalist system. This leads us to the next
chapter in which I have posed the argument that Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is an
attempt to save the past from the monopolizing tendencies of the capitalist ideology
through the implication of the interrogative function of language.

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Chapter iv:
Slaughterhouse 1945: Pilgrim's Progress, Symptomatic of Excess
"History is natural selection. Mutant versions of the past struggle for dominance;
new species of fact arise, and old, saurian truths go to the wall, blindfolded and smoking
last cigarettes. Only the mutations of the strong survive. The weak, the anonymous, the
defeated leave few marks . . . . History loves only those who dominate her: it is a
relationship of mutual enslavement."Salman Rushdie, "Shame"
Slaughterhouse-Five has been hailed by many critics as Vonnegut's magnum
opus. As Todd F. Davis argues, this novel "marks a definite and profound turning point
in Vonnegut's fictional world" ("Kurt" 84). Even it can be plausibly argued that all of
Vonnegut's works prior to Slaughterhouse-Five have been initial attempts at walking
through the flames of Dresden. Jerome Klinkowitz sees Slaughterhouse-Five as a
masterpiece in terms of both form and content:
After working in obscurity for nearly twenty years and struggling for
the right form for his necessary message, Vonnegut has broken through with
Slaughterhouse-Five and is now embraced as the age's guru. (Literary
Subversions 174)
Even Marc Leeds might have a point when he argues that "In some senses,
Vonnegut's life as a novelist was conceived in the death of Dresden" ("The Vonnegut"
536). David ketterer sees this work of fiction as vonnegut's attempt "to confront the
psychic wound that tenses his artistic bow" (299). Raymond M. Olderman sees this
work of fiction as "the personal basis for the apocalyptic darkness in his vision" (196).
In view of the significance of Slaughterhouse-Five in Vonnegut's oeuvre in
general, and its unquestionable status as a cultural icon in American society in
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particular, this chapter seeks to offer a more or less comprehensive analysis of this
spectacular mixture of fact and fiction. To this end, I shall begin my discussion by
looking at the way in which Vonnegut uses metafictional techniques to give authenticity
to his fiction, while paradoxically undermining this very authenticity. The role of irony
as the only sensible alternative to silence in the novel will be investigated with
particular reference to Umberto Eco and john Barth. Vonnegut's deconstructive project
mentioned in the previous chapter will also be analyzed, this time with reference to
Slaughterhouse-Five. A discussion of the relationship between history and literature and
its dynamics in the postmodern era, as well as the problems associated with the archive
and archontic power will lead us to Vonnegut's ambivalent position towards the notion
of the archive and collective memory. Emile Benveniste's notion of three forms of
linguistic utterance corresponding to three different functions of language is used to
press the case for an interrogative function for Slaughterhouse-Five. Finally, a
discussion of Slaughterhouse-Five as a contribution to the collective memory of
American society serves as the conclusion to the present chapter.

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Paradox of Authenticity

Vonnegut blurs the line between fact and fiction right from the title page. As
Farrell notes, "Not only does Vonnegut give the novel two subtitles, but the author's
name is followed by a lengthy introduction to the book itself" (352): "A Fourthgeneration German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and
smoking too much,) who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner
of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, 'The Florence of the Elbe," a
long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic

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schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers
come from. Peace."
This passage clearly mixes fact and fiction. On the one hand, we know that this
work of fiction concerns the firebombing of Dresden by the Allied forces near the end
of WWII, and that Vonnegut has witnessed and survived the attack. This part of the title
page gives authenticity to the fictional world, preventing the reader from dismissing it
as mere fiction on account of the latter part. But we know, on the other hand, that a
planet called Tralfamadore and its flying saucers are the author's inventions, having
nothing whatsoever to do with the real empirical world. Like Cat's Cradle,
Slaughterhouse-Five begins with the author's metafictional intrusion upon the world of
fiction:
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty
much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot
that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal
enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all
the names." (1)
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the use of metafictional techniques or
self-conscious writing is one of the staples of postmodern American fiction. Vonnegut
puts this technique into critical use. As Nicol Bran rightly argues, "Self-conscious
writing . . . produces self-conscious reading" (40). In other words, Vonnegut writes selfconsciously so that readers come to pay more attention to the processes involved in the
experiences of writing and reading.
The novel comprises ten chapters, only the first and last of which are narrated by
Vonnegut himself. This helps establish the authenticity of the narrated events, while

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calling attention to the very process through which these events come to be represented
in the first place. Furthermore, as Vees-Gulani notes, "the narrator [Vonnegut]
interrupts Billy's story on several occasions to authenticate the events" (180 my own
brackets). For example, in the hospital's latrine, Vonnegut introduces himself as
somebody other than Billy Pilgrim who has witnessed all the events so far: That was I.
That was me. That was the author of this book" (125).
Furthermore, while attempting to establish the authenticity of his fictional world
through introducing some elements from the real world into the novel, Vonnegut
paradoxically undermines this authenticity by using the descriptive phrase "more or
less" in the passage quoted above. This phrase serves to call the reader's attention to the
constructed nature of reality and the ways in which the past is accessible to the present
through the medium of language. This brings the issue of nature and function of the
archive into play, of which more later on.
Like the narrator in Cat's Cradle, the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five is
apparently attempting to write a factual book about a real historical event, i.e. the
firebombing of Dresden in 1945. But this task proves to be far more difficult than
expected:
When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought
it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would to
do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a
masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big. But not
many words about Dresden came from my mind thennot enough of them to make a
book, anyway. And not many words come now, either, when I have become an old fart
with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. (2)

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Part of the problem of representation has much to do with the extent of

destruction brought about in the wake of the attack. Vonnegut's letter to his editor,
Seymour Lawrence, supports this idea:
It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing
intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to
never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to
be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And
what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Pootee-weet? (19)

Either Irony or Silence: No Way Out!

The above discussionleads us to the discussion of irony as a strategy of
replenishment and an alternative to quietism. One of the most serious charges made
against postmodernism by Marxist critics such as Eagleton and Jameson is that its
obsession with irony is indicative of the complete absence of any political function in
postmodernism.
The challenge to which Eco refers is one faced by the postmodern author, who,
in virtue of his/her being bound by historical context, has to come after the innovations
of modernism. The same concern is also notoriously voiced by American critic and
writer, John Barth, who in his Literature of Exhaustion wonders how creative and
innovative writing may continue in the face of the knowledge that virtually all forms of
fiction have been "used up" by the moderns (138). John Barth views the contemporary
novel as in decline. His notion of exhaustion is not moral, physical or formal; rather, it
is one based on issues of content. He argues that formal exhaustion can be easily

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overcome, for example, by "printing Finnegan's Wake on a very long roller-towel"

(139). The kind of exhaustion to which he points out is concerned with how to create
something new, which while continuing to be a novel in the proper sense of the term,
would be able "nonetheless to speak eloquently and memorably to our still human hearts
and conditions, as the great artists have always done" (140).
However, Italian Critic and novelist, Umberto Eco, tries to answer these and
similar challenges by defending the status of irony as a new way of engagement with
the past, with the already said. To this end, he draws an extensive and much-quoted
analogy:
I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very
cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her 'I love you madly',
because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that
these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a
solution. He can say, as Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly'.
At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is
no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what
he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.
If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of
love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will
have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be
eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony..
. But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love. (111)
Vonnegut implements irony at the level of both narration and presentation. The
most noticeable example of the use of irony in Slaughterhouse-Five concerns the phrase

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"so it goes." This phrase has been repeated more than a hundred times through the
novel, each time preceded by death in one form or other: from the Biblical story of the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the death of billions of body lice and flee and
bacteria due to the application of poison gas to the clothes of the American prisoners of
war. The utterance of such a phrase is apparently an effort to downplay the significance
of death and destruction. However, a closer look at the issue shows that as Farrell
argues, "the phrase prevents overlooking death, ignoring it, or closing one's eyes to it as
the Tralfamadorians recommend to Billy Pilgrim" (356). In other words, "The tired
weight of this repetition whenever anyone or anything dies in the book serves to remind
the reader of death's everpresence, with each instance of the phrase heaving mortality in
it utterance" (Tomedi 59).
Vonnegut's simple style also contributes to the role of irony in the novel. In fact,
this simplicity can sometimes be extremely misleading. In other words, this simplicity
may cause the reader to ignore the complexity of the reality portrayed by the author.
Peter Reed, however, postulates a defamiliarizing function for such an apparently
simple style:
Sometimes this simplicity, when applied to complex issues, shows
us our failure previously to have considered the possibility of other
perspectives . . . The contrived naivet of the description is frequently
Vonnegut's device to defamiliarize the familiar or to deconstruct the official
myths created to obscure the true nature of events. ("Responsive" 52)
The use of irony, however, is not confined to the level of structure, but extends
to the level of the moral aspect of the novel as well. In the course of the novel, Billy
Pilgrim is abducted and transported to the imaginary planet of Tralfamadore. The

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Tralfamadorians seem to hold notions of time and causality leading them to some kind
of impotent and passive fatalism.
Ironically, however, this ironic gesture has been radically understood by critics
like Josephine Hendin. Based on an erroneous ascription of the Tralfamadorian
determinism to Vonnegut himself, she has contended that "Vonnegut celebrates the
themes of detachment and meaninglessness as devices for diminishing the emotional
charge of painful experience" (qtd. in Broer 8). Such an interpretation is blatantly
incompatible with Vonnegut's social activism and his argument that artists should
"serve society" by being "agents of change" and introducing new ideas ("Wampeters"
237). Elsewhere he takes a step farther, arguing that "writers are the most important
members of society, not just potentially but actually" (qtd. in Davis, "Kurt" 45). After
all, as Todd F. Davis convincingly argues, "Billy's response to Dresden does not
represent Vonnegut's own response" (ibid. 78).

Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonneguts Deconstructive Project:

War and the Linear Progression of time
As shown in the previous chapter, Vonnegut's stylistic innovations go hand in
hand with a deconstructive project aiming some of America's most overarching grand
narrative. There I postulated the prevalence, or at least the existence of a deconstructive
aspect in Cat's Cradle as a postmodern work of fiction. There I introduced the
deconstruction of some of America's most overarching narratives as one of the most
postmodern features of Cat's Cradle. In what follows, I shall try to establish the same
deconstructive project with reference to Slaughterhouse-Five. To this end, I have
chosen war and the linear structuration of time as two of the most crucial grand
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narratives whose deconstruction in Slaughterhouse-Five situates this novel in the

broader context of postmodern American fiction.
War is often conceived as a military conflict between two or more opposing
forces. Obviously, this definition ignores much of what usually goes into the making of
war as a phenomenon of human societies. War, as almost any other human
phenomenon, has more than one single facet of its own. In other words, in addition to
the military aspect of war, there are political, economic and ideological aspects to this
experience, changing it into an issue complicated enough to merit serious investigation.
Wars, regardless of their scale or origin, are often accompanied by the mythologization
of an individual or a group of people. This mythologization acts in, and often correlates
with, a yet more expansive narrative of ethnic or national superiority manifesting itself
in various forms of tribalism, or as is the case with most of modern instances of warfare,
nationalism. The relationship between nationalism as a grand narrative and Nietzsche's
philosophy was explored in the second chapter of the present study. Therefore, we shall
now concern ourselves with this aspect of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, thus
implying the deconstruction of nationalism as an ideology often implemented to justify
waging war against others.
Vonnegut begins his deconstruction of the grand narrative of war by one of the
novel's two subtitles: Children's crusade. Historically speaking, the Children's Crusade
was apparently an attempt to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims undertaken in 1212
by thousands of French and German children who perished, were sold into slavery in
North Africa, or were turned back.
Vonnegut uses this historical fact as the symbol of the plight of many American
soldiers who are sent to war without actually understanding why. In other words, the

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intellectual immaturity of American soldiers is likened to that of those children, who

under the illusion of a holy war, turn into the slaves of American capitalism.
Vonnegut offers a yet more incisive insight into the nature of war and literary
works concerning with it. In the first chapter of the novel, Vonnegut who cannot
remember so much of war goes to his war buddy, Bernard O'hare. However, when the
two sit down to share their war memories, Vonnegut comes to notice that Mary, O'hare's
wife, actually dislikes him. Vonnegut cannot find any justification for Mary's dislike
towards himself until Mary herself reveals it in an impassioned but highly suggestive
peroration:
"Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of
babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne
or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will
look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought
by babies like the babies upstairs." (14)
Mary acts as Vonnegut's literary muse, and Vonnegut dedicates this book to her.
Furthermore, Mary's impassioned criticism of war has profound implications for
literature as well. Mary represents the author when she argues that literary works
concerning with war often try to make it look wonderful despite its horrible and
inhuman aspects. But Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is significantly different from
other war novels in terms of content. Therefore, it has to be different in terms of form as
well. This is why Vonnegut chooses to write in a style wholly peculiar to himself. Long
characterizations, detailed descriptions, suspense and thrilling scenery are amongst the
most common features of novels of war. But Vonnegut, in keeping with his

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deconstructive project, disrupts all these expectations to create something wholly

original.
When deciding to share their memories, O'hare asks Vonnegut to assume the
task of writing the book, and Vonnegut accepts this task relying on what he regards as
his literary talents, calling himself "a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and
characterizations" (6). But as the novel goes ahead, BOTH the author AND THE
READER gradually come to understand that the Dresden experience is far more
complex than ordinary fictional techniques such as characterization or suspense could
possibly portray. Therefore, Vonnegut artistically ascribes this absence of
characterization to the effects of war in general:
There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic
confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the
listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after
all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. (164)
Suspense is another important characteristic of novels dealing with the
experience of war. Vonnegut frustrates this expectation as well through stating the
beginning and end of his novel in the very first chapter: "It begins like this: Listen: Billy
Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet? (22 italics in
original).
Time is another overarching grand narrative which Vonnegut attempts to
deconstruct in Slaughterhouse-Five. Time is of such significance that Frank Kermode
defines plot, an important element of a work of fiction, as "the organization that
humanizes time by giving it form" (45). In sum, one can say that Kermode defines plot
in terms of time. Catherine Belsey even goes so far as to define a whole school of

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literature, i.e. classic realism, as "that form which characterized by . . . narrative leading
to closure" (65).
However, Slaughterhouse-Five deconstructs this narrative of all narratives
through its nonlinear plot and structure. In other words, the nonlinear structure of the
novel makes it impossible or extremely difficult for anyone to give a summary of its
plot. This structure has the effect of disorienting the reader, thus highlighting the
significance of time in experiencing the world. In fact, this structure implies that by
regarding time as linear progression, man often falls into a teleological trap. This
teleological stalemate is often associated with many of the narratives championed by
religious institutions according to which humanity is seen as the culmination of some
divine grand plan. Mark Leeds expresses this viewpoint in a more sophisticated fashion:
Though man tends to believe on a linear track to perfection,
Vonnegut's [notion of] time prompts the rhetorical question, "What makes
you think you're going anywhere?" ("The Vonnegut" 533)
Another danger posed by such a linear and progressive vision of time would be
that any atrocity would be justifiable as another step towards final salvation. In other
words, if time is thus viewed as a system of linear progression, meaning can be assigned
to it, and more importantly, tragedy like the massacre in Dresden can be explained as a
logical step in the process. But as Todd F. Davis notes, "Vonnegut staunchly rejects this
notion, and in doing so rejects perhaps the most totalizing myth in Western
civilizationthe myth that time is chronologically structured" ("Apocalyptic" 158).
Linda Hutcheon, taking a more general stance, argues that " . . . the familiar narrative
form of beginning, middle, and end implies a structuring process that imparts meaning
as well as order" ("Politics" 59). Marc Leeds probably has this deconstructive nature of

97

Slaughterhouse-Five in mind when he argues that "The slaughterhouse meat locker

becomes the sepulcher from which Vonnegut rises questioning the myths engendered in
the presentation of the American experience ("Beyond" 93).

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Slaughterhouse-Five and the question of the Archive

Another constructive approach to Slaughterhouse-Five would be to look at this
novel in terms of the relationship between history and literature, particularly fiction.
This relationship is defined mostly in terms of novel as a genre most appropriate for
historical representation. Therefore, in what follows, I shall concern myself in particular
with the relationship between history and novel, particularly what has come to be
known as historiographic metafiction. Aristotle makes an interesting distinction between
historians and poets which can be extended to include authors as well:
The difference between the historian and the poet is not that one
writes in prose and the other in verse. . . . The difference is that one tells of
what has happened, and the other of things that might happen. For this
reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious
attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths,
history treats of particular facts. (qtd. in Malpas 81)
Aristotle's distinction, its painstaking categorization notwithstanding, suffers
from a serious flaw. This distinction is too simplistic to allow for any interaction
between the two categories under discussion. In other words, it simplifies a highly
complex relationship into a naively uncomplicated polarization. But what has come to
be known as historiographic Metafiction, particularly prevalent amongst postmodern
writers, problematizes the very nature of this relationship by showing that the historical
and fictional spheres are far more interrelated than previously assumed.
The historical fiction has experienced a revival of some sorts within the
framework of postmodernist fiction. In fact, as Robert Scholes observes, the major
novels belonging to the category of postmodernist fiction like those written by Barth,

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Pynchon, Fowles, Reed, Coover and Vonnegut, "have tended strongly toward the
apparently worn-out form of historical novel" ("Fabulation" 205). This argument seems
to be valid insofar that it captures the return to a form which had, for a while at least,
been sent into virtual oblivion. However, it neglects the innovations made by such
postmodern authors within an already extant literary genre. In other words, it puts
writers as different as Cooper and Coover into one single category, thus ignoring the
major differences existing between them. The most crucial of such differences concerns
the issue of representation. Whereas for writers such as Sir Walter Scott or James
Fenimore Cooper the relationship between history and fiction is delineated within welldefined boundaries of representation, for postmodern writers like Vonnegut and Coover,
as one commentator has argued, "story-telling has returned but as a problem, not as a
given" (Hutcheon, "Telling" 233).
The above discussion leads us to the most significant link between history and
fiction, i.e. the issue of the archive. But before dealing with the relationship between
Slaughterhouse-Five and the archive, I attempt to offer a more or less comprehensive
definition of the archive so that the reader may easily comprehend what I have in mind
when speaking about the deconstruction of the notion of the archive in this novel.
Generally speaking, archive denotes a place or collection of records, documents, or
other materials of historical interest. The word "archive" comes from Greek Arkheion,
meaning town hall. This definition alongside the etimology of this word stresses the
physical, as opposed to the sociological aspects of the archive. Michel Foucault, Jacque
Derrida, and Paul ricoeur offer various perspectives on the nature of the archive.
Foucault's notion of the archive seems to be focused upon an abstract conception
based on which the archive is more socio-political than physical and spatial. Foucault

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places his definition of the archive in the realm of abstract socio-political forces,
arguing that the archive is, first and foremost, made of laws of enunciability:
The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that
governs the appearance of statements as unique events . . . The archive is
not that which, despite its immediate escape, safeguards the event of the
statement, and preserves, for future memories, its status as an escapee; it is
that which, at the very root of the statement-event, and in that which
embodies it, defines at the outset the system of enunciability. ("Archeology"
129 italics in original)
Unlike Foucault, who regards the archive as the collection of laws governing
enunciability, other theorists postulate a physical dimension for the archive as well.
Derrida, for example, takes up the etimological definition of the archive to define a
power he calls the Archontic power. Archons were the nine principal magistrates of
ancient Athens. On the basis of their public authority, they had the authority to keep
official documents at their home. Derrida uses this authority to define a kind of
archontic power which can be extended so as to include the contemporary information
revolution:
The archons are first of all the documents' guardians. They do not
only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate.
They are also accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have
the power to interpret the archives. (2)
Derrida's definition postulates two different but interrelated components for the
archive: the spatial and the hermeneutic. On the one hand, he defines the archive as the
actual physical place where official documents are kept. On the other hand, he

101

postulates a socio-political nature for the archive by arguing that there are individuals
and institutions governing the archive and the form(s) it is allowed to assume. Similarly,
Paul Ricoeur postulates an institutionalized nature for the archive, arguing that the
archive simultaneously exists in the physical as well as the socio-political spheres. He
presents the viewpoint that "the archive is not just a physical or spatial place, it is also a
social one" (167). However, the significance of the archive in shaping our perception of
the past cannot be denied. In fact, as Francis Blouin argues, "what constitutes the
archive has become a question fundamental to how our knowledge of the past is
acquired and shaped" (296).
Vonnegut, however, takes a critical stance towards the archive and those with
archontic power in his own society. In fact, he deconstructs the archive and the
archontic power to create a critical account of what really happened in Dresden and how
it was presented to the public. In modern societies, it is obvious that the archontic power
is held by those who control the flow of information through their monopoly over media
and other means of communication. In other words, governments and multinational
corporations function as the archons of modern era. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut
systematically subjects this archontic power to a rigorous interrogation:
I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on
Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what
desirable results there had been and so on. I was answered by a man who,
like myself, was in public relations. He said that he was sorry, but that the
information was top secret still. I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I
said, Secret? My Godfrom whom? (13-14)

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This correspondence clearly demonstrates that the US government is far from

reluctant to use its archontic power, because it is the entity that has access to important
documents that might answer the questions raised by Vonnegut and many others. This
archontic power enables the US government to selectively use archival material in order
to manipulate U.S. perception of a historical event. Vonnegut is surprised because to
him and thousands of other people, the firebombing of Dresden is not a secret at all. The
event is real enough to him, because he saw it as an eye witness. Vonnegut also states
that 135,000 died in Dresden with "conventional weapons" whereas only 71,379 died in
Hiroshima with the use of a nuclear bomb ("Slaughterhouse" 188). Obviously, this is
something that the US government would be extremely reluctant to admit. Vonnegut's
interrogative position towards the archive is also expressed in one of his conversations
with William Rodney Allen:
Our generation did believe what its Government saidbecause we
weren't lied to very much. One reason we weren't lied to was that there
wasn't a war going on in our childhood, and so essentially we were told the
truth. There was no reason for our Government to lie very elaborately to us.
But a government at war does become a lying government for many
reasons. One reason is to confuse the enemy. When we went into the war,
we felt our Government was a respecter of life, careful about not injuring
civilians and that sort of thing. Well, Dresden had no tactical value; it was a
city of civilians. Yet the Allies bombed it until it burned and melted. And
then they lied about it. All that was startling to us. (qtd. in Allen 95)
This leads us to one of the most heatedly debated issue regarding the bombing of
Dresden. The number of Casualties has been estimated between 75,000 and 250,000

103

people (Klinkowitz, "Keeping" 9). David Irving estimates the casualties numbered
somewhere around 135,000 and included, in addition to German civilians, non-German
refugees, foreign laborers, and prisoners of war (14). Frederick taylor acknowledges that
for many years he "knew only the legend of Dresden," having "learned of the city's
destruction principally through a work of fiction: Kurt Vonnegut's acidly surreal
masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five" (xi). regarding the actual number of casualties,
Taylor finds the 35,000 figure a more acceptable figure than the 135,000 David irving
suggests:
The macabre argument over the death toll at Dresden still continues.
Evidence comes and goes, but there is a basic divide between those who
agree that the figures were between twenty-five thousand and forty
thousand, and thosestill including Irvingwho insist in the face of the
documentary evidence that the deaths went into six figures, in some cases
into several hundreds of thousands. (446)
My purpose in discussing the ongoing debates around this issue is not to add my
own voice to the debate. After all, it is not my place or purpose here to present an
argument concerning the military ethics of the bombing of Dresden. The only reason
compelling enough to raise this issue is to demonstrate the complexities and ambiguities
inevitably associated with the archive and its interpretation.

Slaughterhouse-Five and the Interrogative Function of Language

Emile Benveniste introduces three different functions for language and linguistic
utterances, corresponding to the three modalities in which a sentence may be uttered:

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It is everywhere recognized that there are declarative statements,

interrogative statements, and imperative statements, which are distinguished
by specific features of syntax and grammar although they are based in
identical fashion upon predication. Now these three modalities do nothing
but reflect the three fundamental behaviours of man speaking and acting
through discourse upon his interlocutor: he wishes to impart a piece of
knowledge to him or to obtain some information from him or to give an
order to him. These are the three inter-human functions of discourse that are
imprinted in the three modalities of the sentence-unit, each one
corresponding to an attitude of the speaker. (110)
Classic realism, I wish to suggest, belongs to the declarative realm of language.
It purports to provide reader with some information through an often invisible narrator.
What is often regarded as propaganda belongs to the imperative category of language.
In other words, notwithstanding their declarative appearance, propagandistic works of
literature implicitly ask their reader to believe in a particular ideology. The interrogative
function of language, I believe, is correspondent with historiographic metafiction,
particularly with its challenging the way(s) in which events of the past are represented.
Here the issue of Vonnegut and his paradoxical relationship with the archive comes to
the fore. While interrogating history as presented by those holding the archontic power
in American society, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five contributes to the very archive it
purports to interrogate through offering another, although totally different perspective
on the bombing of Dresden. This argument concerning the ambiguous relationship
between Slaughterhouse-Five and the archive supports Hutcheon's notion that
"historiographic Metafiction . . . keeps distinct its formal auto-representation and its
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historical context, and in so doing problematizes the very possibility of historical

knowledge, because there is no reconciliation, no dialectic herejust unresolved
contradiction" ("Poetics" 106).

Slaughterhouse-Five: Memory, Testimony, History

I wish to conclude this chapter by looking at another issue Closely related to the
concept of the archive, i.e. the issue of memory. As Peter Middleton and Tim Woods
have argued, "Postmodernism is haunted by memory: memories of disaster, genocide,
war, the holocaust and so on" (81). But the question that persistently presents itself to
the mind is this: Are we completely in command of that which we remember or send to
oblivion? And if this is not the case, then who controls what should be remembered and
how?
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five deals with a historical event deeply entrenched
in the collective memory of American and German societies. This novel deals with the
concept of memory on both an individual and a collective level. On the individual level,
it self-consciously narrates Vonnegut's struggles to remember his war experience. For
example, While claiming the facticity of his text, Vonnegut also recognizes the
limitations of memory: "I'm writing this book about Dresden. I'd like some help
remembering stuff" (5).
On the collective level, it demonstrates how a written representation of a past
event can weave itself into the fabric of collective memory. Though incomplete and
sometimes imprecise, memory seems to be the only means besides physical objects and
traces through which it is possible to verify the existence of the past. Paul Ricoeur,
106

recognizing this dilemma, argues for the unique functionality of memory in relation to
the past and its representation:
The constant danger of confusing remembering and imagining,
resulting from memories becoming images in this way, affects the goal of
faithfulness corresponding to the truth claim of memory . . . And yet, we
have nothing better than memory to guarantee that something has taken
place before we call to mind a memory of it. Historiography itself . . . will
not succeed in setting aside the . . . conviction that the final referent of
memory remains the past, whatever the pastness of the past may signify. (7)
Another problem associated with memory is the issue of documentation. Based
on this notion, Paul Ricoeur makes a useful distinction between memory and history. He
poses the argument that memory, as long as it is not shared by others, is constantly in
danger of being forgotten. In other words, This kind of memory dies with the death of
its bearer. But if this memory is presented in written form, it stands a good chance of
being preserved. Ricoeur introduces the concept of testimony as "the fundamental
transitional structure between memory and history" (21). Ricoeur refers to the transition
from verbal testimony to written document as "the moment of the inscription of
testimony" (146). Historiographic Metafiction like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, as
Linda Hutcheon argues, "self-consciously reminds us that, while events did occur in the
real empirical past, we name and constitute those events as historical facts by selection
and narrative positioning. And, even more basically, we only know of those past events
through their discoursive inscription, through their trace in the present" ("Poetics" 97).
Hutcheon herself summarizes the key concern of historiographers like Vonnegut: "How
can the present know the past it tells?" ("Politics" 69).

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In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut brilliantly succeeds in transforming a

personal memory into a collective one. This is why contrary to his prediction to the
effect that this novel would be a failure (22), Vonnegut's fictionalization of a traumatic
war experience is read by millions of Americans, and enjoys a high status as a cultural
icon. This great work of fiction constantly reminds the reader not to be afraid of
revisiting the past for the lessons it might still have to offer.

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Conclusion: Towards a critical reorientation

If reason were banished from the face of the earth, no one would imagine
himself to be ignorant.Sadi

So what? This is perhaps the most legitimate question to be asked regarding this
or any other similar project. To answer this question, I have to go back to a couple of
years ago, when I was studying as an undergraduate student at Shiraz university. One
evening, one of my friends named Hussein asked me to go to his room to discuss an
important matter which could not even wait until after dinner. I went to his room and
having promised the utmost secrecy, I was told by Hussein that Mojtaba, our mutual
friend, had become a consummate nihilist. I asked Hussein to explain more, and he told
me that he had seen Mojtaba reading books by atheists like Nietzsche and Vonnegut,
and even that he had heard him talking about God's death. Subsequently, Hussein
suggested that I'd better talk to him and bring him back to the "right path." I went and
argued with Mojtaba about people I had never heard of, and books which I had never
read. In his turn, Mojtaba promised to stop reading those misleading books, and I was
more than happy for being God's instrument to guide a single person to the "right path."
This personal experience clearly demonstrates how Nietzsche and Vonnegut
have often been unduly written off as mere pessimists. Therefore, in the course of this
study attempt was made to salvage their reputation endangered by the misapplication of
academic categorizations. To this end, Nietzsche's philosophy and his new morality
based on a redefinition of all values were introduced as the premise upon which a
postmodern humanism, however oxymoronic this term may appear, comes to rest. By
arguing that "there are no facts, only interpretations" (qtd. in Tongeren 397), Nietzsche

109

set the stage for the rejection of the inherent superiority of fact over fiction, a theme
enthusiastically taken up by postmodern writers like Kurt Vonnegut.
If Nietzsche was the theoretician of this kind of postmodern humanism,
Vonnegut was certainly a practitioner, and a successful one at that. To demonstrate the
validity of this proposition, Nietzsche's distrust towards totalizing myths was explored
as the harbinger of the postmodern disbelief towards grand narratives. Based on this
theoretical framework, a deconstructive project was outlined for Kurt Vonnegut, and
was further explored with particular focus on Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.
The stories that Vonnegut has been telling for the last fifty years or so are best if
viewed as pragmatic responses to pragmatic challenges. In one of his autobiographical
sketches, Vonnegut regards both laughter and tears as "responses to frustration and
exhaustion," and introduces himself as preferring the former over the latter ("Palm"
327). Elsewhere he elaborates on this statement, arguing that "The biggest laughs are
based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears" ("Wampeters" 258). In
other words, humor in Vonnegut's writing serves, in his words, as "an analgesic for the
temporary relief of existential pain" (qtd. in Scholes, "Talk" 108). This goes a long way
towards

explaining the sardonic and bitter humour prevalent even in his most

apocalyptic novels. In fact, as Todd F. Davis argues, "Vonnegut uses humor to face
what for many seems impossible to face: the lack of definitive control over human
existence" ("Kurt" 57).
Unfortunately, however, Vonnegut's warnings appear to have fallen on deaf ears,
leading him to the sad conclusion that American society has been plagued with such a
disappointing torpor that even "humor doesn't work anymore" ("Man" 129). Naturally,

110

the resignation of this Horatian spokesman for a better and more humane world must be
looked upon with something more than ordinary concern.
In the face of the culture of deception promulgated by the Bush administration,
the threats posed by a nuclear standoff between East and West, and finally, despite all
the destruction wreaked upon the blue planet because of unrestrained technological
advances, Vonnegut remains committed to his postmodern humanism through engaging
in social activism, thus giving voice to the concerns of those who still "give a damn
whether the planet goes on or not" ("Man" 69). Vonnegut's only glimmer of hope
remains with those individuals of the human species who choose to act "decently in a
strikingly indecent society" (ibid. 106).
This study was an attempt to conceptualize the humanist elements of Kurt
Vonneguts works with particular reference to Cats Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.
Future studies may focus on other works by the same author or other postmodern
writers to find and explicate such elements. Such a quest would be both worthy of
scholarly endeavours and useful to the whole human society in practical ways, as it
helps find ways to lead more human lives in accordance with the principles promoted by
Vonnegut and his postmodern humanism.

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