Post-Moondernism

While reading Libra, I've noticed that Oswald not only is fascinated by communism and revolution, but also seems to fixate on this notion of history as a force, and "merging with history". On page 101, DeLillo writes "...the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no-choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin...We live forever in history..." This idea pops up a lot when Oswald is going through hardships - he seems to think about the "history in the room" when he's with his mother, or locked up in jail with Dupard and the abusive guards. Although I'm still struggling with what the purpose of this idea is, it reminded me of a few things which might provoke some new thoughts in someone else (help me!). In US History this ...

We've been talking a lot in class about the question of self - where does performance become the self?  Kindred seems to assert that there is a very fine line, if there is a line, between the self and the performance. We see this assertion when Dana feels shame coming out of Kevin's room in the morning at the Weylin house, when Weylin winks at her - her "act" has meshed with the reality of the world she's living in, and she's internalized feelings which she never thought she could have. We see this also in the (slightly?) sympathetic portrayal of Weylin and Rufus, which complicates our perceptions of slaveowners by forcing us to view them as real people. In some sense, not only does the novel raise the question of "what would it be like to live in another time period, and what happens to our sense of self" but also "what would it be like to be someone else?" In a way, the first question turns into the second one when Dana sympathizes with...