The ends of America, the ends of postmodernism

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2007 by Rachel Adams

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    He is only concerned with the
    commerce of money and things.
    What is this compared to the great
    commerce of humankind?

In contrast to the injustice inevitably involved in the "commerce of money and things," "the great commerce of humankind" represented by Archangel/EL GRAN MOJADO is a dialogue inclusive of many voices. Tropic of Orange models that commerce by presenting a story that must be told by multiple characters from across the spectrum of race, class, gender, and geography.

As the novel illustrates, the conflict between these two forms of commerce is amplified by the conditions of contemporary globalization, which have resulted in the dispersal and intensification of economic disparities. But globalization has also given rise to new modes of protest that Nick Dyer-Witheford labels the "new combinations" and Giovanni Arrighi, Terrence K. Hopkins, and Wallerstein call "antisystemic movements." According to Dyer-Witheford, the "new combinations" are political networks that bypass traditional coalitional categories, giving rise to "a proliferation of concrete utopianisms envisaging ways more or less outside or beyond the market system" (194). These innovative forms of mobilization are as much a product of the age of globalization as are the great inequities and threat of cultural homogeneity associated with the spread of transnational capital. In Tropic of Orange the potential of the "new combinations" is best represented by the homeless Angelenos who invade the freeway after a massive accident brings traffic to a standstill. Less systematic and secretive than Pynchon's Tristero/Trystero, their activities are spontaneous, collective, and dangerously anarchic. This revolution is fully televised. In a carnivalesque reversal, cars abandoned by their owners are taken over by the indigent, who treat them as homes rather than means of transportation. While everyone knows the situation is temporary, there is the suggestion that it may have more enduring consequences for the city as a whole. Significantly, Buzzworm notices,

    amazing thing was everybody in L.A. was walking. They just had no
    choice. There wasn't a transportation artery that a vehicle could
    pass through. It was a big-time thrombosis. Massive stroke. Heart
    attack. You name it. The whole system was coagulating then and
    there [...] Only way to navigate it was to feel the streets with
    your own two feet.
      So people were finally getting out, close to the ground, seeing
    the city like he did. (219)

Using the by-now familiar metaphor of the city as body, Buzzworm realizes that even if L.A. suffers a debilitating illness, its human inhabitants will persist, rediscovering forgotten means of conveyance and perception. In the novel, the dreaded gridlock does not bring urban life to an end. Instead, the crisis forces people to see and feel the city differently, as they experience it by foot. And perhaps, the novel suggests, these new experiences, like the L.A. riots of 1992, might lead to lasting changes in the way that individuals and communities perceive one another.

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The ends of America, the ends of postmodernism

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2007 by Rachel Adams

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