C R A I G D O U G L A S D W O R K I N

C R A I GD O U G L A SD W O R K I NThe Imaginary SolutionThe production of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideologicalact in its own right, with the function of inventing imaginary or formal“solutions” to unresolvable social contradictions.Fredric Jameson, The Political UnconsciousQuoniam mihi quidem alia adhuc via non patet istud praestandi, nisi per imaginaria –1 littera i in posterum designabo.procedendo, formulam [Since the only way to make any progress has been by proceeding alongan imaginary path, I henceforth designate the negative square root with theletter i.]Leonhard Euler, Institutionum calculi integralis“From the modernism you want,” quipped David Antin,“you get the postmodernism you deserve.”1 Trueenough, as the last quarter century has shown; Antin’sdynamic nicely encapsulates the logic of canons, inwhich interventions resonate both forward and backward, as lineageand precedent adjust to accommodate and account for apparent ruptures or discontinuities. But Antin’s instant proverb is also a goodreminder that whatever the dominant canon might be—whatever itis that comes to mind at the thought of “modernism” or “postmodFor opportunities to present and discuss portions of this project, I would like to thankLou Asekoff, Benjamin Buchloh, Stuart Culver, Hal Foster, John Guillory, Yunte Huang,Alan Liu, Robert Viscusi, and especially Tania Ørum—this essay is for her.1. I have been unable to locate the source of Antin’s adage, but it is widely quoted.See, for the earliest instance I have traced, Marjorie Perloff, “Postmodernism / Fin desiècle” 177.Contemporary Literature XLVIII, 10010-7484; E-ISSN 1548-9949/07/0001-0029 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

30 C O N T E M P O R A R YL I T E R A T U R Eernism” or “contemporary literature”—the lack of critical consensuson the literature of the previous century means that there are stillviable alternatives for our sense of the contemporary. Indeed, as thisessay will show, the last few years have seen one of those alternativesmaking good, with interest, on the promise of a particular modernism. Or to phrase it from the other perspective, a particularmodernism has finally fully arrived, about a decade behind schedule,but making up for lost time. Part of the task of this essay is to document the emergence of this return and to provide evidence of a tendency that plays out across media, indexing and exemplifying one ofthe defining conditions of its cultural moment. Because these worksfall outside the genres and styles likely to be familiar even to manyreaders of avant-garde literature, this documentation will require acertain degree of descriptive cataloguing (although it is worth notingthat the catalogue itself, not coincidentally, is a key component of theworks I will itemize). With the series of examples that follow, I furtherhope to show that this particular trend in contemporary literature isuniquely hinged, not only recovering one of the dreams of its literarypast but also looking forward to what may be the nightmare of ourdigital future. This second claim, for the history of digital poetics,starts from the premise that a poem may well have a greater affinitywith works from other disciplines or in other media—in this caseInternet applications, software, and digital video—than with otherpoems. Following Lev Manovich’s insight that certain artistic formspredate the media that best accommodate them (Language 248), I willargue that these poems are proleptic: their striking forms anticipatethe computerized new media that would seem to be their idealvehicle.As Marjorie Perloff persuasively argues in Twenty-First-CenturyModernism, there is a “special relationship between the early twentiethcentury and the early twenty-first,” and certain literary works fromour own fin de siècle often have a stronger family resemblance to theavant-garde impulse of their modernist predecessors than to the more

that the catalogue itself, not coincidentally, is a key component of the . saw, until then stay pure, uphill gardeners, urethra cleaner, usa el poder, using the structure, utterly-utta . And then on the way home you