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- Title
Horsing Around with Literary Loops, or Why Postmodernism is Fun.
- Authors
Altheide, David L.
- Abstract
This article analyzes the short story The Man at the End of the Machine, by Allen Shelton. It is a good story and a helpful one in providing some empathy and understanding of a metaphor, the machine. This sensitive essay draws on some personal experiences to flesh out social process, social control, and resistance. But there is more to it. In discussing the story and the genre, the author asks the reader to permit his sociological imagination to wander a bit in order to raise some issues about stories, metaphors, and especially the role of evocative stories within a sociology-of-knowledge framework. The author's general view is that it is not coincidental that a shift to evocative storytelling and epiphanies by serious scholars has accompanied the rise of a media culture steeped in electronic media and entertainment formats. Allen Shelton's provocative piece can be placed within postmodernism and is a case study in which several of these dimensions may be addressed. Inverting the conventional science story of using specifics to build toward a more general understanding, stories bound by the postmodernist cover eschew such guidelines and stress the particular in rich, deep tones from a member. It is the experience for the audience that is stressed, more than evidence, data, truthfulness, or even the meaning of the findings.
- Subjects
MAN at the End of the Machine, The (Short story); SHELTON, Allen; SHORT story (Literary form); EXPERIENCE; SOCIAL control; RESISTANCE (Philosophy); DIGITAL media; POSTMODERNISM (Philosophy)
- Publication
Symbolic Interaction, 1995, Vol 18, Issue 4, p519
- ISSN
0195-6086
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1525/si.1995.18.4.519