Utopia and Debt in Postmodernity; or, Time Management in Inherent Vice

Abstract

The category of postmodernism has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years. Indeed, it has become rather commonplace to pronounce the death or obsolescence of postmodernism today. Unsurprisingly, the increasingly questioned status of postmodernism also impacts the field of Pynchon studies. This article reads Inherent Vice as symptomatic not of the end but of a transformation of postmodernism and postmodernity. Pynchon’s novel simultaneously registers a contemporary intensification of postmodern/late capitalism and, crucially, participates in a minor current in postmodernism, one which insists on collective agency and utopian thinking despite the atomization and isolation of subjects accomplished by late capitalism and which, against all odds, remembers how to think historically—or better, invents new ways of thinking historically.