I've been thinking a lot about the way that the books we've read so far have protrayed World War II. i guess that mostly means Cryptonomicon and Gravity's Rainbow, but maybe a little bit of Underworld. It's interesting that both Cryptonomicon and Gravity's Rainbow are books about World War II, but somehow it doesn't feel like that because they are set in locations or ways that don't reflect what we would traditionally think of when we think fo WWII. Why do you think that these books focus on this other part of the war that we aren't used to? When I'm reading, I forget about the European combat and the holocaust that was also going on.
According to lots of postmodern theory (which all the books we've read in the course could be construed as in their own right), one important way to resist the powers-that-be is to contest the historical narratives that we have been taught to accept. WWII tends to elicit certain concepts and connections in our minds (like anti-fascism, the holocaust, major changes in international law, etc.). How does this understanding of WWII inform political possibilities in the present, regarding, for instance, the war in Iraq? How might changing our conceptions/narratives of history concerning something like WWII change those possibilities? Maybe some of the work we have read this semester touches on this point.