ABSTRACT
In his study of collage and postmodernism, Thomas Brockelman sees collage as a method “to test the limits of visual syntax” that produces “an endless combination of the elements of signification, a kind of visual free association based upon the possibilities of semiotic articulation.”3 The Anthology might be said to encourage a similar play of sounds and lyrical content, whose juxtapositions call attention to similarities and differences, and thereby open multiple meanings and allow for the many possible narratives that scholars and critics have repeatedly constructed. By privileging collage over narrative in my approach, I argue for a more complex and nuanced social power than many other scholars have asserted, emphasizing how collage rather than narrative shapes our understanding of the Anthology as a work of social commentary against segregation. As Brockelman observes,
Collage practices-the gathering of materials from different worlds into a single composition . . . call attention to the irreducible heterogeneity of the “postmodern condition.” But, insofar as it does bind these elements, as elements, within a kind of unifying field . . . the practice of collage also resists the romanticism of pure difference.4
