The Postmodern Adventure

This compelling book explores the challenges to theory, politics, and human identity that we face on the threshold of the third millennium. It follows on the successor of Best and Kellner's two previous books, Postmodern Theory, acclaimed as the best critical introduction to the field - and The Postmodern Turn, which provides a powerful mapping of postmodern developments developments in the arts, politics, science, and theory. In The Postmodern Adventure, Best and Kellner analyze a broad array of literary, cultural, and political phenomena from fiction, film, science, and the Internet, to globalization and the rise of a transnational image culture.

This compelling book explores the challenges to theory, politics, and human identity that we face on the threshold of the third millennium. It follows on the successor of Best and Kellner's two previous books, Postmodern Theory, acclaimed as the best critical introduction to the field - and The Postmodern Turn, which provides a powerful mapping of postmodern developments developments in the arts, politics, science, and theory. In The Postmodern Adventure, Best and Kellner analyze a broad array of literary, cultural, and political phenomena from fiction, film, science, and the Internet, to globalization and the rise of a transnational image culture.

This book presents a groundbreaking analysis of the emergence of a pos tmodern paradigm in theory, the arts, science, and politics. From the authors of Postmodern Theory, the much-acclaimed introduction to key p ostmodern thinkers and themes, The Postmodern Turn ranges over diverse intellectual and artistic terrain--from architecture, painting, liter ature, music, and politics, to the physical and biological sciences. C ritically engaging postmodern theory and culture, Steven Best and Doug las Kellner illuminate our momentous transition between a modernist pa st and a future struggling to define itself.

For these volumes, the author has selected 50 articles and papers, ten of them not previously published, from his work as an Old Testament scholar over the last 30 years. Some of the papers, like 'The Evidence for an Autumnal New Year in Pre-exilic Israel Reconsidered', are far from postmodern in their outlook. But there is ample evidence here that the postmodern is indeed the direction in which his mind has been moving. The essays are organized in eight sections (Method, Literature, History, Theology, Language, Psalms, Job-and, for entertainment, Divertimenti). They include 'Reading Esther from Left to Right', 'Beyond Synchronic Diachronic', 'Story and Poem: The Old Testament as Literature and as Scripture', 'In Search of the Indian Job', and 'Philology and Power'-as well as 'The Postmodern Adventure in Biblical Studies'.

Historian Johan Huizinga once described game playing as the motor of humanity’s cultural development, predating art and literature. Since the late 20th century, Western society has undergone a “ludification,” as the influence of game-playing has grown ever more prevalent. At the same time, new theories of postmodernism have emphasized the importance of interactive, playful behavior. Core concepts of postmodernism are evident in pen-and-paper role-playing, such as Dungeons and Dragons. Exploring the interrelationships among narrative, gameplay, players and society, the author raises questions regarding authority, agency and responsibility, and discusses the social potential of RPGs in the 21st century.

Is postmodernity over? Does postmodernism still have anything important to say? Pragmatism, Technology, and the Persistence of the Postmodern argues “yes” to both. Despite the claims of a number of scholars that “postmodern” is over and done with, Andrew Wells Garnar demonstrates its continued relevance by carefully examining the use of information and communication technologies. These technologies illustrate many important postmodern concepts, thus showing the continued significance of postmodern philosophy. Garnar reconstructs these concepts with the tools of classical pragmatism. By engaging with pragmatists as well as with the thought of Jean-François Lyotard, Albert Borgmann, and others, this book produces a revitalized vision of both pragmatism and the postmodern. This version of pragmatism reflects the tenor of the times in a more nuanced way, while also showing how the postmodern continues to play out in contemporary life. Pragmatism, Technology, and the Persistence of the Postmodern shows how a pragmatic conception of technology opens up possibilities for working within postmodernity to materially address social and technical problems.

The first sustained study of the relationship between Anglo-American postmodernist fiction and the Second World War, Crosthwaite demonstrates that postmodernism has not abandoned history but has rather reformulated it in terms of trauma that is traceable, time and again, to the catastrophes of the 1940s.

An intriguing interrogation of America’s long-running obsession with conspiracy theories Why are Americans today so fascinated by Area 51? How did rumors that the AIDS virus originated as a weapon of biowarfare emerge? Why does the Kennedy assassination provoke heated debate over fifty years after the fact, and why did Donald Trump’s birther theories only serve to increase his popularity with voters? The origins of these ideas reveal important facets of American culture and politics. Placing conspiracy thinking at the center of American history, and challenging the knee-jerk dismissal of conspiratorial thought as deluded and often dangerous, Conspiracy Nation provides a wide-ranging survey of conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In the 19th century, inflammatory rhetoric about slave revolts, the well-publicized specter of the black rapist, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan all worked as conspiracy theories to legitimate an emerging sense of national consciousness based on an ideology of white supremacy – one that still persists today. In our contemporary world, panicked responses to increasing multiculturalism and globalization yield new notions of victimhood and new theories about conspiratorial plans for global domination. Offering up a provocative array of examples, ranging from alien abduction to the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon to Tupac Shakur's "paranoid style," Conspiracy Nation documents and unearths the workings of conspiracy in the contemporary moment. Contributors: Clare Birchall, Jack Bratich, Bridget Brown, Jodi Dean, Ingrid Walker Fields, Douglas Kellner, Peter Knight, Fran Mason, John A. McClure, Timothy Melley, Eithne Quinn, and Skip Willman