Towards Post Modernism

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

If you are like most people, you’re not sure what Postmodernism is. And if this were like most books on the subject, it probably wouldn’t tell you. Besides what a few grumpy critics claim, Postmodernism is not a bunch of meaningless intellectual mind games. On the contrary, it is a reaction to the most profound spiritual and philosophical crisis of our time – the failure of the Enlightenment. Jim Powell takes the position that Postmodernism is a series of “maps” that help people find their way through a changing world. Postmodernism For Beginners features the thoughts of Foucault on power and knowledge, Jameson on mapping the postmodern, Baudrillard on the media, Harvey on time-space compression, Derrida on deconstruction and Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes. The book also discusses postmodern artifacts such as Madonna, cyberpunk, Buddhist ecology, and teledildonics.

In this overview of twentieth-century American poetry, Jennifer Ashton examines the relationship between modernist and postmodernist American poetics. Ashton moves between the iconic figures of American modernism - Stein, Williams, Pound - and developments in contemporary American poetry to show how contemporary poetics, specially the school known as language poetry, have attempted to redefine the modernist legacy. She explores the complex currents of poetic and intellectual interest that connect contemporary poets with their modernist forebears. The works of poets such as Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery are explained and analysed in detail. This major account of the key themes in twentieth-century poetry and poetics develops important ways to read both modernist and postmodernist poetry through their similarities as well as their differences. It will be of interest to all working in American literature, to modernists, and to scholars of twentieth-century poetry.

This systemic study discusses in its historical, cultural and aesthetic context the postmodern American novel between the years of 1960 and 1980. A general overview of the various definitions of postmodernism in philosophy, cultural theory and aesthetics provides the framework for the inquiry into more specific problems, such as: the broadening of aesthetics, the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, the transformation of the artistic tradition, the interdependence between modernism and postmodernism, and the change in the aesthetics of fiction. Other topics addressed here include: situationalism, montage, the ordinary and the fantastic, the subject and the character, the imagination, comic modes, and the future of the postmodern strategies. The authors whose fiction is treated in some detail under the various aspects thematized are John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Raymond Federman, William Gaddis, John Hawkes, Jerzy Kosinski, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Ronald Sukenick, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

'Charles Lemert is one of the most thoughtful and interesting of sociology's postmodernists. He recurrently finds new angles of vision and is especially helpful for overcoming the pernicious opposition of 'micro' and 'macro' perspectives.' -Craig Calhoun, New York University (on the first edition) Highly readable, the second edition of Postmodernism Is Not What You Think responds to the widespread claim that postmodernism is over. It explains the historical connections between the postmodern and globalization. Those who wish to kill the term postmodernism still must face the facts that the former nationalistic world-system has collapsed and is slowly being replaced by a more global set of structures. The book is completely revised and updated with an entirely new section on globalization. The media and popular culture, identity politics, the science wars, politics and cultural studies, structuralism and poststructuralism, and the new sociologies are also put in perspective as signs of the new social formations dawning at the end of the modern age. Lemert shows that the postmodern is less a theory than a condition of social life brought about by the trouble modernity has gotten itself into.

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism offers a comprehensive introduction to postmodernism. The Companion examines the different aspects of postmodernist thought and culture that have had a significant impact on contemporary cultural production and thinking. Topics discussed by experts in the field include postmodernism's relation to modernity, and its significance and relevance to literature, film, law, philosophy, architecture, religion and modern cultural studies. The volume also includes a useful guide to further reading and a chronology. This is an essential aid for students and teachers from a range of disciplines interested in postmodernism in all its incarnations. Accessible and comprehensive, this Companion addresses the many issues surrounding this elusive, enigmatic and often controversial topic.