In this new book, David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience.

_Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers_ surveys the most important figures who have influenced post-war thought. The reader is guided through structuralism, semiotics, post-Marxism and Annales history, on to modernity and postmodernity. With its comprehensive biographical and bibliographical information, this book provides a vital reference work of the last fifty years.

This collection is a powerful statement about the many directions a post-metaphysical ethics might take.

Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity interweaves classical and contemporary writings from the social sciences and the humanities to represent feminist thought from the late eighteenth century to the present. Editors Susan Archer Mann and Ashly Suzanne Patterson pay close attention to the multiplicity and diversity of feminist voices, visions, and vantage points by race, class, gender, sexuality, and global location. Along with more conventional forms of theorizing, this anthology points to multiple sites of theory production--both inside and (...) outside of the academy--and includes personal narratives, poems, short stories, zines, and even music lyrics. Offering a truly global perspective, the book devotes three chapters and more than thirty readings to the topics of colonialism, imperialism and globalization. It also provides extensive coverage of third-wave feminism, poststructuralism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminisms. (shrink)

The revised edition of Subject to Ourselves, a lively and provocative book that was a leader on its topic in England, uses psychoanalytic theory as the basis for a fresh reassessment of the nature of modernity and postmodernism. Analyzing changing experiences of selfhood, desire, interpersonal relations, culture and globalization, the author develops a novel account of postmodernity that supplants current understandings of "fragmented selves." Subject to Ourselves includes a diverse set of case studies, including the power of fantasy in (...) military violence and war, the debate over sexual seduction in psychoanalysis, and the cultural uses of media and new information technologies. The book will be essential reading for students and professionals of social and political theory, psychoanalytic studies, psychology and cultural studies, as well as those with an interest in the modernity/postmodernity debate. Praise for the First Edition: 'This book not only fills an important gap in the literature, for it summarises a debate that is scattered across a decade of rather difficult texts, but also offers a resolution that is sensible and grounded in the best current thinking. It will be widely read by graduate students, faculty, and professionals in the humanities and social sciences.' Choice 'This is an informative and enjoyable book, which will be of use to students and academics...It is accessibly written and provides useful summaries of the different theories and debates in cultural and psychoanalytic theory. Recommended.' Radical Philosophy. (shrink)

Methodologically rigorous description, analysis, and critique of postmodern phenomena presuppose a rigorous theory of postmodernity, for which the philosophy of Martin Heidegger holds great untapped promise. This essay explicates the basic content of Heidegger’s “metametaphysics,” since for Heidegger a “metaphysics” is the epochally prevailing projection of the meaning of being in general, and he offers a theory of Western metaphysics. I begin with Heidegger’s analysis of the “regional ontologies” of the sciences in his 1927 magnum opus Being and Time, (...) since the metametaphysical works of the “late middle” Heidegger in the 1930s–1940s extend this analytical framework to metaphysics as global ontology. I then explicate Heidegger’s views on modern metaphysics, focusing on his analyses of modern science and the philosophy of Descartes, before turning to his theory of postmodernity, which I extract from his analyses of modern technology and the philosophy of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Lyotard’s diagnosis of a ‘postmodern condition’ has been repeatedly interpreted as a disavowal of the universal aspiration of political action and judgment. This article challenges this interpretation by showing that postmodernity involves an attempt to reconsider universality in such a way that it involves dissensus rather than consensus. I proceed by reconstructing Lyotard’s critique of the idea of consensus as a ground of political action and judgment, which in his view is based on a certain model of production of (...) scientific knowledge. Then, I analyse Lyotard’s turn to Kant’s judgment of the sublime as an alternative to a consensus-based conception of universal judgments. In the judgment of the sublime, universality stems from the disagreement between the faculties, which arouses respect for universal ideas. Analogously, political judgments stem from the disagreement between heterogeneous discourses, which produces a universal call to invent new languages that make communication possible. (shrink)

This is a book for all those fascinated by the state of politics, critical thinking, and the plight of the individual in the 21st century.

Contrary to the early media semioticians' claim that semiotics is a metalanguage of the media and the media are a metalanguage of reality, the present paper gives evidence of how the media represent a world that is itself highly mediated. It is argued that media representations involve self-referential loops in which communication turns out to be communication about communication, reports are reports about reports, and mediations are mediations of mediations. Self-reference in the media is interpreted as a symptom of (...) class='Hi'>postmodernity with its tendency towards historical self-reflection in scenarios in which even catastrophic current events are being interpreted as mere media events or even déjà-vu scenarios in a culture in which everything seems to have been said and shown before. (shrink)

In Theorizing the Avant-Garde Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde and assesses its importance for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulations of the avant-garde and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, this interdisciplinary project will appeal (...) to all those interested in twentieth-century modernist movements and postmodernity. (shrink)

The author uses the heidegger debate to juxtapose adorno's modernism to the 'postmodernism' of heidegger and others, Including rorty and lyotard. In contrast to heidegger, The author finds adorno's modernity to be more informed by enlightenment categories. Starting with adorno's suggestion that "ratio" must "transcend" the self-Preservation of instrumental thought, The author interprets adorno as moving in a somewhat universalist direction. According to this interpretation, Although adorno would agree with heidegger's critique of "identifying thought," he would find the category of (...) "rational identity" something much more positive than did heidegger. In contrast to heidegger, Adorno's critique of instrumentality has a strong ethical component. (shrink)

First published in 1990, Border Dialogues explores some of the territories of contemporary culture, philosophy and criticism. It touches on arguments surrounding Nietzsche and Italian 'weak thought', the mysteries of being 'British', and with more immediate concerns such as computers, fashion, gender and ethnicity. The chapters explore how such different strands are joined together, and how this can lead to a reassessment of contemporary cultural criticism. This innovative and interesting reissue will be of particular interest to students of critical theory, (...) cultural studies, radical philosophy and deconstruction. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s critique of modernity, and his vision of what may come after it, constitutes a sustained argument across the arc of his career. Does Hans-Georg Gadamer follow Heidegger’s path of making possible “another beginning” after the modern age? In this article, I show that, in contrast to Heidegger, Gadamer cultivates modernity’s hidden resources. We can gain insight into Gadamer’s difference from Heidegger on this fundamental point with reference to his ambivalence toward and departure from two of Heidegger’s touchstones for (...) postmodernity, namely, Friedrich Nietzsche and Friedrich Hölderlin. We can appreciate and motivate Gadamer’s proposal to rehabilitate modernity by juxtaposing his rootedness in Wilhelm Dilthey and Rainer Maria Rilke with Heidegger’s corresponding interest in Nietzsche and Hölderlin. This difference in influences and conceptual starting points demonstrates Heidegger and Gadamer’s competing approaches to the modern age, a contrast that I concretize through a close reading of Gadamer’s choice of a poem by Rilke as the epigraph to Truth and Method. (shrink)

This article considers friendship as a channel for education and as one of its objectives, as it is a necessary ingredient for a fulfilled life. This requires an initial study of interpersonal relationships in the postmodern context, considering their opportunities and risks. Our aim is to draw a topography of these relationships by analysing texts by major thinkers of the last four decades. The result of this analysis is the core of the article, namely, that there are four categories which (...) seem to give a proper account of the characteristics of interpersonal relationships in postmodernity and are relevant in education: 1) the questioning of the individual; 2) the appearance of the internet; 3) the recoveryof emotions; and, finally; 4) the extension of the feminine space. As a conclusion, they may all be said to have an ambivalent character that requires central issues in education to be reconsidered: the awareness and emotional regulation; the new constitution of identity and intimacy on the internet; education for male-female relationships, which now exist outside the sexual sphere, and preventing violence in these relationships; as well as how to educate for cooperation in an individualistic society. (shrink)

The creative imagination changes itself and the world in ways we cannot anticipate. This restless creativity gathers not just refutable facts; it hunts self-transforming revelations, semiotic prizes acclaimed and defended in the realms of inner awareness and political power. So doing, it eludes final description in any one set of signs. This means, I argue here, that sign systems must themselves give chase. Texts of this kind will not be the fixed embalmed arrays of signs and symbols that have sustained (...) our civilizations to date. These texts will be a new kind of artificial life, creative agents that rewrite and re-express themselves on-the-fly, in ways unpredictable by their founding authors. The deconstructive turn in postmodern theory sought interpretive vistas and strange loops to be teased, once upon a time, from each embalmed text. Beyond postmodernity is an aesthetics and a critical theory of empowered texts — sign arrays never quite the same and that, like time itself, sit still for no one. After an initial push by us, they self-evolve. Human sociobiology, asking how culture rewrites the agenda of replicating genes, provides a first glimpse of this new adventure in semiotics and human self-discovery. (shrink)

"On Perry Anderson's The Origins Of Postmodernity, Clint Burnham's The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics Of Marxist Theory, Steven Helmling's The Success And Failure Of Fredric Jameson: Writing, The Sublime, And The Dialectic Of Critique, Sean Homer's Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism, Adam Roberts's Fredric Jameson and Christopher Wise's The Marxian Hermeneutics Of Fredric Jameson" published on 01 Jan 2002 by Brill.

신자유주의 글로벌화는 도시와 마을을 상품화시키고, 극단적 개인주의와 경제적 불평등을 초래하고 있다. 도시와 마을은 더 이상 공동체가 아니라 로컬리티로 변화되고 있다. 로컬리티의 개인들은 자본의 생산수단과 거버넌스와 분리되어서 임노동자와 투표권자로 되었다. 이러한 상태에서 우리는 글로벌화에 의한 도시와 마을의 상품화와 개인주의에 대한 대안을 탈근대성의 공통적인 것에서 발견할 수 있다. 이 공통적인 것은 전근대의 공통적인 것들과 연결되는 비물질적 생산물이다. 근대적 합리주의자들은 자본주의 사회를 경제적·정치적 요소로 환원시키고, 직선적 진보의 시간에서 미래의 공동체를 약속한다. 이런 이유로 그들은 ‘현재’에서 공동체를 보지 못하고, 공통적인 것에서 미래의 공동체를 구성하고자 시도한다. (...) 그러나 역사적인 관점에서 공통적인 것이 공동체에 선행하지 않았다. 이런 입장에서 M. 마페졸리는 일상생활에서 원자적 개인(자아)은 타인들에 함몰되어서 큰 자기로서 공동체가 되고 있다고 말한다. 감성적·디오니소스적 관점에서 현대사회는 축제와 도취 속에서 분리된 개인들이 상호 연결되는 일체감을 느끼는 ‘살아 있는 거대한 몸’, 공동체이다. 생산적 관점에서 M. 하트는 비물질적 공통적인 것에 의해서 탈근대성의 공동체가 구성될 수 있다고 말한다. 다른 한편으로 소비적 관점에서 M. 마페졸리는 ‘의복, 언어, 몸짓상의 스타일’, 축제의 도취에서 공동체를 발견한다. 생산적·소비적 관점의 통합을 위해서 합리주의자는 축제의 공동체가 바로 비물질적인 공통적인 것(생산수단)이라는 인식적 전환을 반복적으로 실천해야 하고, 감성주의자는 축제에서 생산적 소비활동이 공통적인 것을 매개하는 경제적 자급과 정치적 자치라는 것을 자각해야 한다. 우리는 이성과 감성의 합류점에서 공통적인 것을 성문법에 명기함으로써, 탈근대성의 공통적인 것과 일상생활의 공동체의 통합에 도달할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

I characterize controlling pictures or assumptions and concomitants of first modemity and then postmodernity. In brief, these assumptions are the possibility of absolute transcendence of one’s body, language, and culture versus the inescapability of some immanence in the same, of standing in the world. I trace the historical trajectory of the modem spirit and conclude that the move from modernity to postmodemity has been a long, gradual one that continues today. Modern thought increasingly recognized the historical relativity and conditionedness (...) of everything human, yet held on to at least one version of absolutism. Recognizing that all of even one’s own thinking is always incarnate and conditioned is the decisive point for entering postmodernity. The critical and non-critical aspects of the postmodem spirit are described. I next offer an evaluative overview of modern. theology, evaluate two movements in modern theology and philosophy-existentialism and process thought -- with important postmodern elements, and commend liberation theologies for exposing absolutistic assumptions of modem theology. Finally, with some trepidation I evaluate three types of self-consciously postmodern theology (which can find possible or actual counterparts in all the disciplines of the humanities). Radical or deconstructive postrnodernism hypothesizes total immanence in our representations of reality. It alternates between the relativistic standing everywhere of equally endorsing all interpretations and the standing nowhere of nihilism. In its hidden standard of absolute truth and its refusal to (claim a) stand in the world, radical postmodernism reveals itself to be modern rather than postmodern. Conservative posmodemism. or postliberalism emphasizes the importance of enculturation in a tradition. Hypothesizing immanence inincommensurate worldviews, its posture is defensive. Protestant postliberalism, including Radical Orthodoxy, postmodernly claims Christianity as a self-authenticating context of meaning, but then incoherently shifts into the posture of modem or pre-modern absolutism and claims it as the one true religion. Only moderate postmodernism can adequately reflect the postmodern spirit. It charts a course betvveen absolutism and relativism. It gives the critical aspect its due, affirming limited human transcendence. It grants that all persons are rooted in the world, that all are embodied and enculturated in some meaning. (shrink)

Entangled by modernism -- Archaeological use of theories -- Object science -- Group formation, dissent, and change -- A method for analyzing cultural action -- Fragmenting the Bronze Age -- Contestation in the Hopewell.

Concerned with the idea of the self, this text challenges what it perceives to be the bleak deconstructionist views of ceaseless change with a discussion and depiction of the self in new vocabulary - an action-oriented self defined by the ways in which it communicates.

The paper begins by tracing the development of the understanding of truth as adjunct to the self in postmodernity. It then proceeds to ask what history is in postmodernity in the light of the reconfiguration of truth, and what kinds of response Christianity, and especially Catholic Christianity might develop to the postmodern situation. Using a critique of Habermas’ speech “Modernity – an incomplete project” it develops a notion of postmodernity as an extreme interpretation of modernity, solely through (...) reference to the self. By analysing the concept of the universal horizon in Habermas and in Hegel it shows how postmodernity both produces and deflects the notion of modernity, so that prior to the postmodern, neither modernity nor postmodernity can really be said to be thought at all.The paper suggests that postmodernity is not really ‘thought’ at all, but rather thinks for us, so that we take it for granted. It then takes a sketch of Nietzsche’s critique of the death of God as a springboard to ask what arenas a thoughtless theological response might be tempted into – especially that of conceiving the world purely and baldly as “sacramental” in structure. Finally it concludes by asking what possibilities postmodernity opens up through a thoughtful discernment of how it constitutes us at all. (shrink)