Writing Sites: A Genealogy of the Postmodern World

by Jon Stratton

Based on the premise that as we enter the postmodern world we need to set in historical context the arguments about postmodernism, Writing Sites is one of the few studies of post-structuralism and post-modernism that successfully situates these intellectual movements historically.
 
Through a provocative synthesis of the theories of Marx, Foucault, Baurdrillard, and Derrida, Jon Stratton provides a basis for an analysis of the relationship between capitalism and the metaphors of writing. He argues that these theorists share not only a specific philosophical orientation, but their articulation at a specific historical the deployment of consumption capitalism and the privileging of representation over presence.
 
In providing his genealogy of the postmodern world, Stratton provides a history of representation, examining “sites of writing” at three historical moments. His study reveals the link between three epistemes – classical, modern, and postmodern – and three forms of capitalism – mercantile, production, and consumption – which produce the three moments of otherness – the colonial, the working-class and the mind.
 
Stratton displays an impressive command of historical material, ranging from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, and uses a variety of sources to illuminate his analysis, from literary texts through histories of colonization and travel writings.
 

356 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 1990

About the author

Jon Stratton is Adjunct Professor in the School of Creative Industries at the University of South Australia. He has worked at universities in the UK and Australia and held a Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Iowa in 1998. His areas of interest include Popular Music, Cultural Studies, Australian Studies, Jewish Cultural Studies and Media Studies. He is the sole author of eleven books and has co-edited two. In 2002 he published Australian Rock: Essays on Popular Music. His most recent books included Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (edited with Nabeel Zuberi, 2014), and When Music Migrates: Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines 1945-2010 (2014).