A Postmodern Reader

by Joseph Natoli, Linda Hutcheon (Editor)

These readings are organized into four sections. The first explores the wellsprings of the debates in the relationship between the postmodern and the enterprise it both continues and modernism. Here philosophers, social and political commentators, as well as cultural and literary analysts present controversial background essays on the complex history of postmodernism. The readings in the second section debate the possibility--or desirability--of trying to define the postmodern, given its cultural agenda of decentering, challenging, even undermining the guiding "master" narratives of Western culture. The readings in the third section explore postmodernism's complicated complicity with these very narratives, while the fourth section moves from theory to practice in order to investigate, in a variety of fields, the common denominators of the postmodern condition in action.

Genres: Philosophy, Literary Criticism

598 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1993

Reviews

[Derek Frasure · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great reader of many of the primary texts of postmodernism as of the early 90s. It includes some forgotten stuff that should be read more, and some that was well forgotten. As with all anthologies, there is a falling off of quality as the book progresses. Obviously, Baudrillard, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Habermas, Jameson, Cornel West, and bell hooks are all great. Additionally, Zygmunt Bauman's "Postmodernity, or Living with Ambivalence" is the best overview I've read of various uses and origins of postmodernism and related terminology like surfiction. Hutcheon and Hassan are the great literary critics and their work quoted here is classic. Essays on women and black people in relation to postmodernism close out this volume with a strong call for diversity. Too bad this volume largely ignores Asian, African, and Latin American postmodernisms. The enduring debates are contained in this volume, but the conversation has also moved a lot from where this volume leaves it.