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Postmodernism: A Reader
This reader provides a selection of articles and essays by leading figures in the postmodernism debate.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
540 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1992
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About the author
Thomas Docherty
13 books3 followersProfessor Thomas Docherty is Emeritus Professor of English and of Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 11, 2022
Postmodernism: A Reader brings together essays, articles and excerpted book chapters from a range of contributors, including theorists and commentators like Fredric Jameson, Jean-François Lyotard, Jürgen Habermas, Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco. The essays vary in focus, some commenting on postmodernism in specific areas such as dance, music and architecture, and others commenting on broader issues such as feminism and postcolonialism. The essays with which the book opens strive for the most global perspective as each attempts to define and describe postmodernism in terms of (Western) history and culture. The book is divided into sections, and for each section Docherty supplies introductory commentary situating the various essays in relation to one another as well as to the larger debates that they reflect.
The academic style of the writing in many of the essays is challenging. I found the following by Lyotard to be notable for its denseness and obscurity:
Elsewhere in the book are more than a few passages requiring some familiarity with Kantian concepts in order to be able to follow the argument (I still haven't read him, know I should).
This is not to say that the experience of reading the book is onerous or unpleasant--just to give readers an idea of the relative accessibility of the thought as it is expressed by some of these writers (Baudrillard I found difficult in a different way, in that while I felt I comprehended one of his arguments perfectly--in the abstract--the point was completely lost on me insofar as I had no idea how it connected with the main topic of the essay or with any actual thing in particular).
Many other of the essays I found to be relatively accessible, however, including those by Ihab Hassan, Meaghan Morris and Umberto Eco (for me, the latter writer's work is rather more fun than academic, like a guilty pleasure that comes as a temporary respite to more serious work).
Acquired Jun 28, 2005
Attic Books, London, Ontario
The academic style of the writing in many of the essays is challenging. I found the following by Lyotard to be notable for its denseness and obscurity:
This isn't a matter of sense or reality bearing upon what happens or what this might mean. Before asking questions about what it is and about its significance, before the quid, it must 'first' so to speak 'happen', quod. That it happens 'precedes', so to speak, the question pertaining to what happens. Or rather, the question precedes itself, because 'that it happens' is the question relevant as event, and it 'then' pertains to the event that has just happened. The event happens as a question mark 'before' happening as a question. It happens is rather 'in the first place' is it happening, is this it, is it possible? Only 'then' is any mark determined by the questioning: is this or that happening, is it this or something else, is it possible that this or that? [Italics Lyotard's]
Elsewhere in the book are more than a few passages requiring some familiarity with Kantian concepts in order to be able to follow the argument (I still haven't read him, know I should).
This is not to say that the experience of reading the book is onerous or unpleasant--just to give readers an idea of the relative accessibility of the thought as it is expressed by some of these writers (Baudrillard I found difficult in a different way, in that while I felt I comprehended one of his arguments perfectly--in the abstract--the point was completely lost on me insofar as I had no idea how it connected with the main topic of the essay or with any actual thing in particular).
Many other of the essays I found to be relatively accessible, however, including those by Ihab Hassan, Meaghan Morris and Umberto Eco (for me, the latter writer's work is rather more fun than academic, like a guilty pleasure that comes as a temporary respite to more serious work).
Acquired Jun 28, 2005
Attic Books, London, Ontario
October 10, 2024
AN INTERESTING COLLECTION OF WRITINGS ON MANY ASPECTS OF THE MOVEMENT
The editor, Thomas Docherty (a professor of English) wrote in the Preface to this 1993 collection of essays and other brief writings, “We are not at the end of history; we are rather at the beginning of a rethinking of modernity, a rethinking of the world under the sign of postmodernism. Yet although the term ‘postmodernism’ has become one of the most insistently used terms in the cultural debates of recent years, it is a term which has often been used with a great deal of imprecision… The central rationale for this anthology is to indicate the enormous and eclectic body of interests upon which the postmodern debate has made a significant mark. The gathering of pieces will also reveal how philosophically serious and difficult much of the argument it… It is thus a good moment to gather together in one volume a diverse and extensive body of writings on the subject which have shaped the varied debates.”
The authors/artists in this anthology include Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jürgen Habermas, Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Michael Nyman, Richard Rorty, and many others. The writings are grouped together in sections such as “Aesthetic and Cultural Practices,” “Architecture and Urbanicity,” “Politics,” “Feminism,” and more.
Docherty wrote in his Introduction, “reconsiderations of culture in terms of the relation between the aesthetic and the political come to their fullest development in the more recent work of [Fredric] Jameson and Lyotard. But it should immediately be noted that a deep formative influence lying behind much of the contemporary debate is the legacy of the Frankfurt School… to which I shall return in more detail below. For present purposes, the salient fact is that aesthetic postmodernism is always intimately imbricated with the issue of a political postmodernism.” (Pg. 3) He adds, “The name for this aestheticisation of the political is ‘representation.’ In the postmodern, representation, as both a political and an aesthetic category, has come under increasing pressure…” (Pg. 14)
Lyotard observes in one of his essays, “Postmodern architecture finds itself condemned to undertake a series of minor modifications in a space inherited from modernity, condemned to abandon a global reconstruction of the space of human habitation. The perspective then opens onto a vast landscape, in the sense that there is no longer any horizon of universality, universalization, or general emancipation to greet the eye of postmodern man, least of all the eye of the architect. The disappearance of the Idea that rationality and freedom are progressing would explain a ‘tone,’ style, or mode specific to postmodern architecture. I would say it is a sort of ‘bricolage’: the multiple quotation of elements taken from earlier styles or periods, classical and modern; disregard for the environment; and so on.” (Pg. 47)
Another essayist suggests, “Analysis of postmodernity, however conscientious, must bear the same ‘until further notice,’ incomplete character, as the traditional theories of modernity once did; constructed from within modernity, they perceived the latter as a yet unfinished, and hence organically open-ended, process. Analysis of postmodernity cannot be anything more than a mid-career report.” (Pg. 139)
An essayist reviews the position of philosopher Arthur Danto: “modernist art became energized by an internal ‘logic’ necessarily progressing towards the revelation of art’s real essence---an essence that would not be assimilable in terms of other forms of communication. In Warhol’s Pop Art, this progression issues in its logical culmination. The essence of art is, in effect, declared as institutional. This self-congruence of art with its own essence is the culmination of art history. After it there can be nothing new in a distinctively artistic sense… in other words, postmodern art is essentially post-historical. Art, in effect, has come to an end.” (Pg. 182)
Another essayist argues, “The failure of political discourse and ideological dogma has caused the superstition of art as a progress attitude to be overcome. Artists have realized that the principles of progressivist thought can be reduced, in the final analysis, to an internal progression or evolution of language along lines of escape which parallel the utopian escape of ideology. The art of the immediate past sought to take part in social change through the expansion of new processes and new materials, moving away from painting and from the static time of the work. Present art tends to discard illustrations of what lies outside itself, and to turn back on its own footsteps.” (Pg. 258-259)
Still another essayist asks, “What rupture does so-called postmodernism imply in this set-up? Does postmodernist criticism, interpreted as a crisis in the assumptions behind modernity, in any way modify our reading of the role which the province has hitherto played on the map of international dependencies? Modernity has always been intimately linked to the idea and practice of writing. The storage of knowledge in books generated meaning and fixed reference points; the book as history is also history as the book. Postmodernity, on the other hand, declares itself concerned not with the question of establishing meanings, but with the challenging of the very concept of any monological or univalent structure of signification.” (Pg. 467)
One must of course observe that this collection is now more than thirty years old---an eternity, for a movement which strives to be “the latest thing.” However, for anyone seeking a broad overview/orientation of the earlier phases of postmodernism, this book will be very useful.
The editor, Thomas Docherty (a professor of English) wrote in the Preface to this 1993 collection of essays and other brief writings, “We are not at the end of history; we are rather at the beginning of a rethinking of modernity, a rethinking of the world under the sign of postmodernism. Yet although the term ‘postmodernism’ has become one of the most insistently used terms in the cultural debates of recent years, it is a term which has often been used with a great deal of imprecision… The central rationale for this anthology is to indicate the enormous and eclectic body of interests upon which the postmodern debate has made a significant mark. The gathering of pieces will also reveal how philosophically serious and difficult much of the argument it… It is thus a good moment to gather together in one volume a diverse and extensive body of writings on the subject which have shaped the varied debates.”
The authors/artists in this anthology include Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jürgen Habermas, Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Michael Nyman, Richard Rorty, and many others. The writings are grouped together in sections such as “Aesthetic and Cultural Practices,” “Architecture and Urbanicity,” “Politics,” “Feminism,” and more.
Docherty wrote in his Introduction, “reconsiderations of culture in terms of the relation between the aesthetic and the political come to their fullest development in the more recent work of [Fredric] Jameson and Lyotard. But it should immediately be noted that a deep formative influence lying behind much of the contemporary debate is the legacy of the Frankfurt School… to which I shall return in more detail below. For present purposes, the salient fact is that aesthetic postmodernism is always intimately imbricated with the issue of a political postmodernism.” (Pg. 3) He adds, “The name for this aestheticisation of the political is ‘representation.’ In the postmodern, representation, as both a political and an aesthetic category, has come under increasing pressure…” (Pg. 14)
Lyotard observes in one of his essays, “Postmodern architecture finds itself condemned to undertake a series of minor modifications in a space inherited from modernity, condemned to abandon a global reconstruction of the space of human habitation. The perspective then opens onto a vast landscape, in the sense that there is no longer any horizon of universality, universalization, or general emancipation to greet the eye of postmodern man, least of all the eye of the architect. The disappearance of the Idea that rationality and freedom are progressing would explain a ‘tone,’ style, or mode specific to postmodern architecture. I would say it is a sort of ‘bricolage’: the multiple quotation of elements taken from earlier styles or periods, classical and modern; disregard for the environment; and so on.” (Pg. 47)
Another essayist suggests, “Analysis of postmodernity, however conscientious, must bear the same ‘until further notice,’ incomplete character, as the traditional theories of modernity once did; constructed from within modernity, they perceived the latter as a yet unfinished, and hence organically open-ended, process. Analysis of postmodernity cannot be anything more than a mid-career report.” (Pg. 139)
An essayist reviews the position of philosopher Arthur Danto: “modernist art became energized by an internal ‘logic’ necessarily progressing towards the revelation of art’s real essence---an essence that would not be assimilable in terms of other forms of communication. In Warhol’s Pop Art, this progression issues in its logical culmination. The essence of art is, in effect, declared as institutional. This self-congruence of art with its own essence is the culmination of art history. After it there can be nothing new in a distinctively artistic sense… in other words, postmodern art is essentially post-historical. Art, in effect, has come to an end.” (Pg. 182)
Another essayist argues, “The failure of political discourse and ideological dogma has caused the superstition of art as a progress attitude to be overcome. Artists have realized that the principles of progressivist thought can be reduced, in the final analysis, to an internal progression or evolution of language along lines of escape which parallel the utopian escape of ideology. The art of the immediate past sought to take part in social change through the expansion of new processes and new materials, moving away from painting and from the static time of the work. Present art tends to discard illustrations of what lies outside itself, and to turn back on its own footsteps.” (Pg. 258-259)
Still another essayist asks, “What rupture does so-called postmodernism imply in this set-up? Does postmodernist criticism, interpreted as a crisis in the assumptions behind modernity, in any way modify our reading of the role which the province has hitherto played on the map of international dependencies? Modernity has always been intimately linked to the idea and practice of writing. The storage of knowledge in books generated meaning and fixed reference points; the book as history is also history as the book. Postmodernity, on the other hand, declares itself concerned not with the question of establishing meanings, but with the challenging of the very concept of any monological or univalent structure of signification.” (Pg. 467)
One must of course observe that this collection is now more than thirty years old---an eternity, for a movement which strives to be “the latest thing.” However, for anyone seeking a broad overview/orientation of the earlier phases of postmodernism, this book will be very useful.
May 26, 2024
I am not an expert on the subject, but if you were going to read just one book about postmodernism, this might be the one. It is a collection of essays from a range of well-known thinkers on the subject, and Frederic Jameson's essay alone is worth the price of admission.
March 14, 2014
probably sufficient for undergraduates who want more than a taste of this school of thought, including both pomo-gone-wild and more responsible variants. includes the usual roll call of areas of inquiry: art, literature, architecture, and so on.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews