Postmodernism: A Brief Insight

by Christopher Butler

Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, as well as their engagement with theory, literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, and music. By treating artists, intellectuals, critics, and social scientists “as if they were all members of a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party,” he creates a vastly entertaining framework in which to unravel the mysteries of the “postmodern condition” from the politicizing of museum culture to the cult of the politically correct.

 

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Social, Nonfiction

186 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2002

About the author

Christopher Butler was Professor of English Literature at Oxford University.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

2011
A nice concise overview of what exactly postmodernism is, clearly and objectively written.

2025
I purchased this the one time I went to MOMA in San Francisco.
It is well written, telling the history of Postmodern thought in France and America.
This places Postmodernism as starting after WWII. Other things I’ve read say the Postmodern era began with photos or film - that sounds about right.
Modernism is simple and basic, Postmodernism is not. Postmodernism is all cultures together, all types, all different thoughts. Irony abounds. Self consciousness is everything.

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief critical introduction to postmodernism. It was published in 2002 and then revised in 2010. It is focused mainly on the application of these ideas in the arts. Butler, an English professor, goes through Derrida, Lyotard, Barthes and Foucault. The rest of the book looks at its application in the arts: painting, architecture, opera and writing. Music, itself, does not seem to have a ‘postmodern’ phase.

Some of the works classified as ‘postmodern’ predated the intellectual movement. Might they have partially inspired it? He does not look at this question.

Postmodernism, in the arts, as far as Butler is concerned, is critical of past forms, reflexive, and often ironic. Ultimately, looked at with some distance, these postmodern artistic endeavors look dated, simplistic and boring.

A true postmodernism is always subversive, always oppositional, and thus, unstable.

Lyotard’s warning about metanarratives has not in any way provided us with the tools to protect ourselves from them.

” Postmodernists are by and large pessimists, many of them haunted by lost Marxist revolutionary hopes, and the beliefs and the arts they inspire are often negative rather than constructive.”

The author does treat postmodernism as if the movement is over.

[Bunny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I was looking for a short, quick read that would give me a bit more than the Wikipedia 101 on postmodernism. Chapters 1-2 do a solid job of that. Even though I didn't agree with a lot of the author's negatively-biased analysis in Chapters 3-5, the writing was pithy and humorous enough (not sure it was intended to be -humourously- inflammatory, but alas) that I enjoyed finishing it up.

[Baker Elkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author presents a courteous description of postmodernism and it’s relation to philosophy, literature, art, etc., and then provides a critique of postmodernism from an openly liberal perspective.

[Vanessa Dargain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of the postmodern , especially for children , because it's multidimensionality can be sometimes confusing , but this book presented the postmodern aspect and its argument well . Only 165 pages of reading (not including the bibliography and index) . It gets to the pithy parts quickly .

[Josew1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

its a goog book im learning a lot about art
at some point is teaching me the escensy of this kind of evolutive art

[Awet Moges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid primer, albeit reductive and slightly uncharitable.