Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction

Postmodernism has been a buzzword in contemporary society for the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, and their engagement with theory, literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, and music. He treats artists, intellectuals, critics, and social scientists 'as if they were all members of a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party' - a party which includes such members as Cindy Sherman, Salman Rushdie, Jacques Derrida, Walter Abish, and Richard Rorty - creating 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.

[...]... astray ‘Look’ we say, ‘it’s just a systematically misleading metaphor about a masque.’ However, it is logically obvious that you can’t demonstrate how language always ‘goes astray’ without at the same time having a secret and contradictory trust in it For without a pretty confident notion of the truth, how can we show that any particular stretch of language has ‘gone astray’ or fallen into contradiction?... narratives’ are in crisis and in decline These narratives are contained in or implied by major philosophies, such as Kantianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, which argue that history is progressive, that knowledge can liberate us, and that all knowledge has a secret unity The two main narratives Lyotard is attacking are those of the progressive emancipation of humanity – from Christian redemption to Marxist... as the author? Authorial (or historical) intention should no more be trusted than realism There thus arose a new notion of the text, as a ‘free play of signs within language’ This proclamation of ‘The Death of the Author’, notably by Barthes and Foucault, also had the political advantage of doing away with him or her as the bourgeois, capitalist, owner and marketer of his or her meanings As Barthes... ‘new novelists’ in France also moved away from an interest in the philosophico-emotional states of angst and absurdity, and a commitment to the mimetic engagements of a traditionally narrated novel, such as Sartre’s La Nausée or Camus’s La Peste and L’Étranger, towards a far colder, contradiction-filled anti-narrative method in the texts of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, and others, who were... subordinated and the marginalized – against those with the power to disseminate the master narratives Many postmodernist intellectuals thus saw themselves as avant-garde and bravely dissentient This heralded a pluralist age, in which, as we shall see, even the arguments of scientists and historians are to be seen as no more than quasi narratives which compete with all the others for acceptance They have no unique... can be read as if they were literature, and vice versa We need no longer believe in the literal (as a kind of language referring 24 unambiguously to reality) because all candidates for the literal can be shown to be metaphorical when more closely analysed This view of language in general has met with a growing acceptance from many linguists, notably as led, not uncontroversially, by George Lakoff and... break away from an allegiance to any ‘given’ systems, and to believe that the way we see the world can and should be changed Deconstructors, liberals, and Marxists can all get into some kind of alliance here, in denying that any dominant ideology, or post-Enlightenment, Kantian, universalizing, or imperialist language, can really describe the way things are Playing with the text Deconstruction (particularly... movements, such as minimalism or conceptualism (from which work like Andre’s bricks emerged) They have a distinct way of seeing the world as a whole, and use a set of philosophical ideas that not only support an aesthetic but also analyse a ‘late capitalist’ cultural condition of ‘postmodernity’ This condition is supposed to affect us all, not just through avant-garde art, but also at a more fundamental level,... of many formerly colonized territories have developed similarly would-be masterful political narratives about the history of nationalist struggle It is difficult to avoid such narratives, and nearly all nation-states have them Although there are good liberal reasons for being against such ‘grand narratives’ (on the grounds that they do not allow for disputes about value, and often enough lead to totalitarian... individual character, or coherent narrative suspense and interest, as in the play of their own authorial language Postmodernist doctrines thus drew upon a great deal of philosophical, political, and sociological thought, which disseminated itself into the artistic avant-garde (particularly in the visual arts) and into the humanities departments of universities in Europe and the United States as ‘theory’ . Blair ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Augustine Henry Chadwick BARTHES Jonathan. Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John