The Postmodernism Reader

Foundational Texts in Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology

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Edited by Michael Drolet

Routledge

Due/Published December 2003, 304 pages, paper

ISBN 0415160847

Postmodernism too often seems to be an evasive body of ideas rather than a clear cut concept, mainly characterized by all-embracing assertions. Yet it can be referred to as an intellectual project with specific roots and a historical development. The Postmodernism Reader traces the origins, evolvement and the politics of postmodernism through the key writings of postmodernist thinkers. This collection of foundational essays restores the poignancy that has been lost - or even emphatically rejected - in the debate about postmodernism by focussing on central formative texts and the predominant thinkers we have come to associate with postmodernist theory.

Drolet's introductory essay and his careful selection of texts provide a solid basis for the study of postmodernism by uncovering the philosophical origins of present theories and focussing on their major aspects, thus clearing a path through the maze of knowledge that we call postmodernism. Arranged in three parts, the essays cover the origins of the term postmodernism, its evolution and its political ramifications. Included are writings by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Bauman, Jameson, Berman and Irigaray.

Contents

Introduction

Part One - The Crisis of Modernity and the Birth of the Concept of Postmodernism
 Introduction
1. What is Enlightenment? -- Michel Foucault
2. All That is Solid Melts into Air -- Marshall Berman
3. The Order of Things -- Michel Foucault
4. Nietzsche, Geneaology, History -- Michel Foucault
5. Cogito and the History of Madness -- Jacques Derrida
6. Nietzsche and Philosophy -- Gilles Deleuze

Part Two - The Postmodern Condition: A Concept in Emergence
 Introduction
7. The Postmodern Condition -- Jean-Francois Lyotard
8. Dissemination -- Jacques Derrida
9. Difference and Repitition -- Gilles Deleuze
10. Theatrum Philosophicum -- Michel Foucault
11. The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations -- Jacques Derrida
12. Immanence: A Life -- Gilles Deleuze
13. The Intimacy of Terror -- Jean-Francois Lyotard
14. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism -- Frederic Jamescon

Part Three - Difference, Aesthetics, Politics, and History: Postmodern Reflections
Introduction
15. The Differend -- Jean-Francois Lyotard
16. Sexual Difference -- Luce Irigay
17. Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern? -- Jean-Francois Lyotard
18. A Sociological Theory of Postmodernity -- Zygmunt Bauman
19. Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Difference: an Interview with Jean-Francois Lyotard -- W. van Reijen and D. Veerman
20. History and the Illusion of the End -- Jean Baudrillard
21. Specters of Marx -- acques Derrida