What's Wrong with Postmodernism

Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy

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by Christopher Norris

Johns Hopkins University Press

Due/Published July 1998, 352 pages, paper

ISBN 0801841372

New in paper!

Norris critiques the "postmodern-pragmatist malaise" of Baudrillard, Fish, Rorty, and Lyotard. In contrast he finds a continuing critical impulse -- an "enlightened or emancipatory interest" -- in thinkers like Derrida, de Man, Bhaskar, and Habermas. Provocative as always, Norris reassesses Derridas' influence on modern thinking, and atttempts to sever the tie between deconstruction and American literary critics who, he argues, favor endless, playful, polysemic interpretation at the expense of systematic argument.