The Origins of Postmodernity

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by PERRY ANDERSON

Verso

Due/Published September 1998, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 1859842224

Anderson traces the genesis, consolidation, and consequences of the notion of the postmodern. Beginning his intellectual tour in the Hispanic world of the 1930s, he follows the changes in the meanings and usage of the concept through to the late 1970s, when its adoption by Lyotard and Habermas first gave the idea of postmodernism wider currency. Central attention is given to the work of Frederic Jameson, and its aftereffects in the debates of the 1990s.

Anderson enriches his analysis of modernism by placing postmodernism in the force field of a declasse bourgeoisie, the growth of mediatised technology, and the defeat of the left symbolized by the end of the Cold War.

Review

The word is so familiar and so loaded with preconceptions that its mere mention elicits seemingly immediate reactions. Amidst the free bandying about the term, one is left to wonder where did the concept of postmodernity originate? In this insightful and engaging work, Perry Anderson charts its development, beginning with its first usage (according to Anderson) by Spanish poet, Federico de Onís in the 1930's. It was later brought to the English world by historian Arnold Toynbee (with different connotations) and later to the U.S. by the poet Charles Olson who was trying to define his poetic project. Examining this term through the thought of several other thinkers and writers, The Origins of Postmodernity is a kind of alternative intellectual history of the postwar era. A crucial thinker in Anderson's work is Fredric Jameson, who Anderson views as a crucial contributor to the idea of postmodernity. In his exploration of postmodernity, Anderson also examines such questions as: How has the meaning of postmodernity changed? What purposes does it serve? What happens to art, time, politics, in the age of the spectacle?