The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

Description

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism offers a comprehensive introduction to postmodernism. The Companion examines the different aspects of postmodernist thought and culture that have had a significant impact on contemporary cultural production and thinking. Topics discussed by experts in the field include postmodernism's relation to modernity, and its significance and relevance to literature, film, law, philosophy, architecture, religion and modern cultural studies. The volume also includes a useful guide to further reading and a chronology. This is an essential aid for students and teachers from a range of disciplines interested in postmodernism in all its incarnations. Accessible and comprehensive, this Companion addresses the many issues surrounding this elusive, enigmatic and often controversial topic.

'... the powerful sense that postmodernism is in its gloaming and to the opposite sense that it is only now reaching ... the kind of satuaration of which it has always seemed capable ... This contradiction, indeed, is the explicit concern of Steven Connor's excellent Introduction to the Cambridge Companion, which serves as a frame for the range of activity produced in postmodernism studies across the year ... It is central to the spirit of postmodern thinking, however, that such an apprehension of endedness should coincide with a sense of persistence, a sense of renewal ... The essays that are included in the Cambridge Companion ... can be positioned in relation to these ... strands in which postmodernism is variously and simultaneously in its death throes, in its prime, and in the process of being newly born ... In the Cambridge Companion, the first group might be best exemplified by Connor's own contribution, entitled 'Postmodernism and Literature' ... In Connor's account, Samuel Beckett emerges as a central figure, a kind of pivot ... the organizing of writers ... around a faultline marked by Beckett's work is an exciting and promising prospect ... The second group of essays and books ... includes material that suggests that postmodern thought is not in its fully expanded phase, but is rather entering into a new period ... This new kind of resonance is produced largely by the tendency of postmodern theory to migrate from one intellectual and disciplinary location to another ... So in the Cambridge Companion ... we have essays such as 'Science, Technology, and Postmodernism' (Ursula K. Heise), 'Postmodernism and Post-Religion' (Philippa Berry), 'Postmodernism and Ethics against the Metaphysics of Comprehension' (Robert Eaglestone) and 'Law and Justice in Postmodernity' (Costas Douzinas) ... the entry of postmodern thought into precisely those areas that seemed, in the earlier phases of its development, to be its natural enemies ... But the essays on science, religion, ethics and the law in the Cambr