Book Review: John Asimakopoulos, The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste.

Abstract

Dr. John Asimakopoulos has crafted a fascinating study into the larger debate regarding social structure within the context of postmodern culture. During the latter half of the Twentieth century and into this third decade of the Twenty-First century, there has been passionate debate across disciplines on the reality of postmodern culture. Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard argued about modernity’s continued existence with Habermas, as well as notable scholars such as Anthony Giddens, declaring modernity an “unfinished project;” and drawing from Eighteenth and Nineteenth century German Idealism, especially Georg Hegel, as a “juggernaut” and that we have no choice but to allow modernity to steamroll over anyone and everyone until it plays itself out. We have Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault debating the notion of “human nature” from Modernist and Poststructuralist (respectively) perspectives; we have the Sokal Affair when a mathematician was able to publish a joke paper in a postmodern journal deconstructing the notion of the atom. We had books telling us to “forget Foucault” or to “forget Baudrillard.” Though the larger debate in academia was never resolved, few scholars discuss it now. Looking at the history of the overall debate, it would be easy to conclude that scholars ended at an impasse and that these lines of theoretical thought are intellectual dead ends.