Postmodern Consumption

Abstract

The origins of postmodernism cannot be traced to a single source or set of circumstances. At first glance, the different trails may appear diffused, disparate, and disconnected. A closer look might reveal a common pattern woven by those different threads. Postmodernism is generally viewed as a reaction against or rejection of modernist tendencies in philosophy, social and cultural theory, literature, and politics (Featherstone 1991). Postmodernism is closely related to poststructuralism, whose origins are slightly different but whose arguments are very similar – so much so that in the eyes of many, postmodernism subsumes poststructuralism and therefore they are treated interchangeably. The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the most intense excursions into postmodern ideas. Among the many key figures are Derrida (deconstruction and the decentered subject), Foucault (regimes of truth), Jameson (cultural logic of late capitalism), Kristeva (language and construction of identity), Deleuze and Guattari (desiring machines), Cixous (l'ecriture feminine), Butler (queer theory), Rorty (questions of representation), Gehry (postmodern architecture), Baudrillard (the economy of signs and simulacrum), Lyotard (the problematic of science and legitimation), Greenblatt (new historicism), Said (Orientalism), Harraway (cybogs and posthumanism), and Featherstone and Bauman (consumer culture).