The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

Abstract

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism Steven Connor, Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. After the millennium, popped up like wild spring flowers, and caught many of us by surprise. Had times really ended? If so, when and why? Was this a fad, a trend, or a movement? Would it infect and affect popular culture? Was it merely a new name for the electronic technology -or much more? The term is confusing and controversial. It was used as early as the 1870s by Britain's John Watkins Chapman, and later first claims move up through the 1960s. The choice depends on the different ideals and programs spotlighted. The Oxford English Dictionary gives a short, clear definition: Subsequent to, or later than, what is This raises another question: What, then, is modern? Steven Connor's book sets out to answer these questions and offer us a comprehensive introduction to postmodernism, and then to relate post-modernism to modernity, stressing its significance and relevance to literature, film, law, architecture, philosophy, and religion. Modernity is often taken as the term referring to the social, economic, and scientific institutions flowering in the West during the eighteenth century (some place it earlier), and having worldwide influence in the twentieth. There is no general agreement about just what modern and postmodern mean. The names most frequently associated with postmodernism are Ihab Hasten, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frederic Jameson, and Juergen Habermas. Clearly, the center of concern has been Europe, although there are a number of American disciples; most have been philosophers and literary critics. One area in which it has had limited impact, here or abroad, is popular culture. Some attention has been paid to the extension of postmodern ideas into fields of advertising, popular music, MTV, and architecture. How has all of this affected scholars who write about popular culture? What about textbooks? I asked some committed postmodern friends for definitions, finding that there are as many definitions as there are advocates. The ingredients seemed to fit the old cliche: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. If there is a common thought, it is this: We have moved beyond the old modernity. Remember the McLuhan truism: If it works, it's obsolete. Postmodernists express a desperate need to meet the volatile and unstable elements of the new century head-on. …