Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:46:50.501Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2009

Get access

Summary

It is perhaps ironic that the very intellectuals thought to have originated postmodern theory – we mean of course Baudrillard, Foucault, and Derrida (Lyotard being the exception) – have refused this characterization of their work. It is again not entirely without paradox that postmodern theory has found its most welcoming reception and home not in France but in the United States – the nation of pragmatism, empiricism, and a much vaunted liberal consensus. And notwithstanding Rorty's liberal pragmatic version of postmodernism, it is among the American left, among neo- and-post-Marxists, feminists, queers, and Third World and postcolonial intellectuals, that postmodernism has been most enthusiastically embraced. Why have Americans, mostly left academic intellectuals but also some outside America (for example, in Britain and Australia) come to advocate a politics and social theory in a postmodern mode?

We think that this is an important question but it cannot be productively engaged by approaching postmodernism in an ahistorical way. Postmodernism is best spoken about in the plural and its meaning best clarified by understanding those who use it in a particular social and discursive setting. So, we submit two stories, our stories, of “why postmodernism.” Of course, we know that these are not the whole story or the only ones – indeed they are not even the only stories we could tell but they are, we hope, stories that are suggestive beyond the tales of two left American academic intellectuals.

Why postmodernism: Steve's story

Before I was a postmodernist, I was a Marxist. Why the change? My “conversion” pivoted on my disillusionment with Marxism which broadened into a disenchantment with key aspects of the Western Enlightenment tradition.

Type
Chapter
Information
Social Postmodernism
Beyond Identity Politics
, pp. 1 - 36
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×