Product Description

"Postmodernism" has become the buzzword of contemporary society in the past few years. Yet it remains confusing and baffling in its variety of definitions, contexts and associations. This work aims to offer clear, accessible and step-by-step introductions to postmodernism across a range of subjects. It encourages readers to explore how the debates about postmodernism have emerged from basic philosophical and cultural ideas, and to develop comparative connections and ideas from one area to another. With its emphasis on "postmodernism in practice", the book contains exercises and questions designed to help readers understand and reflect upon a variety of positions within the following areas of contemporary culture: philosophy and cultural theory; architecture and concepts of space; visual art; sculpture and the design arts; popular culture and music; film, video and television culture; and the social sciences.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129940 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Customer Reviews

A fine introduction
This is, all in all, a successful book, that suffers from a certain degree of repetitiveness, which, however, has a constructive effect for those who really want to establish the basics of postmodernism. Recommended.

Thorough, enjoyable, naming most of the parts and bringing them to life
This is as enjoyable and thorough an introduction as can be made in under 300 pages.

I expect readers come with widely different knowledges of postmodernism but, I think, that whatever their previous experience there will be something in more than one of the chapters for them.

1 The introductory chapter "names the parts" and relates the postmodernism(s) to modernism(s).

Subsequent chapters take the reader on a whistle-stop tour of postmodernim applied to some main "disciplines"
2 - philosophy and cultural theory
3 - the literary arts
4 - architecture and concepts of space
5 - visual art, sculpture and the design arts
6 - popular culture and music
7 - film, video and televisual culture
8 - social sciences

These chapters consolidate an understanding of the "parts" named in the introduction in context. For example, in Chapter 2, Woods' discussion of DeLillo's "'White Noise' demonstrates a society completely suffused with simulacra ... In a pure Baudrillardian moment, the real is preceded by the simulacrum'". There are similar examples in all chapters which give a richness to the book which goes much beyond a naming of parts.

My only (minor) reservation is that just occasionally Woods is over-encyclopaedic e.g. in the listing of dozens of postmodern British poets. However, when he moves on to providing an analysis of a specific (American) poem he returns to his fascinating best.

Lots of references to follow up. If a foundation was allowed in postmodernism then 'Beginning Postmodernism' could be it.

I would like to see a 2007 version which not only updated the 1999 stuff but added a chapter on 'Postmodernism on the Web'.

And away we go
What isn't postmodernism? You may wonder this after reading this book. It's not modernism? It's not postpostmodernism? I don't know.

It's "Blade Runner". It's "Naked Lunch". It's Peter Handke's "Kaspar". It's "Gravity's Rainbow." So far, so good. But, unfortunately for me, postmodernism is also Deridda and Foucault, neither of whom I could make much sense of. And, with them and Baudrillard, I get the feeling that I could never read enough about history, politics, pyschology, culture, economics, art and literary criticism (not to mention architecture) to have any basis for evaluating postmodernist claims. It seems like postmodernist theorists opinionate widely and at a high level, making their claims impossible to verify. But maybe verification isn't postmodern. At any rate, it's beyond my little brain that would like to have some illusion of keeping track of things.

Perhaps postmodernism is characterized, among other things, by moving away from any simple sense that reality can be represented. Accepting fragmentation. In this book Woods shares a lot of ways to recognize postmodernism.

Where that leads, I don't know. Not to Kansas. This is a stimulating book. After you get into it some, you may wish it were less stimulating. How Woods knows as much as he does, I have no idea. He mentions Handke, although the index doesn't include Handke. The index doesn't include Warhol and I didn't find him in the main text. I would have thought Warhol was as postmodern as one could get, but I suppose Woods couldn't cover everyone. Just almost everyone. The bibiography is annotated and should be able to take you onto some good further journeys into postmodernism. It depends on how complicated you want to be. Artists seem to have a much better sense of postmodernism than philosophers. Perhaps postmodernism renders philosophy as we've known it obsolete? If so, then the "Philosophy of Andy Warhol" may point the way to what a postmodernist philosophy csn be.