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RR 2001/04 Encyclopedia of Postmodernism Victor E. Taylor and Edited by Charles E. Winquist Routledge London and New York, NY 2001 xiv + 466 pp. ISBN 0 415 15294 1
L75.00
Keywords Philosophy, Post-modernism
Postmodernism has had its critics -- "anything goes", "reality isn't what it used to be", epistemological bricolage, ontological nihilism, the death of history, the deconstruction of the text, the socially constructed text, the de-differentiation between gender. With all that baggage, no wonder that postmodernism provoked criticism, above all from modernists who wanted notions of enlightenment progress, grand narratives of ideology and knowledge, differentiation between high and low art, and a reliably canonical critical position upheld. Postmodernism has come a long way since the 1960s, its first wave, and since then has developed its own historiography, changing with social change, inclusive of post- and neo-- reactions, permeating social institutions and academic disciplines. This encyclopedia reflects that change well.
The locus of its ideas has been Europe, and of its development, application, and polemic has been the USA, and beyond that international. Virtually all the hundred-or-- more contributors are American academics, and, as always with postmodernism, if you like postmodernism, you will think they have done a good job. For me,...