The wake of imagination and the postmodern meaning of "meaning"

Abstract

In responding to the notion of the postmodern as articulated by Richard Kearney, Frederic Jameson, and Jean Baudrillard, this dissertation is concerned with: (1) comparing and contrasting Jacques Derrida's post-structuralism (which, it is argued, helped shape the postmodern) with the philosophy of symbolic forms as put forth by mythologist Joseph Campbell, and (2) examining the postmodern within the context of the work of William Irwin Thompson and Terence McKenna, two thinkers concerned with "chaos dynamics," "the world of myth," and nurturing a "planetary consciousness/culture."