Instead of summing up the various perspectives of scholars and the variety of ideas to which the term postmodernism has been assigned, this text lets this diversity speak for itself. By bringing together articles and essays on the impact of the postmodern temper on an eclectic range of subjects, Berger presents a few of the many ways different theorists have come to terms with postmodernism, while examining manifestations of postmodernism in the culture of everyday life.
Simon Susen examines the impact of the 'postmodern turn' on the contemporary social sciences. On the basis of an innovative five-dimensional approach, this study provides a systematic, comprehensive, and critical account of the legacy of the 'postmodern turn', notably in terms of its continuing relevance in the twenty-first century.
Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
Art theory', understood as those forms of aesthetics, art history and criticism which began in the Enlightenment and culminated in 'high modernism', is now at an end. These essays, examining the interdependencies of advertising, film, painting and photography, constitute a call for a 'new art theory' - a practice of writing whose end is to contribute to a general 'theory of representations': an understanding of the modes and means of symbolic articulation of our forms of sociality and subjectivity.
This book presents an original and dynamic reading of the twentieth-century French sociologist and theological ethicist Jacques Ellul. Adopting Ellul’s use of ‘presence’ as a hermeneutical key to understanding his work, it examines the origins of Ellul’s approach to presence in his readings of Kierkegaard and the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, highlights the central structural role of presence in Ellul’s theological ethics, and elucidates a crucial turning point in Ellul’s theology following a personal crisis in Ellul’s faith and life. Drawing from numerous unpublished and untranslated texts, Jacob Marques Rollison argues that this crisis involves confrontation with a critique of presence manifest in Ellul’s reading of and engagement with Michel Foucault. Marques Rollison distills Ellul’s sociological critiques and theological responses to this crisis, presenting Ellul’s evolving theology against the background of major shifts in French intellectual life. In doing so, the author simultaneously calls for renewed engagement with Ellul’s prophetic thought, critically appraises Ellul’s dialectical theology and Marxist inheritances, and develops a robustly Protestant approach to theological communication ethics for our time.
A 2002 Christianity Today Book of the Year! Postmodernism. The term slowly filtered into our vocabularies about three decades ago and now permeates most discussions of the humanities. Those who tout the promises and perils of this twentieth-century intellectual movement have filled many a bookshelf. And in a previous book, Postmodernizing the Faith: Evangelical Responses to the Challenge of Postmodernism, Millard J. Erickson provided his own summary of several evangelical responses--both positive and negative--to the movement. Now in this book Erickson offers his own promised in-depth analysis and constructive response. What are the intellectual roots of postmodernism? Who are its most prominent exponents? What can we learn from their critique of modernism? Where do their assumptions and analyses fail us? Where do we go from here? What might a post-postmodernism look like? Erickson addresses these issues with characteristic discernment, clarity and evenhandedness, neither dismissing the insights of postmodern thought nor succumbing uncritically to its allure. An important book for all who are concerned with commending Christian truth to the culture within which we live.
Fascinating philosophical inquiry into post-Holocaust representations of the event in political theory, ethics, and aesthetics, and an assessment of the limitations and promise of philosophical 'witnessing' in relation to those issues
This book examines and compares the philosophical positions of various postmodern thinkers and Zen Buddhist philosophers on: language and play; modes of thinking; skepticism and doubt; self and other; time and death; nihilism and metaphysics; and the conception of the end of philosophy. The Zen thinkers dealt with are Dogen and Nishitani, and the Western thinkers are Derrida, Lacan, Heidegger, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze and Guatarri, Kristeva, and Levinas. Although each share similar notions concerning the shortcomings of representational thinking, major differences still exist. By clarifying these differences, Olson counters the tendency to overtly assert or covertly imply that postmodern and Zen philosophies are moving in the same direction. Some postmodern thinkers and Zen Buddhist philosophers share common philosophical ground with regard to a mutual philosophical attack and attempt to overcome the perceived shortcomings of the representational mode of thinking that conceives of the mind like a mirror and assumes a correspondence between appearance and reality that is supported by a metaphysical structure.
