'Postmodern Fragments: Writings on Work, Technology and Contemporary Living' is a collection of essays and short works of fiction, all of which share the common themes of life in the (post)modern society. From the cut-and-paste repetitions of 'The Worker' to the thought-provoking social excavations of 'At Home He's a Tourist: Reconsidering the Postmodern Condition, ' this captures Nosnibor at his best and is an essential read for anyone with an interest in contemporary fiction and culture. Some of the pieces contained herein have surfaced in various locations on the Internet, ranging from Christopher's blogs to underground e-zines: others are available for the first time here.
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.
In Paris in the late Fifties the Beat Generation writer William Burroughs and his sidekick Brion Gysin developed the cut-up method. It involved taking a piece of finished text and cutting it into pieces - then rearranging those pieces to create a new text or work of art. Burroughs wrote that: "When you cut into the present the future leaks out." The cut-up had a profound effect on music, writing, painting, and film. Devotees of the cut-up include David Bowie, Radiohead, and Kathy Acker. In addition to bringing together new work by new people, CUT UP! also salutes some better known 20th Century voices who kept the spirit of Burroughs and Gysin alive. Contributors include Kenji Siratori, Claude Pelieu, Nina Antonia, Billy Chainsaw, Cabell McLean, Mary Beach, Marc Olmsted, Allen Ginsberg, Spencer Kansa, Michael Butterworth, Robert Rosen, Nathan Penlington, Sinclair Beiles, Gary J. Shipley, D M Mitchell, and Edward S. Robinson.
In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.
In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. "[This] thoughtful book is the first remotely realistic map out of the post modern labyrinth."—Joseph Coates, The Chicago Tribune "Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization and science."—Kirkus Reviews
The cultural landscape is now made up of diverse "communities"--feminists, gays, neo-conservatists, African-Americans, pro-lifers--who seem to have no common frame of reference by which to communicate with each other. Veith offers Christians instructions as to how they can respond to these varied groups.
Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of late capitalism in this essential volume. Classic insights on pastiche, nostalgia, and architecture stand alongside essays on the status of history, theory, Marxism, and the subject in an age propelled by finance capital and endless spectacle. Surveying the debates that blazed up around his earlier essays, Jameson responds to critics and maps out the theoretical positions of postmodernism’s prominent friends and foes.
Aphorism (n.): a pithy observation which contains a general truth 'All my teachers have been women. Though several men have taken me aside for an hour to tell me things they know' The Book of Shadows contains several hundred reflections and aphorisms on love, God, art, sex, death, work, and the spirit, imagination and conduct of the human animal. Writing with the same mixture of high seriousness, dark humour and lyric precision that define his poetry, Don Paterson has made a book to carry everywhere and open anywhere - to brighten or darken the moment, but always to administer a jolt to the idling mind. 'Falling and flying are near-identical sensations, in all but one final detail. We should remember this when we see those men and women seemingly in love with their own decline'
Larry A. Hickman presents John Dewey as very much at home in the busy mix of contemporary philosophy—as a thinker whose work now, more than fifty years after his death, still furnishes fresh insights into cutting-edge philosophical debates. Hickman argues that it is precisely the rich, pluralistic mix of contemporary philosophical discourse, with its competing research programs in French-inspired postmodernism, phenomenology, Critical Theory, Heidegger studies, analytic philosophy, and neopragmatism—all busily engaging, challenging, and informing one another—that invites renewed examination of Dewey’s central ideas. Hickman offers a Dewey who both anticipated some of the central insights of French-inspired postmodernism and, if he were alive today, would certainly be one of its most committed critics, a Dewey who foresaw some of the most trenchant problems associated with fostering global citizenship, and a Dewey whose core ideas are often at odds with those of some of his most ardent neopragmatist interpreters. In the trio of essays that launch this book, Dewey is an observer and critic of some of the central features of French-inspired postmodernism and its American cousin, neopragmatism. In the next four, Dewey enters into dialogue with contemporary critics of technology, including Jürgen Habermas, Andrew Feenberg, and Albert Borgmann. The next two essays establish Dewey as an environmental philosopher of the first rank—a worthy conversation partner for Holmes Ralston, III, Baird Callicott, Bryan G. Norton, and Aldo Leopold. The concluding essays provide novel interpretations of Dewey’s views of religious belief, the psychology of habit, philosophical anthropology, and what he termed “the epistemology industry.”
