قراءات إضافية
There are a number of anthologies of postmodernist writings, of which the
most committed is Thomas Docherty (ed.), Postmodernism: A
Reader (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). Ihab Hassan’s seminal articles
on postmodernism are collected in his The Postmodern
Turn (Ohio State University Press, 1987). Derrida’s thoughts on
literature are conveniently brought together in Derek Attridge (ed.), Jacques Derrida: Acts of Literature (Routlege, 1992).
Steven Connor’s Postmodernist Culture (Blackwell,
1989) is strongly committed to an eclectic range of postmodernist theories. Charles
Jencks’s alternative view is neatly summarized in his What
Is Postmodernism?, revised edn. (Academy,
1996).
For an account of the politics of postmodernism, following Jameson, see
Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity
(Verso 1998). On nationalist narratives in the postmodern period, looked at from a
broadly postmodernist theoretical standpoint, see Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Oxford University
Press, 1995), and Homi Bhabha’s anthology, Nation and
Narration (Routledge, 1990). An excellent early example of the use of
Marx, Freud, and deconstruction in literary analysis is Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology (NLB, 1976). Useful because they
make period contrasts are Patricia Waugh, Practising
Postmodernism/Reading Modernism (Arnold, 1992) and Peter Brooker,
Modernism/Postmodernism (Longman,
1992).
The following are critical but also informative about postmodernist
tendencies. For an account of the influence of Marx on intellectuals in this period,
see J. G. Merquior, Western Marxism (Paladin,
1986). The new literary theory encountered surprisingly little published opposition,
but see the interestingly entitled Fraud: Literary Theory
and the End of English by Peter Washington (Fontana, 1989) and
Christopher Butler, Interpretation, Deconstruction, and
Ideology (Clarendon Press, 1984), and, for a general critique, John
M. Ellis, Against Deconstruction (Princeton
University Press, 1989) and Raymond Tallis, Not
Saussure (Macmillan, 1988). A brilliant account of the relationship
of science to political and moral considerations is given by Philip Kitcher in his
Science, Truth and Democracy (Oxford
University Press, 2001). The tendency to the local story attitude of postmodern
philosophy has inspired a reply from Thomas Nagel, which defends his view of the
value and possibility of objectivity in philosophy and of the abstracting ‘view from
nowhere’ in ethics, expressed in his The Last
Word (Oxford University Press, 1997).
An influential model for non-linguistic phenomena analysed as text was
Roland Barthes, Système de la mode (1967; tr. as
The Fashion System, Hill and Wang, 1983).
This approach became common to all ‘semiotic’ approaches to culture. For a survey,
see Robert Hodge and Gunter Kress, Social
Semiotics (Blackwell, 1988). For a study of the different subject
positions open to us within postmodernist theory and the contemporary novel, see Kim
Worthington, Self as Narrative (Clarendon Press,
1996). For Habermas’s critique of postmodernism, see inter
alia his The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity (MIT Press, 1987). Edward Lucie-Smith, Art Today (Phaidon, 1995) is an excellent survey of the
many current schools of art. An essential resource is to be found in Kristine Stiles
and Peter Selz (eds), Theories and Documents of Contemporary
Art (University of California Press, 1996).
