Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:57:36.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Postmodernism and postmodernity: What do these terms mean and why are they successful?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Douwe Fokkema
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The various meanings of the terms ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity’ are traced; in various European languages these mean different things. Postmodernist discussion in the various arts is not synchronous. Postmodernism can be seen as the cultural expression of the times we supposedly live in, but are the achievements of modernity gone for ever?

Type
Mini-Focus: Postmodernism
Information
European Review , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 1998 , pp. 25 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Toynbee, A. (1946) A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes 1–6 by D.C.Somervell (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 39. In the unabridged version of A Study of History, vol. 1, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1945) Toynbee uses the term ‘ultra-modern’ (p. 171n) instead of ‘post-modern.’Google Scholar
2.Toynbee, A. (1945) A Study of History, vol. 1, p. 14.Google Scholar
3.Levin, H. (1966) ‘What was modernism?’, reprinted in Refractions: Essays in Comparative Literature (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 271–295.Google Scholar
4.Fokkema, D. and Ibsch, E. (1988) Modernist Conjectures: A Mainstream in European Literature 1910–1940 (London: C. Hurst) and the references given there (pp. 2–3).Google Scholar
5.Levie, S. (1989) Commerce 1924–1932: Une revue internationale moderniste (Roma: Fondazione Camillo Caetani).Google Scholar
6.Butler, C. (1994) Early Modernism: Literature, Music, and Painting in Europe, 1900–1916 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Hoffmann, G. (1986) ‘The absurd and its forms of reduction in postmodern American fiction,’ in Approaching Postmodernism, Fokkema, D. and Bertens, H. (eds) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins), p. 201.Google Scholar
8.Bertens, H. and Fokkema, D. (eds) (1997) International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Jencks, C. (1996) What is Post-Modernism? 4th edn (London: Academy Editions).Google Scholar
10.Welsch, W. (1987) Unsere postmoderne Moderne (Weinheim: VCH-Acta humaniora).Google Scholar
11.Lyotard, J.-F. (1979) La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Minuit).Google Scholar
12. Quoted from the English translation, Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian (Manchester University Press), p. xxiv.Google Scholar
13.Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), p. xii.Google Scholar
14.Carroll, N. (1997) ‘The concept of postmodernism from a philosophical point of view,’ In International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice, Bertens, H. and Fokkema, D. (eds) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins), p. 94.Google Scholar
15.Derrida, J. (1997) Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Galilée).Google Scholar
16.Habermas, J. (1997) ‘Vom Kampf der Glaubensmächte: Karl Jaspers zum Konflikt der Kulturen’. In Vom sinnlichen Eindruck zum symbolischen Ausdruck (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp), pp. 41–58.Google Scholar
17.Barth, J. (1972 [1958]) The End of the Road (New York: Doubleday/Bantam), pp. 47 and 74.Google Scholar
18.Etzioni, A. (1968) The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes (London: Collier-Macmillan, and New York: The Free Press).Google Scholar
19.Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell), p. vii.Google Scholar
20.Bertens, H. (1995) The Idea of the Postmodern (London and New York: Routledge), p. 246.Google Scholar