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Postmodernism for Beginners by Jim Powell and Joe Lee, For Beginners, 2007, 192p. [
Amazon]
Sweet irony. This table presents postmodernism as a movement pretending to avoid (or to be critical of) form, hierarchy, centering etc. Yet, it defines this very same postmodernism using binary oppositions.
In 1983, when asked about the postmodern movement, here’s what Michel Foucault answered:
“I must say that I have trouble answering this. First, because I’ve never clearly understood what was meant in France by the word “modernity”. In the case of Baudelaire, yes, but thereafter I think the sense begins to get lost. I do not know what Germans mean by modernity. The Americans were planning a kind of seminar with Habermas and myself. Habermas had suggested the theme of “modernity” for the seminar. I feel trouble here because I do not grasp clearly what that might mean, though the word itself is unimportant; we can always use any arbitrary label. But neither do I grasp the kind of problems intended by this term ― or how they would be common to people thought of as being “post-modern.” While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism, there was a certain problem ― broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject ― I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist.”
(“Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault”, interview by Gérard Raulet, translated by Jeremy Harding, Telos, vol. 55, Spring 1983, pp. 195-211; reproduced in Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984 edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman and Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge, [1988]1990, p. 34; Amazon, Google Books)
