The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s - Softcover

Hoeveler, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074253393X ISBN 13: 9780742533936

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004

Synopsis

During the 1970s, the United States became the world's preeminent postindustrial society. The new conditions changed the way Americans lived and worked, and even their perceptions of reality. Americans struggled to find their place in a world where symbol became more important than fact, appearance more important than reality, where image supplanted essence.

In this reassessment of a little studied decade, J. David Hoeveler, Jr., finds that the sense of detachment and dislocation that characterizes the postindustrial society serves as a paradigm for American thought and culture in the 1970s. The book examines major developments in literary theory, philosophy, architecture, and painting as expressions of a 1970s consciousness. Hoevler also explores the rival "political" readings of these subjects and considers the postmodernist phenomenon as it became an ideological battleground in the decade. Clear and engaging, the work will be of great interest to historians, theorists, and everyone who wants to further explore the 1970s.

About this title

Review:

The Postmodernist Turn not only charts historical change in a decade of the recent past. It accomplishes what some of Hoeveler's subjects doubted was ever really possible in historical study: it helps us to understand the intellectual landscape in which we find ourselves several decades later.--Lewis Perry, Vanderbilt University

From the Back Cover:

In this reassessment of a little studied decade, J. David Hoeveler, Jr., finds that the sense of detachment and dislocation that characterizes the postindustrial society serves as a paradigm for American thought and culture in the 1970s. The book examines major developments in literary theory, philosophy, architecture, and painting as expressions of a 1970s consciousness. It also looks at the rival "political" readings of these subjects and considers the postmodernist phenomenon as it became an ideological battleground in the decade. Although the new continental thinking promised to revitalize the American Left, Hoeveler shows how the American readings actually fortified more traditional norms in American thought. Thus, as the works of Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida gained much attention in academic circles, American readings domesticated the European concepts. The Yale School of critics receives particular attention, as do historian Hayden White, anthropologist Clifford Geertz, literary scholar Edward Said, and a host of other important participants in the intellectual debates of the 1970s. Hoeveler also treats the merging of postmodernist thought with the older American tradition of pragmatism. In his insightful analysis of Richard Rorty's seminal works from the 1970s, Hoeveler reveals a strain of postmodernist thought that is liberal, playful, and creative, and, as he suggests, an "ideal that might best assure the American tradition a viable future".

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 074253393X
• ISBN 13: 9780742533936
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246