Summary
Contents
Subject index
This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson. The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.
Rescuing Modernity: The Recovery of the Social
Rescuing Modernity: The Recovery of the Social
The theories of modernity discussed in the previous chapters anticipate the postmodern critique of modernity in many respects. The notion of the crystallization of culture and the coming of the posthistorical society can be seen as a prelude to postmodernism since it proclaims the demise of the unifying narratives of the great political ideologies and the emancipatory promises of modern culture. This can be traced back to Max Weber's and Georg Simmel's theories of modern culture as disenchanted and tragic, having lost its capacity to provide unity and meaning. The turn to formalism in early twentieth-century thought is of course more clearly evident in radical modernism, a movement that is often seen ...
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