Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this completely revised and considerably expanded new edition, Steven Connor considers the recent work of the most influential postmodern theorists, including Lyotard and Jameson, and offers accounts both of the work of newly emerging theorists and new areas of postmodernist culture which have developed over the last decade, especially in law, music, dance, spatial theory, ethnography, ecology, and the new technologies.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Contexts
• 1 Postmodernism and the Academy
• Part II Posterities
• 2 Postmodernities: Postmodern Social and Legal Theory
• 3 Postmodernism in Architecture and the Visual Arts
• 4 Postmodernism and Literature
• 5 Postmodern Performance
• 6 Postmodern TV, Video and Film
• 7 Postmodernism and Popular Culture
• Part III Consequences
• 8 Post-Modesty: Renunciation and the Sublime
• 9 Postmodernism and Cultural Politics
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Connor offers a cogent and wide-ranging discussion of the various "postmodernisms," which reflect and engender the production of contemporary "culture." He is interested primarily in how theoretical advances impact on practical institutions in science, art (painting, architecture, photography, literature, performance, TV, and video, film, rock music, fashion and style), the academy, and cultural politics. Given postmodernism's lack of consensus and "legitimation crisis," its carnivalesque interweaving of thought and style, and its belief in the fictionality of history and theory, Connor does well in marshalling diverse and seemingly contradictory materials and perspectives. The book treats virtually all the stars in the postmodern critical firmament and gives particular attention to J.F. Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and I.H. Hassan. Connor clearly establishes which of the arts first developed a postmodern consciousness and which has been the most influential in its development. His call for a "common frame of assent," for "more inclusive forms of ethical collectivity" underlies the generosity of the book's scope and the objectivity of its evaluation of postmodernism's overall performance. The documentatation is extremely useful. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections. S. Golub Brown University