The Postmodern

This is a very well written, concise, accessible overview of the entire debate over postmodernism. It will help the reader answer such questions as: What is postmodernism? How does it relate to postmodernity? How does it relate to modernism and modernity? How should postmodernism be judged? Malpas makes the case that we are living in a time of postmodernity marked by cultural and subjective fragmentation brought on by late capitalism. But he endorses critics such as Lyotard who find a space for a specifically postmodern, political resistance. What makes this book superlative is how wide-ranging it is, giving a concise history of modern philosophy and touching on many major thinkers and aspects of critical theory. Beside the expected Lyotard, Jameson and Baudrillard, there is also Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Lacan, Fanon, Habermas, Said, Benjamin, Derrida, Kristeva, Butler, Marxism, feminism, and anticolonialism, plus Marshall Berman, Linda Hutcheon, Donna Haraway, and a bunch of other critics of modernism and postmodernism. Sadly no Barthes or Foucault. But this book could serve as an introduction to the whole world of critical theory, as all these theorists' works are put into a context of what they have to contribute to an understanding of our contemporary, postmodern reality. I will be looking at other books in the Routledge New Critical Idiom series and hoping to find works as equally clear and accessible without being overly simplified.