A reading list of the most important postmodern works.

I am constructing a reading list of important postmodern literature and artworks for my University thesis and I am looking for suggestions on relevant material.

Firstly I am looking for primary material that espouses the most influential postmodern philosophies.

Specifically I am examining deconstruction and fragmentation (but secondary material that describes the wider postmodern canon is every bit as relevant).

Secondly I am looking for works of art which are influenced by the postmodern view of the world, especially those that focus on deconstructive and fragmentative representations.

This would be literature in the first instance but other artforms are just as important to me.

Any critical works which focus on postmodernism in a spiritual context (whatever the point of view) are also of great interest to me.

Thank you for all of your help.

:smiley:

Anything by Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault or (dare I say it), Nietzsche. Of course, there are others I haven’t read yet…

Must include at least Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, and Writing and Difference by Derrida.

Note: OP amended (and I even did it before reading your post).

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys/gals, feel free to share your thoughts on the material you suggest.

Lyotard is the pre-eminent philosopher of “postmodernity” - of course, he is very closely allied to the likes of Derrida, Foucault, et al., but it is Lyotard that actively sought to define the concept in a philosophical sense while most of the other French thinkers tended to resist it. Likewise, it’s important not to confuse poststructuralism with postmodernism, because they are not the same thing.

After Lyotard you are best moving on to figures like Frederic Jameson, David Harvey, Linda Hutcheon, Andreas Huyssen, Zygmunt Bauman and Ihab Hassan, because their overviews will give you a good sense of where to take your enquiries and provide you with a solid understanding of the postmodern, which is important if you want to evaluate less overtly positioned examples (particularly in the artistic context).

Bear in mind that there are two aspects to this: first, the theoretical stance or outlook, postmodernism (what Lyotard called “the postmodern condition”), and secondly, the historical period, postmodernity (what Jameson called “the cultural logic of late capitalism”).

When I sought to define the idea for my Masters thesis I was quite taken by Lyotard’s emphasis on “the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo)” in his essay ‘Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?’ In this sense, postmodernism/ity is that which “will have been done”. What we get from this is a much more ambiguous understanding of postmodern-ism/ity, especially in its relations to modern-ism/ity.

I’ve also talked about postmodernism, with particular reference to literature, elsewhere on this board.

Thanks for that Matty your post contained lots of useful info, as did your other posts in the linked thread.

So how would you say poststructuralism relates to postmodernism?

I had always thought that it was Derrida and his deconstruction that really started postmodernism? Am I wrong?

What was the title of your Masters thesis? Is it published?

Thanks ahead of time!

Distinguishing poststructuralism and postmodernism is very difficult, and it was perhaps too hasty of me to be so swift to do so. Really what I was trying to emphasise was the doubled aspect of the postmodern as both theory and periodisation. Poststructuralism, I would argue, has much more to do with the former than it does the latter. I think you are right to identify Derrida here, because deconstruction might be described as the paradigmatic example of postmodern thinking, but it can be easier to begin by understanding it in a poststructural context - that is, as part of the philosophical movement that developed in response to structuralism (Structure, Sign & Play would be the paradigmatic text, in that case).

Another approach is to see postmodernism as a much broader movement than poststructuralism, with a more disparate set of origins. The earliest “postmodernists” were actually to be found in the artistic disciplines rather than in academia and in a sense the theoretical aspect of postmodernism developed in response to the innovations made in the arts. So, you might want to look at figures like Robbe-Grillet, Stockhausen, Rauschenberg, Godard and Robert Venturi, to mention only the most obvious. This merely expands the analysis of that “responsive” or “reactive” aspect of postmodernism.

Ultimately, I think the essential thing to consider is whether the analysis of postmodernity or postmodern theory is explicit or not. The thing about most poststructuralism is that it is not concerned with that idea. Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, etc. rarely, if ever, talk about the postmodern - indeed, their references are almost universally modern, albeit often in a critical sense. There is no doubt they provide inspiration to postmodern trends and sometimes discuss issues and ideas of great relevance to postmodernity, but it is important to follow the lineage rather than assume the connection. Moreover, to properly understand the postmodern I think you need to deal with both of its key features, and that means engaging with the overt postmodernists rather than the more indirect poststructuralists.

At the risk of waffling any further I’ll leave it at that for now. Perhaps if you have gone away and read a few things and/or have some more specific queries then we can take up the discussion again from there, otherwise I might just be muddying the waters for you!

My Masters thesis, by the way, was on the impact of postmodernist ideas on historical studies and was not published, no, as it was really only a short dissertation with only limited research. In principle I’d be happy to share it with you, but I am not too sure on the rules about intellectual copyright in relation to it, so I’d need to check.

Thanks very much Matty I appreciate your input very much.

I will go away and follow up on the information you have provided me with, and may come back with some questions if that is ok with you.

I would absolutely love to read your thesis and if you can find away to make that happen it would be a great source of inspiration to me.

Thanks once again for taking the time to contribute in such helpful way and I hope everthing goes well for you in the future!

Cheers!

Unity.

Yeah, fire any questions you have as and when.
I’ll look into the thesis thing.

:confused: How the heck can human works exist past modern times? Post is after. After modern times , we are in modern time always… You all have a time machine??? Postmoderism/ists cannot be, it is not possible unless you all do have a time machine. The title is a false one. [-X

That’s just a question of interpretation really, Kris - yes, literally speaking the modern is the new or contemporary, the now, if you like. However, most commentators will identify a specifically “modern” phase of human history, or at least a set of values broadly described as “modernism”, so it makes sense to discuss reactions to those values (as exemplified in something like The Dialectic of Enlightenment, for example).

I would also reiterate the Lyotardian point about the future anterior (post modo) as the “will have been done” - there is a futuristic element to postmodernism, if you will.

Now is future.