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The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-construcing the Postmodern WorldEdited with the non-specialist in mind, this is an exploration of the main themes of postmodernism and postmodernity -- constructivism, deconstruction, irony, pluralism, multiculturalism.
--AHP Newsletter "In an engagingly skeptical, aphoristic voice, Anderson provides continuity between sections as diverse as "Symbols at Work and Play" (which includes a relatively lucid passage from Jacques Derrida on "the dubious relationship between a word and its referent" and Stephen Katz's spoof on "How to Read and Write Postmodern") and "Science without Scientism," featuring passages from Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend on the instability of scientific principles." Publishers Weekly (excerpt) Introduction: What's Going on Here? What gives so many people a feeling of permission to tinker with the hallowed symbolic heritage of societies -- mixing rituals and traditions like greens in a salad, inventing new personal identities, revising old political ideologies, picking and choosing what to believe and what not to believe? Is there a pattern that links such diverse events as the fall of Communism, the information/communications revolution, the doctrinal civil wars within organized religions and the restless spiritual and cultural wanderings of the educated and affluent? The message of this book is that there is. |
Contributors . . . Jean Baudrillard Ernest Becker Peter Berger Isiah Berlin Jacques Derrida Umberto Eco Paul Feyerabend Michel Foucault Howard Gardner Kenneth J. Gergen Vaclav Havel bell hooks Charles Jencks James Davison Hunter Stephen Katz Stanley Krippner Thomas S. Kuhn Steinar Kvale Robert J. Lifton Thomas Luckmann Martin Marty Maureen O'Hara Richard Rorty Pauline Marie Rosenau Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Richard Shweder William Simon Huston Smith Werner Sollors Ernest Sternberg Roy Wagner Michael Winkler Connie Zweig (Published in the UK as The Fontana Postmodernism Reader. HarperCollins, 1996.) |
