What's Wrong with Postmodernism?: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

by Christopher Norris (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1990

  $35.90

  In What's Wrong with Postmodernism Norris critiques the postmodern-pragmatist malaise of Baudrillard, Fish, Rorty, and Lyotard. In contrast he finds a continuing critical impulse-an enlightened or emancipatory interest -in thinkers like Derrida, de Man, Bhaskar, and Habermas. Offering a provocative reassessment of Derrida's influence on modern thinking, Norris attempts to sever the tie between deconstruction and American literary critics who, he argues, favor endless, playful, polysemic interpretation at the expense of systematic argument. As he explores leftist attempts to arrive at an accommodation with postmodernism, Norris addresses the politics of deconstruction, the issue of men in feminism, Habermas' quarrel with Derrida, narrative theory as a hermeneutic paradigm, musical aesthetics in relation to literary theory, and various aspects of postmodern debate. A chapter on Stanley Fish brings several of these topics together and offers a generalized statement on the function of current criticism.

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $5.48

  This work offers a selection of Norris' articles, essays and reviews which have been written over the past five years. Although focused primarily on issues of literary theory, the material also has relevance for philosophy, intellectual history, sociology and developments in cultural criticism. Topics included are deconstruction (its ethical and philosophical bearings), Habermas' critique of Derrida, the post-pragmatist rhetoric of assent, post-modernity, the ideology of the aesthetic, language in relation to musical theory and revisionist readings of Kant (on the sublime). There is a long closing chapter dealing with Heidegger's politics (issues raised by Farias and Lacoue-Labarthe).