The Postmodernism Reader Foundational Texts

Postmodernism too often seems to be an evasive body of ideas rather than a clear cut concept, mainly characterized by all embracing assertions. Yet it can be referred to as an intellectual project with specific roots and a historical development.
The Postmodernism Reader traces the origins, evolvement and the politics of postmodernism through the key writings of postmodernist thinkers. This collection of foundational essays restores the poignancy that has been lost - or even emphatically rejected - in the debate about postmodernism by focusing on central formative texts and the predominant thinkers we have come to associate with postmodernist theory.
Michael Drolet's authoritative introductory essay and his careful selection of texts provide a solid basis for the study of postmodernism by uncovering the philosophical origins of present theories and focusing on their major aspects, guiding the reader through the maze of knowledge that we call postmodernism. Arranged in three parts, the essays cover the origins of the term postmodernism, its evolution and its political ramifications. Included are writings by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Bauman, Jameson, Berman and Irigaray.


Contents:
Introduction

Chapter I - The Crisis of Modernity and the birth of the Concept of Postmodernism
Introduction
1. Michel Foucault, What is enlightenment?
2. Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air.
3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things.
4. Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.
5. Jacques Derrida, Cogito and the History of Madness.
6. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy.

Chapter II - The Postmodern Condition: a Concept in Emergence.
Introduction
7. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition.
8. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination.
9. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.
10. Michel Foucault, Theatrum philosophicum.
11. Jacques Derrida, The Time of a thesis: punctuations.
12. Gilles Deleuze, Immanence: A Life.
13. Jean-François Lyotard, The intimacy of Terror.
14. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Chapter III - Difference, Aesthetics, Politics and History: Postmodern Reflections.
Introduction
15. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend.
16. Luce Irigaray, Sexual Difference.
17. Jean-François Lyotard, Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern?
18. Zygmunt Bauman, A Sociological Theory of Postmodernity.
19. W. van Reijen and D. Veerman, Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics and the Politics of Difference: an interview with Jean-François Lyotard.
20. Jean Baudrillard, History and The Illusion of the End.
21. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx.