The passing of postmodernism : a spectroanalysis of the contemporary /

Toth (Grant MacEwan Univ., Canada) offers a cultural critique, arguing for the persistence of the postmodern project within the abandonment of many of its formal characteristics and a turning to increased political and ethical perspectives. What Frederic Jameson theorized as repressed Toth reinterprets as spectral. He draws from Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (Eng. tr., 1994) to demonstrate a utopian spirit pervasive within postmodernism, an attempt to reject the illusory ideals that informed modernism. Delving into a wide array of postmodern theorists, writers, and filmmakers, including Zizek, Foucault, Pynchon, Acker, Morrison, and Lynch, the author shows that the discussion of the end of postmodernism presents the same traps as those associated with discussions of the presumed death of modernism. Instead, he argues in his "spectrology," both are continuous and discontinuous with predecessors so that the promise of a post-ideological world without ghosts remains unrealizable though ever pursued. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. R. D. Newman University of Utah