Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Postmodernism and Popular Culture
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inc GSTIn this provocative and timely book, John Docker takes his readers on an intellectual adventure. The journey includes an introductory guided tour of the history of modernism, consideration of the development of postmodernism, explanation of the difference between structuralism and poststructuralism and discussion of the debates and conflicts around each. Along the way readers will visit the architecture of Le Corbusier, take a ride on the Sydney monorail, watch Prisoner (Cell Block H) on TV, come into contact with Derrida, read some crime fiction and enter into the world of carnival. The book engages, in a stimulating and illuminating way, with some of the most important academic debates of our time. It combines polemical force with intellectual rigour, reclaiming popular culture from the forces opposed to it. John Docker's personal style and accessible prose will introduce postmodernism to many interested general readers and students intimidated by other dense, theoretical tracts. The breadth and intelligence of his cultural history will make the book essential reading for scholars, in a range of disciplines, around the world.
- Lively, stimulating, provocative prose; book is written in a personal style
- Broad-ranging – considers a vast range of subjects, without becoming slight and without becoming incoherent
- Important contribution to currently raging academic debates - surveys modernism and postmodernism and place of popular culture within both
Product details
December 1994Paperback
9780521465984
344 pages
229 × 152 × 20 mm
0.51kg
10 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Modernism in Conflict:
- 1. Architectural modernism
- 2. Literary modernism
- 3. Modernism versus popular literture
- 4. The Frankfurt School versus Walter Benjamin
- 5. Flowering of an orthodoxy
- 6. Myths of origin
- 1970s screen theory and literary history
- Part II. Modernism and Postmodernism:
- 7. Architectural postmodernism: learning from Las Vegas
- 8. From Las Vegas to Sydney
- 9. Are we living in a Postmodern Age?
- 10. Mapping Frederic Jameson's grand narrative
- 11. From structuralism to postructuralism: Derrida
- 12. Cultural studies
- Transitional moments from modernism to postmodernism
- Part III. Carnival:
- 13. Bakhtin's carnival
- 14. Dilemmas of a world upside fown
- 15. Fools: carnival-theatre-Vaudeville-television
- 16. Fool, trickster, social explorer - the detective
- 17. Crime fiction as a changing genre
- 18. Melodrama, farce, soap opera
- 19. Melodrama in action: Prisoner or Cell Block H
- Conclusion: Carnival and contemporary popular culture
- Notes
- Index.
