Postmodernism and the Re-reading of Modernity

Whatever else can be said about the debates surrounding postmodernism, it must be acknowledged that in recent years it has proved the most important theme for cross-disciplinary forums. This is attested to by the variety of disciplines - philosophy, literary criticism and theory, art history, political science - represented here. Each field of study naturally inflects the terms modernity, modernism and postmodernism in somewhat different ways. The multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives involved in the debate is complemented by its international nature: quite distinctive formulations of the problematic come from writers in France, Germany, the USA and Great Britain, which are in turn linked to the political, cultural and intellectual histories of these countries. One of the motivations for organizing the three-day Symposium on which this volume is based was to ventilate these disciplinary and national differences in a context where extended discussion was possible.