Connor - The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism offers a comprehensive introduction to postmodernism. The Companion examines the different aspects of postmodernist thought and culture that have had a significant impact on contemporary cultural production and thinking. Topics discussed by experts in the field include postmodernisms relation to modernity, and its significance and relevance to literature, film, law, philosophy, architecture, religion, and modern cultural studies. The volume also includes a useful guide to further reading and a chronology. This is an essential aid for students and teachers from a range of disciplines interested in postmodernism in all its incarnations. Accessible and comprehensive, this Companion addresses the many issues surrounding this elusive, enigmatic, and often controversial topic.

THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

POSTMODERNISM

EDITED BY

STEVEN CONNOR

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521640527

Cambridge University Press 2004

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Reprinted 2005

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-64052-7 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-64052-0 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-64840-0 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-64840-8 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this publication are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

CONTENTS

STEVEN CONNOR

PAUL SHEEHAN

CATHERINE CONSTABLE

STEVEN CONNOR

STEPHEN MELVILLE

PHILIP AUSLANDER

JULIAN MURPHET

URSULA K. HEISE

PHILIPPA BERRY

ROBERT EAGLESTONE

COSTAS DOUZINAS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PHILIP AUSLANDER is Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds the PhD in Theatre from Cornell University. At Georgia Tech, Professor Auslander teaches in the areas of Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies. He is a contributing editor to both the US-based TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies and the UK-based Performance Research. He contributes regularly to these and other journals, and his books include Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance; From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism; and Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. He received the 2000 Callaway Prize for the Best Book in Theatre or Drama for Liveness. He recently edited Performance: Critical Concepts, a collection of eighty-nine essays in four volumes. His next book project as an author will be All the Young Dudes: Glam Rock and the Discourse of Authenticity in Popular Music. In addition to his scholarly work on performance, Professor Auslander writes art criticism for ArtForum in New York City and Art Papers in Atlanta.

PHILIPPA BERRY is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Kings College, University of Cambridge. She combines interdisciplinary research in English and European Renaissance culture with work on feminist and post-modern theory. She is the author of Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen, and of Shakespeares Feminine Endings: Disfiguring Death in the Tragedies, and co-editor of Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion and Textures of Renaissance Knowledge. She is currently writing a study of Shakespeares comedies, to be entitled Phenomenal Shakespeare.

STEVEN CONNOR is Professor of Modern Literature and Theory in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, London, and Director of the London Consortium Programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is the author of books on Dickens, Joyce, Beckett, and postwar fiction, as well as of Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary; Theory and Cultural Value; Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism; and The Book of Skin. Other unpublished works and works in progress are to be found on his website at <www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc>

CATHERINE CONSTABLE is a senior lecturer in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, where she specializes in philosophy and film theory. She has written articles on postmodernism, philosophy, and film and has coedited a special issue of Hypatia (vol. 15, no. 2) on Australian feminist philosophy, which was published in Spring 2000. She is currently completing a book for the British Film Institute that is provisionally entitled Thinking in Images: Feminist Philosophy, Film Theory and Marlene Dietrich and due to be published in 2004.

COSTAS DOUZINAS is Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, London, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Athens. Educated in Athens, London, and Strasbourg, he has taught at the Universities of Middlesex, Lancaster, Prague, Thessaloniki, Griffith, Cardozo, Nanjing, and Beijing. He is the managing editor of Law and Critique: The International Journal of Critical Legal Thought and of the Birkbeck Law Press. He specializes in jurisprudence, human rights, and critical thought. His books include (with Ronnie Warrington) Postmodern Jurisprudence: The Law of Text in the Texts of Law; (with Ronnie Warrington) Justice Miscarried: Ethics and Aesthetics in Law; (with Ronnie Warrington) The Logos of Nomos: Interpretation, Ethics and Aesthetics in the Law; The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century; (with Lynda Nead) Law and the Image: The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law; and Critical Jurisprudence; and Postmodern Just Wars (forthcoming). His work has been translated into five languages.

ROBERT EAGLESTONE works on contemporary and twentieth-century literature, literary theory, and philosophy and teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Ethical Criticism: Reading after Levinas; Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students; Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial; and articles on contemporary European philosophy, Samuel Beckett, Angela Carter, ethics, science, the Holocaust, archaeology, and historiography. He is a Literary Advisor to the British Council and on the Executive of the Forum for European Philosophy. He is the academic series editor of Routledge Critical Thinkers.

URSULA K. HEISE is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and the author of