ABSTRACT
The subject of this chapter is at once thrillingly bold and disturbingly vague. It is bold in that the prefix ‘post’ evokes the idea of a decisive break with the past and the arrival of a new age. This notion is both appealing and interesting, not least because announcements of postmodernism and postmodernity accord with the views of others who argue we are entering a novel information society. However, the subject is also disconcertingly vague, postmodernity/ism being vexingly hard to define with clarity. The terms can appear to be less of a definition than a series of descriptions and impressionistic suggestions (with repeated pronouncements on ‘difference’, ‘discourses’, ‘irony’ and the like). Furthermore, postmodernism/ity seems at once to be everywhere (in architecture, in academic disciplines, in attitudes to the self) and, because the words are so imprecisely used, impossible to pin down.
