ABSTRACT
The 1983-4 contributions to the debate on the postmodern by Lyotard, Rorty, Jameson, and Baudrillard led many to the conclusion that postmodernism and postmodernity had indeed arrived. As a result, we find in the second half of the 1980s a whole range of articles and books that seek to assess the political potential of the postmodern. Some titles clearly announce that political interest: Postmodernism and Politics (Arac 1986), ‘Postmodernity and politics’ (Brodsky 1987), ‘Postmodernism and politics’ (Aronowitz 1987), Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Ross 1988), ‘Postmodern politics’ (Ryan 1988), The Postmodern Political Condition (Heller and Feher, 1988), ‘Postmodernism: roots and politics’ (Gitlin 1989), ‘Periodization and politics in the postmodern’ (Turner 1990b). Other titles, such as Steven Best and Douglas Kellner’s Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations or John McGowan’s Postmodernism and its Critics (both of 1991), are less self-evident but not less pertinent.
