ABSTRACT
Construction of the concept ‘postmodernity’ proceeds today at a rapid pace. A welter of articles and books define, elaborate, celebrate and denounce this thing, the postmodern, whose very existence is matter for separate, energetic debate. Clearly interests are at stake, careers are being made. But this activity is finally produced by the concept itself, which being based on paradox, generates discussion. On the one hand, ‘postmodernity’ names the loss of critical distance in the world today, and on the other, it names the delegitimation of those categories by which a cultural centre or a socio-economic base might be identified. So writing about postmodernity implies its absence. If there is no critical distance under post modernity, then how can there be distance enough for analysis of it to proceed? And if it is knowable only as decentred, then how can its essence be recognized at all? To be dispersed in this sense is no longer to take the form of an identifiable object. Such paradoxes, which resist closure, produce the deeply problematic object of their attention.
