ABSTRACT
There is hardly a single field of intellectual endeavour which has not been touched by the spectre of ‘the postmodern’. It leaves its traces in every cultural discipline from architecture to zoology, taking in on the way biology, forestry, geography, history, law, literature and the arts in general, medicine, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and so o n .1 Yet this amorphous thing remains ghostly - and for some, ghastly - for the simple reason that the debate around the postmodern has never properly been engaged. The term itself hovers uncertainly in most current writings between - on the one hand - extremely complex and difficult philosophical senses, and - on the other - an extremely simplistic mediation as a nihilistic, cynical tendency in contemporary culture.
