ABSTRACT
It is difficult to write about late-twentieth-century U.S. culture without taking on the term postmodernism, which, without clear consensus about its meaning, circulates widely as a periodizing concept. Generally dated from the 1970s, postmodernism is believed to mark a decisive break from the modern era at the cultural, epistemic, and socioeconomic levels. In most theories of postmodernism, the modern period is identified with industrial capitalism, although its successor is variably characterized as a postindustrial society or a new stage of capitalism. No account of which I am aware makes a convincing case for seeing the postmodern as a socioeconomic order radically discontinuous from the modern, although certain significant changes—such as greater global integration of capital or the spread of advanced information technologies—have undoubtedly occurred. At the cultural and epistemic levels, the novel elements associated with postmodernism, such as philosophical and aesthetic antirealism, heightened consciousness about representation, refusal of totality and closure, or fragmented and unstable subjectivity, have been persuasively shown to have modernist antecedents. 1
