ABSTRACT
A good starting point for understanding the origins of postmodernism is the wave of political radicalism that swept across the Western world in the late 1960s. Just as (post-Marxist) Critical Theory (see chapter 4) was, in part, born of the politics of the New Left, the origins of postmodernism can be seen in the identification with a range of disaffected groups such as student protesters, feminists, environmentalists and gay liberationists. While advocating political radicalism, many on the Left were dissatisfied with the continuing emphasis on the importance of economically determined social class in left-wing political movements. They believed that this emphasis neglected other issues such as racial or gender discrimination. As we will see in the following chapter, during this period feminists were drawing attention to the repressiveness of social relations previously dismissed as ‘private’. It was also a time of nationalist struggles against colonial and imperialist domination, with people in many parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa demanding the right to self-determination in the name of ‘the people’, while minorities in Western countries were documenting the ways in which they suffered forms of discrimination or exclusion from the mainstream of society.
