ABSTRACT
Let us not proclaim the death of postmodernism prematurely. It may well be that forms of postmodern expression have had their day, but we still live under Lyotard’s postmodern condition (1984), our public services (for example) run on narrowly performative lines as fractured societies throw up recycled fragments of old ideologies as protest movements: nationalism, religious fundamentalism and unreconstructed Marxism. There is no new grand narrative: old men such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have taken their turns as the voices of the young. (Is Beyoncé the most influential global voice under 40?) Allied to this is the more arguable contention that postmodernity does not simply follow modernity according to a linear model of time and therefore cannot come to an end. Remember that many sociologists have always fought against the threat the postmodern posed to their avowedly progressive narratives.
