ABSTRACT
The reading collection describes the lifecycle of postmodernism in the langauge and imagery similiar to that of Albert Camus - as he describes the lifecycle of revolt turned revolution. In art, science and culture the writers talk of the initial impetus of the movement similiar to Camusean revolt, as emancipatory dislocation, the creation of new juxtapositions and a cacophony of individual parts brought to consciousness for the first time. The embrace of difference and the overcoming of miserable injustice—feelings of both kingdom and exile—a re-appraisal of the metanarrative through deliberate interruption. It brought with it a radical, new sense of equivalence and opportunity. It liberated what had been marginalised through the modern, leading to the experience of refraction, the blurring of genres, identities, fact and fiction. This liberating and unsettling elusiveness of meaning and knowledge, the stranger as mirror, revealed something very unsettling about our lives. Like Meursault it dethrones the absolute and the individual; taking us into the first step towards recognising new limits, moving away from excesses, reclaiming moderation.
