The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s

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Rowman & Littlefield, 2004 - History - 225 pages
During the 1970s, the United States became the world's preeminent postindustrial society. The new conditions changed the way Americans lived and worked, and even their perceptions of reality. Americans struggled to find their place in a world where symbol became more important than fact, appearance more important than reality, where image supplanted essence. In this reassessment of a little studied decade, J. David Hoeveler, Jr., finds that the sense of detachment and dislocation that characterizes the postindustrial society serves as a paradigm for American thought and culture in the 1970s. The book examines major developments in literary theory, philosophy, architecture, and painting as expressions of a 1970s consciousness. Hoeveler also explores the rival "political" readings of these subjects and considers the postmodernist phenomenon as it became an ideological battleground in the decade. Clear and engaging, the work will be of great interest to historians, theorists, and everyone who wants to further explore the 1970s.
 

Contents

Postindustrialism
1
Wars of Words
15
Reading Left
35
Postmodernism I Painting
54
Postmodernism II Architecture
76
Writing Feminist
100
Debating Black
119
Neoconservatism
136
On Liberalism
159
Afterword
173
Chronology
185
Notes and References
189
Bibliographic Essay
211
Index
217
Copyright

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Page 208 - Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 74, 102. 22. EP Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press, 1978). 23. Ian Hacking, "The Archaeology of Foucault," New York Review of Books, 28 (May 14, 1981), p.

About the author (2004)

J. David Hoeveler, Jr., is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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