The Post–Modern Reader

Post–Modernism has been debated, attacked and defended for over three decades. It is, however, not just a fashion or style but part of a greater movement in all areas of culture, and one which stubbornly persists like its parent, Modernism. The Post–Modern Reader is a seminal anthology that presents this trend in all its diversity, as a convergence in architecture and literature, sociology and cultural theory, feminism and theology, science and economics.

For this new edition, editor Charles Jencks, has provided an entirely new definitive introductory essay What then is Post–Modernism?′ that reflects on the movement′s coming of age. The book also encompasses essential classic texts on the subject by John Barth, Umberto Eco, David Harvey, Jane Jacobs, Jean–François Lyotard and Robert Venturi, while incorporating new inclusions by Felipe Fernández–Armesto, John Gray, Ihab Hassan and Anatole Kaletsky. Each text is introduced and contextualised for the reader with a new short introductory passage.

A new edition of a classic anthology of 26 texts covering the full gamut of Post–Modern thought from architecture and literature to economics and theology. The reader includes key texts by John Barth, Umberto Eco, David Harvey, Jane Jacobs, Jean–François Lyotard and Robert Venturi. A book edited by the most influential figure behind the Post–Modern movement – Charles Jencks. A timely and informative publication for students that captures the renewed interest in Post–Modernism.

Preface.

Charles Jencks: Post–Modernism The Ism that Returns.

Part 1 Defining the Post–Modern.

Charles Jencks: What Then Is Post–Modernism?

Jean–François Lyotard: Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?

Andreas Huyssen: Mapping the Postmodern.

Margaret A Rose: Defining the Post–Modern.

Part 2 Literature and Architecture.

John Barth: The Literature of Replenishment.

Umberto Eco: The Postscript to The Name of the Rose: Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable.

Linda Hutcheon: Theorising the Postmodern: Towards a Poetics.

Ihab Hassan: From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The Local/Global Context.

Felipe Fernández–Armesto: Pillars and Posts: Foundations and Future of Post–Modernism.

Jane Jacobs: The Kind of Problem a City Is.

Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

Charles Jencks: The Language of Post–Modern and the Complexity Paradigm.

Paolo Portoghesi: What Is the Postmodern?

Part 3 Sociology, Economics, Feminism, Science.

Zygmunt Bauman: Is There a Postmodern Sociology?

David Harvey: The Condition of Postmodernity.

Robin Murray: Fordism and Post–Fordism.

Anatole Kaletsky: 9/15 The Birthpangs of Post–Modern Economics?

Susan Rubin Seleiman: Feminism and Postmodernism: A Question of Politics.

Craig Owens: The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism.

Tito Arecchi: Chaos and Complexity.

John Gray: Evangelical Atheism, Secular Christianity.

David Ray Griffin: The Reenchantment  of Science.

David Bohm: Postmodern Science and a Postmodern World.

Charles Birch: The Postmodern Challenge to Biology.

Edward Goldsmith: Gaia and Evolution.

Index. 

Charles Jencks is an architectural theorist, landscape architect and designer, whose books on the history and criticism of Modernism and Post–Modernism are widely regarded throughout the world. His 1977 book The Language of Post–Modern Architecture, which has evolved over seven new editions, defined Post–Modernism as a cultural movement and popularised its use in relation to architecture. In recent years, Jencks has become a leading figure in landscape architecture. He continues to write and lecture internationally.