The Origins of Postmodernity - Softcover

Traces the genesis, consolidation and consequences of the postmodern idea. Beginning in the Hispanic world of the 1930s, the text takes the reader through to the 70s, when Lyotard and Habermas gave the idea of postmodernism wider currency and finally the 90s, with the work of Fredric Jameson. The author develops his analysis of postmodernism by placing it in the force field of a "declasse" bourgeoisie, the growth of mediatized technology and the historic global defeat of the left symbolized by the end of the Cold War. Pursuing his interpretation of postmodernism as the cultural logic of a multinational capitalism "complacent beyond precedent", Anderson ends with a set of historical reflections on the fading of modernism, shifts in the system of the arts, the rise of the spectacular, debates on the "end of art" and on the fate of politics in the postmodern world.

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, "Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity," and "The New Old World." He teaches history at UCLA and is on the editorial board of "New Left Review."