The Politics of Postmodernity

In his study Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman contrasts the hopes and expectations of the modernising world of the nineteenth century with the real outcomes of the twentieth century, where the very conditions of modernity have led to the mass destruction of humanity and of those early hopes for the betterment of humankind. This volume explores the possibilities left to those once modernising societies, not only in terms of the worlds they have constructed but also in discerning the novel conditions which the closure of modernity entails. That closure, in part the completion of industrialisation and the social order that went with it, and in part the dislocation of the kinds of social knowledge used to understand it, has raised profound and disturbing questions about the character of this brave new world and the new ways in which its governance and the goal of the good society can be understood. This volume explores some of the current vicissitudes of modernity, especially in relation to the crises of the political, and the political consequences of new technologies.

• A new analysis of postmodernity and its relation to political theory and politics • Multidisciplinary approach with contributions from leading specialists in their fields • Discusses changes in the current political world

Acknowledgements; Notes on contributors; 1. Introduction: postmodernity and the political James Good and Irving Velody; Part I. Modernity and Vicissitudes: 2. Parvenu and pariah: heroes and victims of modernity Zygmunt Bauman; 3. Private and public in ‘late modern’ democracy Geoffrey Hawthorn and Camilla Lund; 4. Modernity and disenchantment: some reflections on Charles Taylor’s diagnosis Quentin Skinner; 5. Postmodernism and ‘the end of philosophy’ David Cooper; Part II. The Critique of Modernist Political Thought: 6. Antinomies of modernist political thought: reasoning, context and community Raymond Plant; 7. Master narratives and feminist subversions Diana Coole; 8. In different voices: deliberative democracy and aestheticist politics Judith Squires; Part III. Technology and the Politics of Culture: 9. Technology, modernity, politics Herminio Martins; 10. Surrogates and substitutes: new practices for old? Marilyn Strathern; 11. Postmodernism, the sublime and ethics Roy Boyne.