Post-Modernity and Revolution

It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that mankind has entered the era of "post-modernity". Three themes are embraced in this claim - the poststructuralists critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment, the supposed impasse of the high modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms, and the alleged emergence of "post-industrial" societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism. "Against Post-Modernism" takes issue with all these themes. It challenges the idealist irrationalism of poststructuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating post-modern from modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation. Drawing on philosophy and cultural history, takes issue also with some of the most forthright critics of post-modernism, including Jurgen Habermas and Frederic Jameson. Post-modernism, Alex Callinicos argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial "new middle class". He suggests it is best read as a symptom of political frustation and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right.