Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History

by John Docker

Overview

In this provocative study, John Docker takes his readers on an intellectual adventure. The journey includes a guided tour of the history of modernism, consideration of the development of postmodernism, explanation of structuralism and poststructuralism, and discussion of the debates and conflicts around each. It ranges widely, from theoretical discussion to consideration of everything from architecture, television and detective writing to Sydney's monorail. The book engages with some of the most important debates of our time, combining polemical force with intellectual rigor, and reclaims popular culture from the forces opposed to it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521465984
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/12/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Modernism in Conflict: 1. Architectural modernism; 2. Literary modernism; 3. Modernism versus popular literture; 4. The Frankfurt School versus Walter Benjamin; 5. Flowering of an orthodoxy; 6. Myths of origin; 1970s screen theory and literary history; Part II. Modernism and Postmodernism: 7. Architectural postmodernism: learning from Las Vegas; 8. From Las Vegas to Sydney; 9. Are we living in a Postmodern Age?; 10. Mapping Frederic Jameson's grand narrative; 11. From structuralism to postructuralism: Derrida; 12. Cultural studies; Transitional moments from modernism to postmodernism; Part III. Carnival: 13. Bakhtin's carnival; 14. Dilemmas of a world upside fown; 15. Fools: carnival-theatre-Vaudeville-television; 16. Fool, trickster, social explorer - the detective; 17. Crime fiction as a changing genre; 18. Melodrama, farce, soap opera; 19. Melodrama in action: Prisoner or Cell Block H; Conclusion: Carnival and contemporary popular culture; Notes; Index.