Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Edited by Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist
Published by Routledge, 2001.
This is a hard-bound book measuring 7" by 10" and running 466 pages including the index.
This is a difficult book to review, because its subject matter evokes strong feelings among people and is very difficult to define, and because it is difficult to know what to expect from a good encyclopedia of Postmodernism in the first place.
I'll begin by saying that it is an important work, into which Routledge, which is one of the most prestigious publishers of academic reference books, put lots of resources and years of effort. There were sixteen different people on the editorial team managing contributions from 144 scholars.
The introduction, which is only about a page long, serves mainly to avoid defining postmodernism or explaining the editorial position of the project, saying that it includes a "wide-spectrum (sic) of perspectives on postmodernism, illustrating a cohesion through the mutability and plurality of this critical concept that is so much a part of our intellectual and cultural context." It does provide a pseudo-definition, saying, "Definitions of postmodernism range from eclecticism and montage to neo-scepticism and anti-rationalism. Postmodernism, in its contradictory, sometimes misguided, and various deployments, has consistently challenged our understanding of unity, subjectivity, epistemology, aethetics, ethics, history, and politics."
A key thing to observe about this book is that part of the way it serves to explain postmodernism is by unfortunate example. What I'm referring to is the writing style of many of the contributors, which can be more than difficult, in that particular postmodern way. There are good arguments in favor of an approach to writing that challenges the reader to rethink the process of reading in approaching an idea whose depth may require thinking in a new way, but it is odd to find such unclear and difficult, almost poetic prose in an encyclopedia, which usually serves the purpose of transmitting knowledge as simply as possible. It seems that some of the contributing scholars saw fit to deploy language in a mode of resistance to the encyclopedic project itself. As an example, check out the first paragraph in the entry for "language," by Lucio Angelo Privitello:
De trop(e) language looms, raveling out representative systems. Whether as thesei (conditioned formation consensus) or physei (conceptual content), the action of language is also instrument to its chasm-made-presence, where "true" rings metonymic of peaks reached and tolled out of breath. If "the mother of language is negation" (Nietzsche), its father is articulated desire in speech (Lacan). As a secret pact (Freud) of a gifted linguistic-determined exchange (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss), exclamation (Herder) cum invocation (Augustine) reaches in time to a discourse (Heidegger) that performs the body as a "poetic logic" (Vico) where the very "words are the victims" (Bataille).
This particular entry, especially at the beginning, has the feeling of a movie trailer advertising the adventure film of Postmodernism. (The bold items are cross-references.) The logic behind this kind of writing, it seems, is that explanation takes away the purity of an idea and limits its associative meaning. There really is a kind of poetics to it, as well as perhaps a hostility toward rational discourse itself. To be fair, that entry does get somewhat clearer in its remaining page and a half, and many if not most of the other entries are perfectly comprehensible to the conventional mind, but it is still very odd and interesting to see it and others like it in an encyclopedia. It reminds me of the residents of the town of Bolinas, California, who so hate visiting tourists that they tear down all the street signs as soon as the city can put them up, preventing them from finding their way around (until they've been trapped there so long that they become locals themselves). In this entry on language it is as though Privitello is not interested in helping the reader to understand what he is saying so much as making it so difficult that any understanding the reader evinces is going to be mostly invented in his own mind, which is perhaps a kind of postmodernist argument by demonstration. In a sense, the requirement, behind many of the entries, that you swim in the waters of postmodernism in order to use the book makes it similar to other reference books that require a degree of background knowledge in the discipline, though it seems that in addition to background knowledge a certain intellectual and literary sensibility is required as well.
For an example of what's covered in the book, here's a list of the first fifteen items in the "P" sequence, with length in pages:
It's certainly a fascinating and potentially useful book for some people; I'd say that its speaking with a strongly postmodernist voice, as it does, is both a weakness and a strength, depending on who's using (or attempting to use) it.
Edited by Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist
Published by Routledge, 2001.
This is a hard-bound book measuring 7" by 10" and running 466 pages including the index.
This is a difficult book to review, because its subject matter evokes strong feelings among people and is very difficult to define, and because it is difficult to know what to expect from a good encyclopedia of Postmodernism in the first place.
I'll begin by saying that it is an important work, into which Routledge, which is one of the most prestigious publishers of academic reference books, put lots of resources and years of effort. There were sixteen different people on the editorial team managing contributions from 144 scholars.
The introduction, which is only about a page long, serves mainly to avoid defining postmodernism or explaining the editorial position of the project, saying that it includes a "wide-spectrum (sic) of perspectives on postmodernism, illustrating a cohesion through the mutability and plurality of this critical concept that is so much a part of our intellectual and cultural context." It does provide a pseudo-definition, saying, "Definitions of postmodernism range from eclecticism and montage to neo-scepticism and anti-rationalism. Postmodernism, in its contradictory, sometimes misguided, and various deployments, has consistently challenged our understanding of unity, subjectivity, epistemology, aethetics, ethics, history, and politics."
A key thing to observe about this book is that part of the way it serves to explain postmodernism is by unfortunate example. What I'm referring to is the writing style of many of the contributors, which can be more than difficult, in that particular postmodern way. There are good arguments in favor of an approach to writing that challenges the reader to rethink the process of reading in approaching an idea whose depth may require thinking in a new way, but it is odd to find such unclear and difficult, almost poetic prose in an encyclopedia, which usually serves the purpose of transmitting knowledge as simply as possible. It seems that some of the contributing scholars saw fit to deploy language in a mode of resistance to the encyclopedic project itself. As an example, check out the first paragraph in the entry for "language," by Lucio Angelo Privitello:
De trop(e) language looms, raveling out representative systems. Whether as thesei (conditioned formation consensus) or physei (conceptual content), the action of language is also instrument to its chasm-made-presence, where "true" rings metonymic of peaks reached and tolled out of breath. If "the mother of language is negation" (Nietzsche), its father is articulated desire in speech (Lacan). As a secret pact (Freud) of a gifted linguistic-determined exchange (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss), exclamation (Herder) cum invocation (Augustine) reaches in time to a discourse (Heidegger) that performs the body as a "poetic logic" (Vico) where the very "words are the victims" (Bataille).
This particular entry, especially at the beginning, has the feeling of a movie trailer advertising the adventure film of Postmodernism. (The bold items are cross-references.) The logic behind this kind of writing, it seems, is that explanation takes away the purity of an idea and limits its associative meaning. There really is a kind of poetics to it, as well as perhaps a hostility toward rational discourse itself. To be fair, that entry does get somewhat clearer in its remaining page and a half, and many if not most of the other entries are perfectly comprehensible to the conventional mind, but it is still very odd and interesting to see it and others like it in an encyclopedia. It reminds me of the residents of the town of Bolinas, California, who so hate visiting tourists that they tear down all the street signs as soon as the city can put them up, preventing them from finding their way around (until they've been trapped there so long that they become locals themselves). In this entry on language it is as though Privitello is not interested in helping the reader to understand what he is saying so much as making it so difficult that any understanding the reader evinces is going to be mostly invented in his own mind, which is perhaps a kind of postmodernist argument by demonstration. In a sense, the requirement, behind many of the entries, that you swim in the waters of postmodernism in order to use the book makes it similar to other reference books that require a degree of background knowledge in the discipline, though it seems that in addition to background knowledge a certain intellectual and literary sensibility is required as well.
For an example of what's covered in the book, here's a list of the first fifteen items in the "P" sequence, with length in pages:
- pagan aethetic (just under one page)
- paradox (just under one page)
- paranoia (1.5 pages)
- parergon (1.25 pages)
- Pei, I. M. (1.5 pages)
- Pierce, Charles Sanders (just under one page)
- peregrination (1 page)
- phallocentrism (just under one page)
- pharmakon (two pages)
- phenomenology (1.5 pages)
- philosophy (6.5 pages)
- plane of immanence (3/4 of a page)
- play (just under a page)
- poetics (one page)
- poetry, postmodern (1.5 pages)
It's certainly a fascinating and potentially useful book for some people; I'd say that its speaking with a strongly postmodernist voice, as it does, is both a weakness and a strength, depending on who's using (or attempting to use) it.