Modernity and Postmodernity : Knowledge, Power and the Self

by Gerard Delanty

• ISBN13: 9780761959045
• ISBN10: 0761959041
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-06
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

Summary

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson. The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: Knowledge, Power and the Self	1	(7)
The Discourses of Modernity: Enlightenment, Modernism and Fin-de-Siecle Sociology	8	(24)
The Emergence of Modernity	8	(6)
Towards Modernism	14	(7)
The Fin-de-Siecle Critiques of Modernity	21	(10)
Conclusion: Contested Modernities	31	(1)
Modernity and Secularization: Religion and the Postmodern Challenge	32	(20)
Blumenberg and Modernity	34	(8)
Modernity and Tradition	42	(4)
Postmodernism and Negative Theology	46	(4)
Conclusion: Posttraditionalism in Question	50	(2)
The Pathogenesis of Modernity: The Limits of the Enlightenment	52	(20)
Horkheimer and Adorno: Enlightenment as Mass Deception	53	(3)
Koselleck: Critique and Crisis	56	(4)
Toulmin: Modernity's Hidden Agenda	60	(4)
Voeglin: Modernity as Gnosticism	64	(2)
Arendt: The Loss of the Political	66	(4)
Conclusion: Developmental Logics	70	(2)
The Impossibility of Modernity: Cultural Crystallization and the Problem of Contingency	72	(16)
Posthistory and Cultural Crystallization	73	(3)
Leo Strauss: Modernity as a Loss of Certainty	76	(5)
Luhmann: A Self-Limiting Modernity	81	(5)
Conclusion: Contingency and Communication	86	(2)
Rescuing Modernity: The Recovery of the Social	88	(26)
Habermas: From History to Discourse	89	(11)
Lefebvre and Heller on Everyday Life	100	(7)
Castoriadis and Touraine on Modernity and Postmodernity	107	(6)
Conclusion: Discursive Space	113	(1)
Postmodernism and the Possibility of Community	114	(17)
What is Community?	115	(4)
The Contemporary Rediscovery of Community	119	(3)
Beyond Communitarianism: The Postmodernization of Community	122	(5)
Community as a Cultural Imaginary	127	(3)
Conclusion: Towards a Reflexive Community	130	(1)
From Modernity to Postmodernity: Post-dialectics and the Aestheticization of the Social	131	(25)
Postmodern Aesthetics	133	(4)
Postmodernism as Deconstructive Theory	137	(4)
Postmodernization	141	(5)
Postmodern Politics	146	(7)
Conclusion: Postmodernity beyond the West	153	(3)
Further Reflections: Constructivism beyond Postmodernity	156	(12)
Notes	168	(5)
References	173	(19)
Index	192