Review Of "The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, And Cultural Studies At The Third Millenium" By S. Best

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

4-1-2002

Published In

Choice

Abstract

We live, say Best (Univ. of Texas, El Paso) and Kellner (UCLA), between modernism and postmodernism. Their suggestive accounts of contemporary fiction (Thomas Pynchon), feminist critics of contemporary science (Sandra Harding, Donna Hardaway), and other postmodernists offer a glimpse of what our "postmodern adventure" might look like. All, say the authors, aspire " ... to destabilize natural and self-evident facades; to disrupt oppressive linkages to knowledge with power; to advance counterdiscourses rooted in sites including domestic life, schools, workplaces, and popular culture; to work across disciplinary boundaries; and to promote intellectual and sociopolitical transformation." The authors' ambition leads them to write breathlessly--but clearly--in an episodic style that leaps from literature to war, to science and technology, to human evolution, and to globalization with far more assertion and suggestion than argument. Although they wish to avoid what they call "self-refuting attacks on theory" advanced by some postmodernists like Lyotard, Foucault, and Rorty, it isn't clear that their own "multiperspectival" approach provides criteria for distinguishing sense from nonsense. As a book encouraging its readers to read and think about the authors and issues they discuss, it is commendable. Whether one thinks that the postmodern adventure is worth the trip, however, remains problematic. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates.

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