Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Postmodernity and the Release of the Creative Imagination
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'A rather curious and sobering thing happened to me as I was reading in preparation for this paper. I had expected to encounter a certain kind of literature in confronting the subject of postmodernity. It would be full of word games. There would be parodic essays on the supposed distinction between late modernity and postmodernity. There would be voices asserting or, alternatively, denying that ours is an age of all surface and no depth. Some would argue that it’s a world of mobility rather than substance, of the fragment rather than the whole, or of heterogeneities rather than totalities. We live, others would agree, by cheap commodification rather than community-building. I anticipated the teasing word constructions that baffle the uninitiated: the double-coding, the ‘aesthetic play’.1 I was, as I say, prepared for this discourse. Over the years, I have in fact learned a great deal from it. I enjoy it. This time, however, something discordant struck me in some of the literature. Subtly evident was an expression of deep personal disturbance or anger not at all in keeping with the ordinary gamesmanship and paradox-play or, as often, the dense analysis characteristic of postmodern theorising. Let me give some examples.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration Ann Curthoys (editor), Ann McGrath (editor), Clayton : School of Historical Studies, School of Historical Studies, Monash University , 2000 Z1664714 2000 anthology criticism

    'For anyone wanting to write histories that capture the imagination and challenge the intellect. A useful text for teachers and students in history-writing classes.' (Publication summary)

    Clayton : Monash University Press , 2009
Last amended 24 Feb 2017 14:24:08
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