Book Description
Postmodernism and postmodernity have become key terms through which contemporary cultural change is theorized. In this original and stimulating study, Nick Heffernan demonstrates that the postmodern is not only a cultural matter: it bears on the transformations wrought by and within contemporary capitalism itself. To ask the postmodern question, according to Heffernan, is necessarily to inquire into the nature of Western capitalist societies as they have developed in the second half of the twentieth century, and in the process to engage in a series of complex meditations on capital, class, and technology. In a stimulating reading of the relationship between cultural forms of social, economic, and political change in postwar America, Heffernan uses a range of cultural texts--film, literature, reportage--to illuminate the processes and modes by which crisis and social, economic, and cultural changes are registered. Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory, and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back at the center of the critical agenda.

Book Info
(Pluto Press) A text using a range of cultural media, including film, literature and reportage, to expose and clarify the processes and modes by which crisis and social, economic and cultural changes are registered in postwar America. Softcover. DLC: United States--Social conditions--1980-.

About the Author
Nick Heffernan teaches American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University College Northampton.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the tradition of Mike Davis and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan engages in a series of meditations on capital, class and technology in contemporary America. He turns to the stories we generate to tell ourselves - via fiction, film journalism, theory - to see how change is registered. By investigating a variety of texts, he observes how structural change affects the way people organize their lives economically, socially and culturally. Case studies include Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner", William Gibson's cyberspace trilogy, Thomas Pynchon's " The Crying of Lot 49", and Wim Wender's " Until the End of the World".Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back as the center of the critical agenda.

SYNOPSIS

In the tradition of Mike Davis and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan engages in a series of meditations on capital, class and technology in contemporary America. He turns to the stories we generate to tell ourselves - via fiction, film journalism, theory - to see how change is registered. By investigating a variety of texts, he observes how structural change affects the way people organize their lives economically, socially and culturally. Case studies include Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner", William Gibson's cyberspace trilogy, Thomas Pynchon's " The Crying of Lot 49", and Wim Wender's " Until the End of the World".Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back as the center of the critical agenda.

FROM THE CRITICS

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