Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-220) and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
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Introduction: What was postmodernism?: Changing tenses ; Coming attractions -- 1. Before postmodernism: Postmodernism and its precursors ; Changing dominants ; The last avant-garde -- 2. Big bang: Crash ; Bang ; Complexity and contradiction ; The tipping point ; High and low ; Made, unmade, ready-made ; Strange loops -- Alice: Curious Alice ; Postmodern Alice ; Go ask Alice ; Trips vs. Missions -- 3. The major phase: peak postmodernism, 1973-90: Rebranding ; "Theory" ; Megafictions ; Avant-pop ; Cyberpunk ; Users' manuals ; Pictures and the return of painting ; Downtown, or, the capital of postmodernism -- Prospero's books: Enchanted islands ; Caliban's play ; The women's play ; The shipwreck play ; Prospero's books ; Masques of postmodernism -- 4. Interregnum, 1989-2001: Between ; Late ; Virtuality, or, all that is solid melts into air ; After gravity, or, anxieties of influence ; Anti-gravity ; Arts of suspension ; Planet China -- Angels in America: Angels everywhere ; Gravity's angels ; Close encounters ; Annunciations ; The last of the angels? -- 5. After postmodernism: Millennium approaches ... and recedes ; Post-postmodernism, at last? ; Intensities and mutations ; The end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) -- Ruins: "American has no ruins" ; Sham ruin ; Ruin porn ; Manifest destiny.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
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This book surveys the full spectrum of postmodern culture - high and low, avant-garde and popular, famous and obscure - across a range of fields, from architecture and visual art to fiction, poetry, and drama. It deftly maps postmodernism's successive historical phases, from its emergence in the 1960s to its waning in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jefferson Airplane and magical realism, to Jean-Francois Lyotard, Laurie Anderson and cyberpunk - this book creates a rich picture of a complex cultural phenomenon that continues to exert an influence over our present 'post-postmodern' situation. Comprehensive and accessible, this Introduction is indispensable for scholars, students, and general readers interested in late twentieth-century culture.