Total recall : aliens, ‘others’ and amnesia in postmodernist thought

Postmodernism sees itself as a champion of plurality and seeks to represent voices of ‘other cultures’ which have been suppressed, neglected or marginalized by modernity. But is postmodernism necessarily a good thing for non-Western cultures? Is it, in its rejection of all metanarrative, its overriding concern for the present at the expense of history, its insistence on blurring the distinction between image and reality, and its absolute moral relativity, a liberating force or a new form of cultural assimilation? Is postmodernism totally divorced from modernist philosophy or is it simply the cultural logic of secularism? This essay explores these questions on the basis of four new books: Contingency, Irony and Solidarity by Richard Rorty;¹ The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey;² Contemporary Political Culture: Politics in a Postmodern Age by John R. Gibbons (editor);³ and Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism by Andrew Ross (editor).⁴