- Title Pages
- A Prefatory and Introductory Note
-
1 A Look at Terms and Issues -
2 An Adversarial Image of Modernity -
3 The Postmodern Moment -
4 At the Core of the Postmodernist Challenge to History -
5 Two Versions of the Postmodernist Future -
6 The Project of a Postmodernist Theory of History -
7 Postmodernism's Emergence in an Unlikely Setting -
8 An Early Redefinition of Progress's Destination -
9 Views with Postmodernist Affinities -
10 The First Twentieth-Century Postmodernist: Alexandre Kojève -
11 The Flourishing of Structural Postmodernism (1945–65) -
12 The Fading of Structural Postmodernism and a Triumphal Exception: Francis Fukuyama -
13 Insights and Problems -
14 A Prelude to Poststructuralist Postmodernism -
15 Narrativist History in the Poststructuralist Mode -
16 In the Eye of the Storm: The Poststructuralist Postmodernist Concept of Truth -
17 The Metanarrative Controversy -
18 Poststructuralist Postmodernists on the Individual and the Utility of History -
19 What Kind of Marxism in Postmodernity? -
20 Postmodernism and Feminist History -
Part 5 Concluding Observations - Select Bibliography
- General Works
- Publications Focusing On Structural Postmodernism
- Publications Concerning Poststructuralist Postmodernism
- Poststructuralist Postmodernism: Spur to the New and Challenge to the Established in History
- Index
Views with Postmodernist Affinities
Views with Postmodernist Affinities
- Chapter:
- 9 Views with Postmodernist Affinities
- Source:
- On the Future of History
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
In history, the social energy that shaped temporary forms of unity also caused their decline when its initial strength dissipated. Historians have often spoken about exhausted states, empires, and societies, but have embedded such talk usually into cyclical theories of decadence. Adams, much in the manner of structural postmodernists, referred to one universal history with its development and end. As in Cournot's view, the much-vaunted idea of progress would be the major force that drove history to its ironic end in permanent stability. The acceleration of innovations and change witnessed not just a greater human control over the world but also the accelerating dissipation of social energy. The function of the modern period was thus ultimately a destructive one.
Keywords: universal history, structural postmodernists, postmodernist affinities, progress, stability, innovation, social energy
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
- Title Pages
- A Prefatory and Introductory Note
-
1 A Look at Terms and Issues -
2 An Adversarial Image of Modernity -
3 The Postmodern Moment -
4 At the Core of the Postmodernist Challenge to History -
5 Two Versions of the Postmodernist Future -
6 The Project of a Postmodernist Theory of History -
7 Postmodernism's Emergence in an Unlikely Setting -
8 An Early Redefinition of Progress's Destination -
9 Views with Postmodernist Affinities -
10 The First Twentieth-Century Postmodernist: Alexandre Kojève -
11 The Flourishing of Structural Postmodernism (1945–65) -
12 The Fading of Structural Postmodernism and a Triumphal Exception: Francis Fukuyama -
13 Insights and Problems -
14 A Prelude to Poststructuralist Postmodernism -
15 Narrativist History in the Poststructuralist Mode -
16 In the Eye of the Storm: The Poststructuralist Postmodernist Concept of Truth -
17 The Metanarrative Controversy -
18 Poststructuralist Postmodernists on the Individual and the Utility of History -
19 What Kind of Marxism in Postmodernity? -
20 Postmodernism and Feminist History -
Part 5 Concluding Observations - Select Bibliography
- General Works
- Publications Focusing On Structural Postmodernism
- Publications Concerning Poststructuralist Postmodernism
- Poststructuralist Postmodernism: Spur to the New and Challenge to the Established in History
- Index
