The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium [Hardcover]

Steven Best PhD (Author), Douglas Kellner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572306661 | ISBN-13: 978-1572306660 | Publication Date: June 15, 2001 | Edition: 1

Massive geopolitical shifts and dramatic developments in computerization and biotechnology are heralding the transformation from the modern to the postmodern age. We are confronted with altered modes of work, communication, and entertainment; new postindustrial and political networks; novel approaches to warfare, genetic engineering, and even cloning. This compelling book explores the challenges to theory, politics, and human identity that we face on the threshold of the third millennium. It follows on the success of Best and Kellner s two previous books: Postmodern Theory, acclaimed as the best critical introduction to the field, and The Postmodern Turn, which provides a powerful mapping of postmodern developments in the arts, politics, science, and theory. In The Postmodern Adventure, Best and Kellner analyze a broad array of literary, cultural, and political phenomena/m-/from fiction, film, science, and the Internet, to globalization and the rise of a transnational image culture. They use the best of modern and postmodern perspectives to illuminate contemporary life and to strive for a just and viable future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For the past decade, Kellner and Best have been our guides to postmodernity. Now they turn their attention to the new century; its challenges and prospects for radical democracy. Their combination of clear prose, insightful analysis, and theoretical mastery is as imposing as it is welcome. Bravo!"--Toby Miller, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University

"This is an exceptional and absolutely essential book for anyone concerned with the interface of science, technology, the new electronic media, and the promise of cultural studies. It is a 'must read' for teachers, students and others seeking to critically engage the complexity of a world that demands a new vocabulary, cultural pedagogy, and politics."--Henry Giroux, Waterbury Chair Professor, Penn State University

"Best and Kellner are philosophers with a difference: they write brilliantly about the real world. The Postmodern Adventure articulates what is really new and strange about contemporary culture, without the hyperbole and jargon that is so off-putting in most postmodern writing. The book is politically engaged, clearly written, and sparkling with provocative analyses of current events and ideas. There's nothing else like it--read this book and enjoy!"--Andrew Feenberg, San Diego State University

"This pathbreaking book provides a view of postmodernism through the lenses of critical social theory, science and technology studies, and cultural studies--a unique achievement in itself. Best and Kellner subvert many guiding assumptions underlying the modern academic division of labor. Above all, they show how a deeply refined critical social theory can be a powerful weapon in the service of intellectual critique, political understanding, and social change. I highly recommend this text."--Carl Boggs, School of Arts and Sciences, National University

About the Author

Steven Best, Ph.D., is a Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. He has published articles on Marx, postmodern theory, Baudrillard, Debord, Jameson, film, television, and cultural theory.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 313 pages
• Publisher: The Guilford Press; 1 edition (June 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572306661
• ISBN-13: 978-1572306660
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,846,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ForeWord's Gold Medal 2001 Book of the Year in Philosophy, May 16, 2002

By 

Richard Kahn (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Paperback)

Simply put: this book is an award winner from the two guys who have published the classic survey text Postmodern Theory, and who then followed up with the book that pretty much inaugurated the field of Critical Postmodernism in America, The Postmodern Turn, in which they mapped the emerging intersections of critical theory, art and aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, and the quantum changes in the sciences. That book won the Michael Harrington Award for the Best Book of 1998, New Political Science Section.

I can honestly say that The Postmodern Adventure is twice the book that the last in the series was (and that book was clearly no slouch!). Best & Kellner clearly (but sophisticatedly) chart the complex novelties of our present moment -- illuminating the relationships between such diverse phenomena as Virtuality and the Internet-work, American war and terrorism, Cosmology, Animal Rights, and Biotechnology and Cloning. All of this is seen through the guiding lens of Thomas Pynchon's multiplicitous vision of the Rocket in Gravity's Rainbow.

At the end, Best & Kellner point thinkers and scholars alike toward a future which is fast emerging everywhere at the extremes of Utopia/Dystopia. It is our Adventure to fight creatively and constructively for the former, while critically analyzing the latter, to make of theory a space of practice, and to open our narrow frameworks for living up and out toward the cosmic whole in the name of social justice.

Yes, if you are looking for salon-swinging Frenchmen, their cigarettes held dramatically aloft as they speak incomprehensible oaths to the end of metaphysics, then this is not the Postmodernism for you. This is Critical Postmodernism -- an analysis and a synthesis, a great college text and an interesting read after work, a political statement and a theoretical foundation for others to make their own. Think Deep Ecology meets Cyberpunk meets the Fight for Democracy and you may begin to appreciate just what's going on here...do you think that's a Frankenstein's monster? Good -- that's in there too: go ahead and read!

We live in a revolutionary time -- this book awakens the Postmodernisms afoot in both American soil and abroad to the grander narrative of this amazing moment: counselling the age-old wisdom that "Philosophy begins in wonder," but to this we must add the Postmodern element of flow, of "wander." Adding wonder to wander, Best & Kellner arrive at "Adventure" -- the Postmodern Adventure.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cross-section of disciplines is revealed, October 10, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Paperback)

This college-level survey of science, technology and cultural studies provides challenges to theory, politics and issues which we face in modern times. A cross-section of disciplines is revealed in a title which is billed as philosophy but which includes a strong examination of science and culture. Students within many scientific disciplines will find its discussions intriguing - and scholarly.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, May 27, 2006

By 

Austin Wagoner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Paperback)

Best and Kellner present their ideas in a very compelling and informative fashion. In doing so, they provide a much needed wake up call for those of us who have been caught up in the spectacles of modern capitalism. They advocate a reconciliation of both modern and postmodern ideas to create a new scientific paradigm that will make the best of both positions, and, consequently, create a restructing of world order for the benefit of all humanity. A must read!!!