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Hans Bertens, Professor of American Studies at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, has in the last few years become one of the most astute observers and judges of the phenomenon of postmodernism, a scholar most adept at organizing and classifying the many materials that fall under this rubric. His new book seems designed to continue this process by clarification [End Page 974] in two or three key areas including the relationship between “high-modernism” and “post-modernism,” issues of terminological priority and /or instability, and the dialectics of postmodernity as a social state or “condition” versus postmodernism as a more highly-specified movement (partly seen through an examination of leading theorists such as Rorty, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Hutcheon, and others.)

Bertens’s procedure is eminently organic. In the first few chapters he follows step by step the separation (or, even better, the individuation) of the semantic field of the postmodern from the cluster of other meanings with which it was intermeshed in the 1960s and 1970s, such as modernism and anti-modernism themselves, as well as existentialism, the avant-garde and, eventually, deconstruction. For Bertens the central figures in the birth of this separate semantic field were Ihab Hassan and William Spanos, though they no longer play “a significant role” in the current debates, while Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks are highlighted for their roles in displacing high-modernist domination in architecture and other arts. Finally, the first part sketches the beginnings of the cultural-political debate that, though it did not seem particularly interesting before the 1980s, was soon to dominate the discourse of postmodernism.

The second part of Bertens’s book is somewhat less historical, and more analytical and theoretical in nature than the first, comprising a series of separate essays devoted to figures or issues that the author finds important. I am somewhat less persuaded by this second part than by the first, which I think is exemplary and of great use.

Indeed much is missing in this second part. It seems to me, for instance, that any substantial discussion of postmodernism should include some account of the scientific dimension of the intellectual climate of our time (the theory of chaos first and foremost, but also Godel’s theorem, the theories of Heisenberg and Einstein, the advances in genetics, cybernetics, and astrophysics, among many others). The fact is that, in the United States at least, a vibrant school has developed around Katherine Hayles, Frederic Turner, Paulson, Natoli, Spariosu, Argyros, to name but a few, who connect in ingenious and stimulating ways postmodernism with recent developments in the sciences. The same could be said about religion. Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, and Frank Kermode from the direction of literature, Jean-Luc Marion and Emanuel Levinas from that of theology, are just a few of those who have hit upon the possibilities opened up by a postmodern stylistics in religious speculation and practice. (The whole phenomenon of the “New Age”, as well as very broad surfaces of popular and consumer art/literature/TV are likewise closely connected with postmodernism.) The failure of the book to address even in passing such issues can only be regretted.

Nevertheless, many of the separate essays included by Bertens in the second part of his book are thoughtful and learned. Certainly, few will quarrel with his thorough examination of figures such as Richard Rorty or [End Page 975] Jean Baudrillard here, nor with the important dialectic of feminist theorizing and postmodernist writing. Habermas’ objections to the postmodern condition, wrong-headed as some of them might be regarded, deserve the analysis they get, at least as part of the dispute Bertens wants to trace. (A dispute in which, without acknowledging it, Habermas plays the role of an eloquent voice for conservatism and “traditional humanism”). There is probably less justification for reserving a whole chapter to Fredric Jameson, who, for ideological reasons, remains somewhat alien to the phenomenon of postmodernism as Bertens characterizes it. (Indeed, to be fair, I must say that Bertens’ treatment hovers here between perplexity and irony, and thus often captures Jameson’s own self-conflicted difficulty.)

I am also somewhat ambivalent about the chapter on postmodern politics. Bertens, relying much on the interesting works of Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher on “the End of Macropolitics,” is clearly more even-handed and better informed than many commentators on the subject that I have read. However, I would argue that postmodernity brings with it chiefly a change of political theme, not necessarily a change in the nature of the geopolitical game. The stakes are now different, not the rules. Instead of the rivalry or option between two alternative types of civilization (as was the case until 1989), what we see is a dramatic simultaneous increase in the centripetal and centrifugal forces of world culture (say, globalism vs. multiculturalism, or the universal vs. the local). In this respect also, postmodernity is a state of affairs that includes its opposites and antidotes on all levels. Thus, it is important to admit that while postmodernity has brought with it the rise of “single-issue” politics, it has also occasioned a revival of classical liberalism, decentralization, subsidiarity, and downsizing of statist (or governmental) functions. The role played in such tendencies by new technologies (and in particular the informational/interactive revolution) cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Ultimately, a discussion of “postmodern politics” must begin from the expansion (to the point of explosion?) of the individual person: creativity and destruction neatly, but dangerously, balanced.

Bertens’s study has one overarching merit. It illustrates in a specific way, in a low-key rhetorical mode, what exactly we mean when we say that literary theory nowadays is (or aspires to be) a field in which the social sciences and the humanities intersect. How exactly does it happen that categories such as “representation,” “desire,” or “hermeneutics” can be relevant for society at large: not only for understanding it, but in their impact on it? Few of us can provide crisp, convincing explanations when so asked. Bertens is an exception, because he has had the happy idea of showing rather than telling. “One can see postmodernism, then, as Enlightenment principles finally coming home to roost, while, paradoxically, that home is simultaneously being subjected to a thorough deconstruction,” Bertens concludes. In reminding us of the continuities between our own “fin de siècle” and those of preceding centuries, Bertens shows great insight and puts us on the right [End Page 976] track toward comprehending a “postmodernity” in which we will have to live with ever-renewed crisis and with, at best, precarious stabilities.