Fellows and Fellow Travelers: The reading for this W's seminar is David Harvey, THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY, Part I: "The Passage from Modernity to Postmodernity in Contemporary Culture." I am happy to provoke this discussion, but I would like everyone to 1) bring a question, and 2) identify a specific passage in the text that you think we would benefit from readong out loud and discussing. My questions: 1. Harvey argues that modernity itself has a history, that it has evolved over time. How is this point central to his assessment of postmodernism? What periodization does he suggest for thinking about the evolution of modernity? 2. How does he use Baudelaire and Marx to discuss modernity? 3. Why is the collage such a powerful representation for postmodernism? 4. What do these key concepts mean -- structure of feeling? deconstruction? late capitalism? Try to look them up if you can't figure them out from their use in the text. 5. What is Harvey's critique of postmodernism? What does he think it has to offer of value? What does he think are its shortcomings? How does he locate it in relationship to modernism? 6. What has all this to do with Sitas? Does reading Harvey help you understand Sitas' arguments better? See you W morning! Love and Solidarity, Peter
_______________________________________________ Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http://macmmuf.org) [email protected] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org
