Postmodernism and the Enlightenment : New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Why is postmodernist discourse so biased against the Enlightenment? Indeed, postmodern theory challenges the validity of the rational basis of modern historical scholarship and the Enlightenment itself. Rather than avoiding this conflict, the contributors to this vibrant collection return to the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, and do not hesitate to look at them through a postmodernist lens, engaging issues like anti-Semitism, Utopianism, colonial legal codes, and ideas of authorship. Dismissing the notion that the two camps are ideologically opposed and thus incompatible, these essays demonstrate an exciting new scholarship that confidently mixes the empiricism of Enlightenment thought with a strong postmodernist skepticism, painting a subtler and richer historical canvas.

Booknews

Considering the Enlightenment not as the outworn Other that postmodernism defines itself by opposing, but rather a surviving heritage that postmodernism itself must locate itself within, US scholars of history and literature explore such topics as Montesquieu in the Caribbean: the colonial Enlightenment between and ; the of Denis Diderot as an 18th-century time machine; and reproducing Utopia: Jeanne-Maria Leprince de Beaumont's . All but one of the 11 essays first appeared in volume 25 (summer 1999), some in earlier form. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Postmodernist thinkers and Enlightenment scholars ought to be in close communication, but in reality they have little to do with each other.