The Unravelling of the Postmodern Mind

Can the postmodern decide things? Can it oppose abuses of fantasy and power, and resist the attractions of violence? Can it make adequate provision for its own future? Who stands to gain from postmodernity? Cristopher Nash sets out these questions and more, taking the view that the entire body of writing on postmodernity needs to be reread in the light of the unique psychological character and motives that now appear to mould and drive it. Challenging our habit of confusing the vast vigorous culture of postmodernity with theories of 'postmodernism', he argues for a new way of seeing things. Instead of looking at the world through the filter of philosophical abstraction, The Unravelling of the Postmodern Mind is expressly and radically about affect. About what it feels like to (want to) be postmodern. Casting a wide net - beginning with a radical reading of the felt human needs fulfilled by philosophical indeterminist and pluralist thinking, and tracking similar impulses through the media, literature, fashion, the arts and architecture, tourism, dance and rock, drug culture, the cultures of cyberspace, virtual reality and cyberorganics, and the proliferation of new modes of birth, lifestyle and death - it catches the sound of the postmodern phenomenon in its greater clamour. This unique and controversial book shows that the postmodern does offer many of the things it claims for itself. That it presents problems about which it must keep silent. That it is, in elemental ways, a matter of choice. And that we have choices to make.

Can the postmodern decide things? Can it oppose abuses of fantasy and power, and resist the attractions of violence? Who stands to gain from postmodernity? Cristopher Nash sets out these questions and more, taking the view that the entire body of writing on postmodernity needs to be reread. Casting a wide net beginning with a radical reading of the felt human needs fulfilled by philosophical indeterminist and pluralist thinking, and tracking similar impulses through the media, literature, fashion, the arts and architecture, tourism, dance and rock, drug culture, the cultures of cyberspace, virtual reality and cyberorganics, and the proliferation of new modes of birth, lifestyle and death, it catches the sound of the postmodern phenomenon in its greater clamor.

Contents......Page 4 Foreword......Page 6 1 The Postmodern Tradition......Page 12 Styles of Uncertainty......Page 15 Dwelling in Fictions......Page 25 Fictionalizing Dwellings......Page 31 2 A Fantasy......Page 37 Talking about Minds......Page 51 A Model......Page 65 Processes......Page 82 The Ambivalence Threshold......Page 140 5 Ways of Acting......Page 146 Trying Promiscuity......Page 151 Trying Ecstasy......Page 187 6 Living through Postmodernity......Page 215 The Problem of Change......Page 217 Things We Can Do......Page 230 Talking about the Postmodern......Page 260 Choosing......Page 263 Notes......Page 272 Bibliography......Page 301 D......Page 315 L......Page 316 W......Page 317 D......Page 318 N......Page 319 S......Page 320 W......Page 321 This text is an exploration of the postmodern. Nash believes that the entire body of writing on postmodernity needs to be reread in the light of the unique psychological character and motives that appear to mould and drive it Who would have predicted that with so much freedom could come so much anxiety?