Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Book reviews - Tibor Tóth: Patricia Waugh: Practising Postmodernism Reading Modernism
TIBOR TÓTH PATRICIA WAUGH: PRACTISING POSTMODERNISM READING MODERNISM 1 Patricia Waugh's Practising Postmodernism Reading Modernism is an excellent book in defense of Postmodernism. She suggests that postmodernism could be comprehensively approached through the comparative analysis of the romantic, modern and postmodern aesthetic strategies. The first part tentatively entitled 'Reading Postmodernism, Modernity and its Discontents' defines Postmodernism as an aesthetic and body of thought, as a late-flowering of Romanticism. Her suggestion is that Modernism itself can be loosened from its traditional limitations by viewing it as transition between Romanticism and Postmodernism. Waugh's suggestion is that Postmodernism cannot be comprehensively explored without problematising the construction of Modernism. While emphasizing the inadequacy of radical break theory of the relation of Postmodernism to earlier aesthetic practice and theory, she does not ignore the dangers of naive evolutionism. A central idea is that continuities and discontinuities offer the possibility of perceiving new relationships. She argues that Postmodern theory can be understood as the latest version of a long-standing attempt to address social and political issues through an aestheticised view of the world, though it may be more thoroughly aestheticising than any previous thought. Patricia Waugh approaches the problem of Postmodernism and cultural pessimism through Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy , refuting the interpretation of modernity as the expression of an existence whose foundations seem to be on the verge of imminent collapse, interpreting it instead as a proliferation of value which offers new forms and contexts for our power of self determination. Acknowledging the dangers of abandonment of Enlightenment thought, Waugh emphasizes that the above strategy may release us from the hidden tyrannies of universalising modes of their invisible exclusionary tactics. Postmodern is interpreted as Apocalyptic against the Judeo-Christian tradition of a Last Judgement in its sense of crisis. She notes that 'post' modernity suggests the idea of a break, but this break is illusory since Nietzsche's idea of temporal consciousness and his 1 Waugh, Patricia: Practising Postmodernism Reading Modernism, London: Edward Arnold, 1992 189
