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

has to 'totalise'. To offer critique can only be to challenge from within through rhetorical or narrative disruption. Examples taken from the works of Salman Rushdie, Nathaniel Howthorne, Eliot, Pound and Joyce lead Waugh to state that postmodernism reminds the reader that any perceived order can only be an arbitrary construction of the human mind. When trying to periodise the Postmodern, Waugh attempts to construct the dominant elements of the Postmodern. Starting from Roman Jakobson's definition of dominant in a specifically aesthetic context, 'the focusing component of a work of art' which 'rules, determines and transforms the remaining components', dominant comes to be linked with periodisation. Waugh states that Postmodernism shows us that the periods make history manageable, but they inevitably raise questions of genealogy, value and power. Discussing Freud, Kermode, Daniel Bell and the Marxists she comes to refute Eagelton's interpretation of Lyotard stating that the distinction between Modernism and Postmodernism starts to break down as soon as we examine actual works of art. The cultural logic of Jameson's and Eagelton's idea of Postmodernism is introduced through discussion of 'Periodising the Sixties' asserting that we can no longer talk about culture in a 'media society.' She quotes Jameson's argument asserting that if Postmodernism is the cultural logic of Late Capitalism, Late Capitalism is a totality which cannot be thought. Waugh's analysis of Jameson's argument shows that Jameson has overgeneralised from his own sense of the loss of the individual vision of the modems and the weakening of the grand narratives embedded in his own Hegelian thought. Similarly, she states that Jameson ignores the Bakhtinian insight into the multiaccentual nature of cultural symbols which suggest that no economic mode can in fact ever entirely colonise meaning and value. Next Waugh analyses Charles Jencks' interpretation of Postmodernism in The Language of Post-Modern Architecture

; she speaks of the opposition between 'universal grammar' and the postmodern 'neovernacular.' Waugh demonstrates that Jencks accepts the dominant which Jameson uses to describe Postmodernism but offers an alternative evaluation of it. After discussing Bell's definition of Postmodern as the axial principle of postindustrial society where theoretical knowledge assumes exclusive centrality, Waugh states that periodising is an impossible task, but to work with Postmodernism is to begin to be aware of the way in which our preconceptions about the aesthetic, including concepts like period, shape what we see in individual texts. The section entitled 'Postmodernism as Aesthetic Technique,' attempts to describe some of the preoccupations and formal characteristics of postmodern literature and re-examines the issue of its cultural value from other perspectives. It analyses parody, irony, self-reflexivity, and playfulness 192