This text presents a comprehensive survey of the intellectual developments that have brought about a shift in cultural perspectives of postmodernism. It is divided into three sections: essays; biographical entries; and a glossary of terms.

The main aim of the book has been to include writers, movements, forms of writing and textual strategies, critical ideas, and texts that are significant in relation to postmodernist literature. In addition, important scholars, journals, and cultural processes have been included where these are felt to be relevant to an understanding of postmodernist writing. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Postmodernist Literature and Theater contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on postmodernist writers, the important postmodernist aesthetic practices, significant texts produced throughout the history of postmodernist writing, and important movements and ideas that have created a variety of literary approaches within the form. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the postmodernist literature and theater.

What is 'deconstruction'? What authors are considered 'postmodern novelists'? The Routledge Companion to Postmodernismcombines a series of fourteen in-depth background chapters with a body of A-Z entries to create an authoritative, yet readable guide to the complex world of postmodernism. Following full-length articles on postmodernism and philosophy, politics, feminism, lifestyles, television, and other postmodern essentials, readers will find a wide range of alphabetically-organized entries on the people, terms and theories connected with postmodernism, including: Peter Ackroyd; Jean Baudrillard; Chaos Theory; Death of the Author; Desire; Fractals; Michel Foucault; Frankfurt School; Generation X; Minimalism; Poststructuralism; Retro; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; and Trans-avant-garde. Students interested in any aspect of postmodernist thought will find this an indispensable resource.

What might a 'theory of everything' look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon's incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.

Appraises key issues in the contested fields of postmodernism and feminism, focusing on applications in relation to practice, research and education in social work.

Classical Debates for the 21st Century distinctively reconsiders the canon of political thought, in the context of current world events, by presenting debates between the ideas of classical theorists. It is through these debates that Thomas O. Hueglin argues that exclusive state sovereignty, individual citizenship, and majority rule have become questionable categories of political theory and practice in a globalizing world. To a large extent, the classical canon of political thought has been constructed in order to give legitimacy to these categories, but it is time to rethink the validity of that canon, and to search for alternative voices and traditions that emphasize plurality, shared sovereignty, and complex patterns of representation and decision-making. This does not mean that the familiar names in the classical canon have to disappear. But they should be examined more critically for their continued importance, and additional theorists thus far neglected should complement them. Each chapteris organized as a debate between two theorists with contrasting views and approaches. At the end of each chapter, there is a critical evaluation of these political theorists’ continued or renewed relevance.

This book traces the crystallisation of post-Marxism as a specific theoretical position in its own right and considers the role played in its development by post-structuralism, postmodernism and second-wave feminism. It examines the history of dissenting tendencies within the Marxist tradition and considers what the future prospects of post-Marxism are likely to be.