The Condition of Postmodernity, David Harvey, 1989. London: Basil Blackwell. 378 pp.

BOOK REVIEW BY STEVE BEST

Harvey relates postmodern developments to shifts in the organization of capitalism and new forms of
time-space experience. Harvey's basic approach to postmodernism is sound. Rather than rejecting
postmodern developments as superficial and merely transitory, he believes they represent a new
paradigm of thought and cultural practice that requires serious attention. At the same time, he avoids
exaggerating the novelty of postmodern developments and sees both continuities and discontinuities
with modern practices. Postmodernism represents not a complete rupture from modernism, but a new
"cultural dominant" where elements that could be found in modernism appear in postmodernism with
added emphasis and intensity. As he puts it, where a modernist like Baudelaire tried to combine in a
modern aesthetic both the eternal and the transitory, the whole and the fragmentary, postmodernism
rejects all attempts to represent the immutable or ordered patterns and totalities, in order to revel in
flux, fragments, difference, and chaos.
Harvey is neither overly uncritical nor celebratory toward postmodernism. He criticizes
postmodernism for being too nihilistic and for embracing aesthetics over ethics. Postmodernism
avoids the realities of political economy and global capitalism and precludes the possibility of a
positive politics informed by normative principles. Moreover, Harvey finds that postmodernists
provide a caricatured account of modern cultural and theoretical practices. Harvey objects to the
assimilation of a wide variety of modern architectural forms to the debacle of housing projects such as
Pruitt-Igoe, and he claims modernists found ways to contain explosive and anarchic forms of capitalist
development. Also, he believes that the "meta-narratives that the post-modernists decry (Marx, Freud,
and even later figures like Althusser) were much more open, nuanced, and sophisticated than the
critics admit" (115). Yet, unlike most other Marxist readings of postmodernism, Harvey also sees
positive aspects to postmodernism, such as its concern for complexity, difference, otherness, and
plurality which are neglected in many modern practices.
The most interesting and important aspect of Harvey's book is his attempt to situate postmodernism
within the logic of advanced capitalism. Unlike Baudrillard and other radical postmodernists, Harvey
does not see postmodernism as some radically new postindustrial or even postcapitalist development.
Rather, postmodernism results from new organization and technological forms developed by
capitalism in the second half of this century. Specifically, Harvey directly relates postmodern
developments to the shift from Fordism to a "more flexible mode of accumulation" (he deliberately
avoids the term "post-Fordism" to avoid suggesting there are not some fundamental continuities in the
two modes of capitalist organization). "The relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given
way to all the ferment, instability, and fleeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates
difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodifications of cultural forms" (156).
Postmodern developments are therefore directly related to "the more flexible motion of capital
[which] emphasizes the new, the fleeting, the ephemeral, the fugitive, and the contingent in modern
life, rather than the more solid values implanted under Fordism" (171). An important part of Harvey's
book is devoted to analysis of historically changing forms of space-time experience. He holds that
"neither time nor space can be assigned objective meanings independently of material processes" and
that "conceptions of time and space are necessarily created through material practices which serve to
reproduce social life" (204). It follows that the recently created "more flexible mode of accumulation"
would produce a different form of time-space experience. Harvey characterizes this in terms of an
ever greater "time-space compression" where long durations of time required for travel and
communication are reduced to almost nothing and the vast, disparate spaces of the planet are absorbed
into a homogenized, global village. Harvey believes this time-space compression that begins with
capitalism has greatly intensified in the last two decades, and that postmodernism emerges as a
cultural response to its disorienting and disruptive effects.
THE POSTMODERN TURN: PARADIGM SHIFTS IN THEORY, CULTURE, AND SCIENCE

BY STEVE BEST AND DOUGLAS KELLNER

We explore some important sources of postmodern theory in 19th century thinkers such as
Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, and show how these theorists anticipate contemporary forms
of the postmodern turn, demonstrating our claim that postmodern discourses do not emerge in
vacuo, but rather have a complex history of anticipations in modern theories and developments.
By now, there are many genealogies, many narratives, and many ways of presenting the turn to
the postmodern, each with its own designated precursors, privileged disciplinary focus, path of
development, and point of view. No genealogy of the postmodern is neutral and unmotivated,
and responses range from positive and celebratory discourses of those affirming the
postmodern like Hassan to the critical ones of Habermas and others deploring it. The
postmodern turn, as we shall see, moves through many different fields and crosses a varied
terrain of theory, the arts, the humanities, science, politics, and diverse areas of social reali ty.
Our goal throughout is to delineate the postmodern turn in a variety of fields and to show how
the disparate trajectories of the postmodern, despite their differences, are coalescing into a new
paradigm that we see as emergent, not yet dominant, and therefore is hotly contested.
As Kuhn defined it (1970), a "paradigm" is a "constellation" of values, beliefs, and methodological
assumptions, whether tacit or explicit, inscribed in a larger worldview. Kuhn observed that
throughout the history of science there were paradigm shifts, conceptual revolutions that threw the
dominant approach into crisis, and eventually dissolution, a discontinuous change provoked by
altogether new assumptions, theories, and research programs. In science, Kuhn argued, a given
paradigm survives until another one supersedes it, seemingly having a greater explanatory power.
At any one time, in other words, certain assumptions and methods prevail in any given discipline
until they are challenged and overthrown by a new approach that emerges through posing a decisive
challenge to the status quo and, if successful, becomes dominant, the next paradigm, itself ready to be
deposed by another powerful challenger as the constellation of ideas continues to change and shift.
Thus, in our view, postmodern paradigm shifts arise in different fields as critical responses to
ideas and methods perceived to be staid, dogmatic, erroneous, or oppressive, as well as in
response to developments in society, technology, economics, and politics.
The text reflects our position that social reality can be analyzed most adequately through
multiple methodological and theoretical perspectives. Building on recent work in Kellner's
Media Culture (1995) and Best's The Politics of Historical Vision (1995), we seek to present new
insights into both postmodern theory and contemporary society and culture, which we argue is
a borderland between the modern and something new for which the term "postmodern" has
been coined. Providing conceptual content and articulation to this vastly overused and abused
concept is one of the goals of the following studies.