Critiquing Postmodernism in Contemporary Discourses of Race / American Literature Readings in the 21st Century (PDF)

SUE J. KIM is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.

"Kim's study, then, points the way toward a consideration of difference that is not mired in relativism without ethics, but that appreciates real social conditions as they influence and particularize experience." - MELUS

"In this marvelous book, Kim attempts what we rarely see in the innumerable critiques of postmodernism available to us from progressive, radical scholars: she constructs her case by drawing on the work of complex, sophisticated writers from diverse traditions and contexts - mainstream American, Asian American and African. This is superb work of comparative literary studies and cultural criticism. It is bound to exert some influence across several fields including postcolonial studies, American studies and the discourses of race, identity and agency." - Biodun Jeyifo, Professor, African and African American Studies and Literature and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

"In Critiquing Postmodernism, Kim offers a searing critique of the postmodern politics of difference. Ranging across critical theory, political discourse, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Kim incisively examines two conspicuous limitations of what she calls otherness postmodernism - an approach to otherness that ironically ends up flattening differences into sameness and an overwhelming emphasis on cultural and aesthetic rather than institutional or political-economic critique. As a consequence, Kim forcefully argues, otherness postmodernism continues to perpetuate the reified and essentialist notions of race that it claims to supersede. The most unexpected revelations of this study emerge from Kim s juxtaposition of theories and texts that are seldom discussed together, such as the concepts of radical democracy propounded by Laclau and Mouffe along with Omi and Winant, or the novels of Thomas Pynchon, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Bessie Head. International in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, Critiquing Postmodernism is indispensable reading for