The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

'… the powerful sense that postmodernism is in its gloaming and to the opposite sense that it is only now reaching … the kind of satuaration of which it has always seemed capable … This contradiction, indeed, is the explicit concern of Steven Connor's excellent Introduction to the Cambridge Companion, which serves as a frame for the range of activity produced in postmodernism studies across the year … It is central to the spirit of postmodern thinking, however, that such an apprehension of endedness should coincide with a sense of persistence, a sense of renewal … The essays that are included in the Cambridge Companion … can be positioned in relation to these … strands in which postmodernism is variously and simultaneously in its death throes, in its prime, and in the process of being newly born … In the Cambridge Companion, the first group might be best exemplified by Connor's own contribution, entitled 'Postmodernism and Literature' … In Connor's account, Samuel Beckett emerges as a central figure, a kind of pivot … the organizing of writers … around a faultline marked by Beckett's work is an exciting and promising prospect … The second group of essays and books … includes material that suggests that postmodern thought is not in its fully expanded phase, but is rather entering into a new period … This new kind of resonance is produced largely by the tendency of postmodern theory to migrate from one intellectual and disciplinary location to another … So in the Cambridge Companion … we have essays such as 'Science, Technology, and Postmodernism' (Ursula K. Heise), 'Postmodernism and Post-Religion' (Philippa Berry), 'Postmodernism and Ethics against the Metaphysics of Comprehension' (Robert Eaglestone) and 'Law and Justice in Postmodernity' (Costas Douzinas) … the entry of postmodern thought into precisely those areas that seemed, in the earlier phases of its development, to be its natural enemies … But the essays on science, religion, ethics and the law in the Cambr