Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

Contemporary theory is full of references to modern and postmodern. How useful are these terms? What exactly do they mean? And how is our sense of these terms changing under pressure of feminist analysis? In Doing Time, Rita Felski argues that it makes little sense to think of modern and postmodern as opposing or antithetical terms. Rather, we need a historical perspective that is attuned to cultural and political differences within same time as well as leaky boundaries between different times. Neither modern nor postmodern are unified, coherent, or self-evident realities. Drawing on cultural studies and critical theory, Felski examines a range of themes central to debates about postmodern culture, including changing meanings of class, end of history, status of art and aesthetics, postmodernism as the end of sex, and politics of popular culture. Placing women at center of analysis, she suggests, has a profound impact on way we thing about historical periods. As a result, feminist theory is helping to reshape our vision of both modern and postmodern.