Hip-hop, Bowie and I Love Dick are among the cultural artefacts covered in this splendidly readable survey

For the past half-century, postmodernist thinkers have been trying to discredit truth, identity and reality. Identity is a straitjacket, and truth is just some middle-aged academic’s opinion. As for reality, it has become as obsolete as dressing for dinner. Objectivity is a myth in the service of the ruling powers. If only we could shed these illusions, we could revel in a world of infinite possibility. Instead of waking up to the same tedious old self each morning, we could flit from one identity to another as easily as David Bowie. The final liberation is that anything can mean anything else. Once you kick away fixed meanings and firm foundations, you are free to enjoy yourself. Postmodernism is meant to be fun, even if a current of nihilism runs steadily beneath it. As Stuart Jeffries suggests in this splendidly readable survey, there is something vacuous at the heart of its exuberance.

Even so, postmodernism is intended to be subversive. Since civilisation works by order and authority, challenging these things is bound to seem disruptive. The trouble is that neoliberalism challenges them too. Nothing is more fluid and flexible than the marketplace. Nobody on Wall Street believes in absolute truth. The true anarchists are the free marketeers. So is postmodernism a critique of the status quo or a capitulation to it?