Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective

by Joyce Appleby (Editor)

This comprehensive reader chronicles the western engagement with the nature of knowledge during the past four centuries while providing the historical context for the postmodernist thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty and Hayden White, and the challenges their ideas have posed to our conventional ways of thinking, writing and knowing.

559 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Joyce Oldham Appleby, Ph.D. (Claremont Graduate School, 1966; B.A., Stanford University, 1950), is professor of history at University of California, Los Angeles. She previously taught at San Diego State University, 1967–1981. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, and was president of the Organization of American Historians (1991) and the American Historical Association (1997).

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright, they create a very clear narrative from the 1600s to about fifteen years ago, but its basically all white men. Even in the past seventy years its fucking white men. Every time I left reading this book it pissed me off, and the best they can do is close with a white feminist critique of postmodernism. Not a post-colonial text?! C'mon! The entire Enlightenment and forward is written off the back of the colonies, women, people of color, and the queer and the best you can do is have one Cornel West text and one feminist scholar?

To be fair, the introductions and synopses were very well written.