1st Edition

Transcending Postmodernism Performatism 2.0

By Raoul Eshelman Copyright 2025
    256 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Transcending Postmodernism: Performatism 2.0 is an ambitious attempt to expand and deepen the theory of performatism. Its main thesis is that, beginning in the mid-1990s, the strategies and norms of postmodernism have been displaced by ones that force readers or viewers to experience effects of aesthetically mediated transcendence. These effects include specific temporal strategies (“chunking”), stylizing separated subjectivity (the genius and the fool being its two main poles) and orienting ethics toward actions taken by centered agents bearing a sacral charge. The book provides a critical overview of other theories of post-postmodernism, and suggests that among five text-oriented theories there is basic agreement on its techniques and strategies.

    Contents

     

    Foreword

    Introduction: Theories of Post-postmodernism

    Chapter One: The Prison-house of Posthistoricism

    Chapter Two: A Time for Transcendence

    Chapter Three: Performatism and the Ethics of Perpetration

    Chapter Four: From Fool to Genius: Separated Subjectivity in Performatism

    Chapter Five: Aesthetics, Sexuality and Transcendence

    Chapter Six: Performatism and Global Narratives

    Chapter Seven: The End of Performatism?

    Bibliography

    Index

     

    Biography

    Raoul Eshelman is a Slavist who received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Constance and who worked primarily at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich until his retirement in 2022.