Crossing the Postmodern Divide

Book excerpt: Crossing the Postmodern Divide is a guide for all those perplexed by what it means to live at the edge of an era. Albert Borgmann writes for everyone seeking to understand the sprawling critique of modernity that informs virtually every aspect of life at the end of the twentieth century, from philosophy, social theory, and the arts to everyday worlds of work and family and community. In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. With exceptional clarity, Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life. We have lost faith in the modern project. Our society is disenchanted with a world in which science and technology have become tools for destruction; where rampant individualism is a mask for privilege and greed; and where the institutions of public life are emptied of meaning and purpose. In offering alternatives to modernity's exhausted traditions, alternatives already emerging in everyday life, Borgmann moves this critique to its next stage. Whether in the increasingly flexible organization of work, the enabling technologies of the personal computer, or the return to small-scale communities more in harmony with the demands of nature, he finds us beginning to reorder our social worlds. Crossing the Postmodern Divide also offers a powerfully articulated vision of what a postmodern culture has in store. This new era, at its best, would enable participation, acknowledge limits, and restore to human life the importance of the local, the sacred, and the communal. The critique of modernism Borgmann portrays goes beyond the empty language of postmodern discourse. It speaks to real dissatisfactions with the quality of our world and strives to provide us with a helpful view of the postmodern divide and what lies beyond it.