Nietzsche and Postmodernism by Dave Robinson - Jul 1999

Icon Books Ltd, Jul 1999. Paperback. Dave Robinson's brief introductory text explaining Nietzshe's importance to postmodern thinking is a fine primer for the undergraduate or the generally uninitiated. It builds and extends on the information in the best-selling "Introducing Postmodernism". By declaring the death of God, the greatest of the grand narratives-- stories which we tell to orient ourselves in the world and explain its machinations--Nietzsche believed humanity would be plunged into a valueless, nihilistic abyss. Postmodernism's radical doubt thus traces its genealogy back to the poetry and aphorisms of an anti-philosopher only recently rehabilitated, rescued from earlier racist misreadings by his association with the thought of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and the rest of the French school. In a number of short, pithy paragraphs Robinson steers a course through Nietzche's invigorating, if contradictory, ouevre and explains how the previously reviled thinker has come to have such a central place in modern thought. --"Mark Thwaite"