THEORIES OF THE POSTMODERN From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss to Lacan, the Signifier Floated The search for origins are always futile but the process often turns up interesting moments in time. For example, when did Postmodernism begin? The answer depends upon the place one...
POST-COLONIAL THEORY PART TWO: FRANTZ FANON Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth Since the voyages of Columbus, Europeans sought out the territories of the Other, claimed the dark skinned people for slaves, and exploited the resources of those alien...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-1980) EXISTENTIALISM “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.” Existentialism set the tone for Postmodern thinking by being negative: it is defined in terms of what it is not and discards previous systems rooted in the...
JACQUES-MARIE ÉMILE LACAN (1901 – 1981) PART ONE: HISTORICAL CONTEXT Among the most important philosophers of the post-war period was Jacques Lacan who lectured to a number of future Postmodern thinkers, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva,...
SIMONE-ERNESTINE-LUCIE-MARIE BERTRAND de BEAUVOIR (1908 – 1986) One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Longtime companion to Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir was the other half of France’s glamour couple of the Left Bank. Both philosophers were...
