The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Dreamscapes of Privatopia and the Carceral

City’s Mean Streets. As Smith (1996b) was to

make clear within the context of gentrification

more generally, the new spaces of the

‘revanchist’ city were not simply drawn by

capital, but were forged out of an unholy

alliance between it and the state. Looking back

on these dreary accounts of postmodern

urbanism, it is hard to remember the demo-

cratically minded intentions of one of its most

influential progenitors – Robert Venturi – who

reacted against the sparseness of orthodox

modernism by collapsing the distinction

between high and low architecture in his fam-

ous book,Learning from Las Vegas(Venturi,

Scott Brown and Izenor, 1972).

Postmodernism elicited several different

responses inhuman geography. As the fore-

going suggests, many of the first responses

were influenced by postmodernism in archi-

tecture and planning (rather than literature or

the creative arts more generally). Some saw in

postmodernism’s attention to difference and

specificity an opportunity to revive and re-

fashionhumanistic geographyas a form of

irredeemably critical and affirmative local

knowledge(e.g. Ley, 1987, 1993, 2003a),

while others saw an opportunity for a far more

theoretically ambitious, insistently radical

reconstruction of human geography writ large

(Dear, 1986, 1988; Dear and Flusty, 2002).

Many of these discussions were inspired in

some measure by experiments in urbanism

on the west coast of North America, notably

Los Angeles and Vancouver, and they fostered

the emergence and identification of a los

angeles school. One of its principal protag-

onists was Edward Soja, who straddled the

fields of geographyand planning. Unlike

Ley and Dear, however, he had a much more

positive view ofhistorical materialismand

of the (crucial) possibility of its spatialized

reconstruction through a critical engagement

with postmodernism (see Soja, 1989). Against

this, however, as noted above, Harvey (1989b)

mobilized his own historico-geographical

materialism as a vigorous critique of

postmodernism and postmodernity. These

more architectonic versions of postmodernism

as critical project (Soja) and critical object

(Harvey) were roundly criticized byfeminist

geographers in particular for their insensitivity

to difference. These critiques were part of a

growing interest in post-colonialism and

post-structuralism that soon eclipsed post-

modernism in human geography and beyond.

Today, the hullabaloo over postmodernism

has waned, but it manages to live on in some

contexts, including not only architecture

but also, strangely enough, religion. Part

philosophical engagement inspired by post-

structuralists such as Jacques Derrida (see

Caputo, 1997; Caputo and Scanlon, 1999),

and part a cultural wave of new Age, Eastern

mysticism, this latest reconfiguration of post-

modernism is paired against a disbelieving

modernism, elements of which (see table) have

been deployed in epic battles against religion.

How the religion–postmodernism nexus will

evolve remains to be seen, but one thing is

certain: whether we are in a state ofmodern-

ityor postmodernity, it will not take long for

contemporary culture to construct nostalgia

forpostmodernism, making pastiche out of it

as it did to everything else, serving up ironic

quotations of the movement that gave new

meaning to the term ‘irony’. kwo/jpj

Suggested reading

Dear and Flusty (1998); Harvey (1989b);

Jameson (1991); Ley (2003a); Soja (1989).

postmodernity Not to be confused with the

cultural and aesthetic movement postmod-

ernism, postmodernity refers to the contem-

porary historical period that arguably closed

the door uponmodernity. The advent of the

historical era and its associated artistic move-

ment occurred during roughly the same

period (the mid-to-late twentieth century),

but the driving forces of postmodernity oper-

ate at a longer time-scale than do those of

postmodernism (particularly now that the cul-

tural form is into its dotage). While modernity

was characterized by an insistence upon the

possibility and knowability of ‘Truth’, post-

modernity replaced itsfoundationalassump-

tions of solvability in scientific enterprises (see

science), universality in ethical imperatives

(seeethics) and transcendence in the essence

of things (seeontology) with uncertainty,

singularity and immanence. For better or

worse (and it has certainly been both), the

defining elements of postmodernity arose

from a series of major transformations in the

Modernism Postmodernism

Compartmentalism Holism

Individualism Communalism

Rationalism Spiritualism

Nationalism Globalism

Imperatives Tolerance

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 568 1.4.2009 3:20pm

POSTMODERNITY