Costellazioni e meteore. Su alcune metafore del postmoderno

The success and decline of philosophical postmodernism is also a matter of metaphors. When authors such as Richard Bernstein (1992) refer to it as a constellation, a horizon, or a mood (Stimmung), they underline the impossibility of an unambiguous definition of the postmodern turn. Postmodernism can be mapped – yet, its boundaries remain questionable. The aim of the present essay is twofold. The first part retraces some influential metaphors of postmodernism, from Ihab Hassan (1971) to recent debates. The second part discusses Elia Zaru’s recent book, Crisi della modernità (Crisis of Modernity). The relevance of Zaru’s volume lies in the wide scope of his analysis, which sift through a large amount of references from both Europe and the U.S. Zaru deals with the rhizomatic semantic of postmodernism and shows its political essence.