Zeitgeist in Babel

Zeitgeist in Babel collects important essays on postmodernism from leading scholars and critics, edited by Ingeborg Hoesterey. The collection addresses the heated theoretical debates about postmodernism across multiple disciplines—literature, architecture, visual arts, philosophy, and cultural studies.

The title cleverly references both "zeitgeist" (spirit of the age) and the Tower of Babel, suggesting that postmodernism represents a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, lacking a single unified theory or language. The essays explore postmodernism's relationship to modernism, its political implications, its aesthetic strategies, and whether it represents a genuine break with earlier cultural forms or merely a late stage of modernism.

This 1991 collection captures postmodernism discourse at a crucial moment, when the concept was being vigorously debated in the academy. The book would have served as an important text for graduate seminars and scholarly research on contemporary culture.
About the Editor: Ingeborg Hoesterey is a scholar of comparative literature specializing in modernism, postmodernism, and German literature.