Yale Hosts Symposium to Explore Postmodernism

Yale Law School and the Whitney Humanities Center will host a conference, “Postmodernism/Postmodernity: Politics, Law, Culture, Aesthetics,” Friday and Saturday, Feb. 27-28. All sessions will take place at the center, 53 Wall St., and are free and open to the public.

The conference will be organized into four panels. On Friday, 10 a.m.-noon, participants will discuss politics and political economy; 2-4 p.m., racial, ethnic and gender identity. On Saturday, the focus will be on law and justice, 9-10:45 a.m.; and culture and aesthetics, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Panelists include experts in law, political theory and economy, and cultural studies from Columbia, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Cornell, NYU and UC Berkeley. Moderating the sessions will be members of the Yale faculty.

“Our hope is that the symposium will provide the occasion for informed and sympathetic but also critical assessments of the concept of the ‘postmodern’ – as an aesthetic, as a set of theoretical claims, as a description of the way we live now, and as a basis for political action,” says conference organizer Robert W. Gordon, the Johnston Professor of Law. “The kinds of questions that have inspired us to plan this conference include: Is ‘postmodernity’ a valuable way of describing our social condition? Does it provide a helpful account of scientific research, economic management or legal and administrative decisionmaking? Was there ever a way of life that was not ‘postmodern’ – any period or state of society in which the culture was not produced by the manipulation of symbolic forms, or the public sphere diffused and fragmented into sub-communities who talk only to, or past, one another?”

For further information, call (203) 432-0673.