Paper presented at the Annual National Art History Conference of South Africa, 2003
It is significant that there seems to be a growing antagonism between the discourse of the ‘other’ and postmodern discourse and practice. In this regard the fields of postcolonial and non-western theory seems evermore engaged with the critical dissemination of the postmodern condition: Texts such as “Postmodernism and the Other: The New Imperialism of Western Culture” by Ziauddin Sardar (1998), seem to exemplify a growing concern amongst non-western\ postcolonial cultures that the presuppositions and premises of ‘postmodernity’ and ‘modernity’ may in fact be one and the same. There is accordingly a focus on contemporary forms of postmodern discourse and practice as a form of continued Eurocentric expansion, as a re-implementation of certain lopsided western systems of capital and cultural growth under the guise of postmodern plurality. Ultimately postmodernity is viewed with ever-growing suspicion as a western form of exploitation that works to secure the continued domination of non-western and\or contemporary postcolonial cultures to the western\European way of life.
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