Perpustakaan Digital ITB

This essay examines theoretical and rhetorical appurtenances exposed by the rupture inherent in the historico/geographical phenomenon known as postmodernism. Traversing the barrier between academic writings and discursive meanderings of a wide variety of the proponents, as well as critiques of postmodern urbanism, I intend to locate the place of postmodern problematic in a dialectical impasse. The essay forays into the allegorical nature of postmodern urbanism and extends a critical gaze to the earlier debates surrounding postmodernism. In this paper, it is argued that to two sets of questions need to be dealt with before coming up with a successful refutation of postmodernism. The first set is related to the reproduction of knowledge and power, and the second set foregrounds the break within the dialectical paradigm that defined the experience of modernity, i.e. memory.