In this insightful social-political discussion on aesthetics, Dr. B. Tirupati Rao examines the aesthetic phenomenon from Plato to Derrida. Dr. Rao focuses on the difference/difference, if not the clash between modern and postmodern aesthetics. He gives new clues for a fuller understanding of the intricate epistemological roots of modern, postmodern and poststructuralist aesthetics. This book is instantly accessibly in its approach without being simply condescending or uncritically denouncing the influential thinkers like Sartre, Adorno, Althusser, Barthes, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Goldmann, Gadamer, Foucault, Lyotard, Paul de Man, Jameson, Cixous and Kristeva. The work also presents us with a clear and concise picture of all the major aesthetic phenomena of the Western World. The work also connects sociology with psychology as a unifying tool for the postmodern thought, which otherwise would remain just fragmentary idea or concept still running into the danger of the present crisis in theory and practice.
