Culture of Interpretation

Roger Lundin’s Culture of Interpretation (1993)is a very thoughtful discussion of the American cultural context of postmodernism. He argues persuasively for a strong continuity between the Enlightenment and Romanticism (both look to the transcedent self, albeit in different ways, as the source of truth and values), and makes the case that postmodernism is both a continuation of certain strains of romanticism and the exhaustion that has followed the collapse of what Robert Solomon called the transcendental pretense. By focusing so much on the 19th-century American scene Lundin explains why postmodernism found roots in the therapeutic culture of the US.

Lundin is at his best when detailing the romantic background of postmodernism, but he is weaker when he gets to Derrida and other post-structuralists. Merold Westphal’s comment that the postmodernism is a “meditation” on certain Pauline themes excluded by modernity (the partiality of human knowledge, the reality of self-interest, the impossibility of neutrality), for instance, deserves more than the derogatory dismissal that Lundin gives it. There were other places where I would dispute Lundin’s take on things. But the flaws of the book are greatly overshadowed by its virtues. This learned and historically-sensitive study of contemporary culture is well worth reading.