Planetary Clock: Antipodean Time and Spherical Postmodern Fictions

The Planetary Clock explores postmodernism across an antipodean axis, tracing its evolution from the 1960s to the twenty-first century. It reinterprets literature, film, music, and visual art within a planetary framework, highlighting the influence of an antipodean impulse on postmodernism. The book brings together well-known American postmodernists and recent science fiction writers, comparing them to their English and Australian counterparts. It also aligns cultural postmodernism with music, visual arts, and cinema, expanding our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century.

Format: Hardback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 23 February 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press

The Planetary Clock delves into the portrayal of time in postmodern culture, exploring how temporality manifests itself differently across an antipodean axis. Spanning a vast spatial and temporal expanse, from the formal experimentation of the 1960s to contemporary environmental concerns, this project offers a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of postmodernism. By examining various scales of time from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, with a particular focus on issues of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene, The Planetary Clock presents a multifaceted revisionist account of postmodernism. It reinterprets literature, film, music, and visual art from the post-1960 period within a planetary framework, fostering a dialogue between the cultures of Australia and New Zealand and other Western narratives. By highlighting an antipodean impulse, involving the transposition of the world into different spatial and temporal dimensions, The Planetary Clock sheds light on an integral aspect of postmodernism that has often been overlooked. Drawing its title from a Florentine clock designed in 1510 to measure worldly time alongside the rotation of the planets, this volume encompasses a diverse range of American postmodernists, as well as more recent science fiction writers. It juxtaposes the US tradition with its English and Australian counterparts, broadening our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century. By aligning cultural postmodernism with music, visual arts, and cinema, this volume expands our horizons, offering a deeper exploration of the multifaceted and evolving phenomenon of postmodernism in the world today.

Weight: 882g
Dimension: 26 x 164 x 241 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198857723