Social Postmodernism catches a particular and quite uncomfortable mid-90s theoretical pressure point. 

The question circled is very much what happens after identity politics has made power visible, but before theory has figured out how to think coalition, difference, sexuality, class, race, gender, and social structure without flattening them into slogans. Edited by Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman, the collection brings postmodern and social theory into contact with feminist, queer, and political critique, arguing against both old universalism and lazy fragmentation.

This is less “postmodernism as vibes” and more postmodernism as an argument about social life. It looks at how bodies are made legible, how identities become political, how liberation movements inherit the categories they are trying to dismantle. It sits in that fertile, slightly combative period when theorists were trying to get beyond the simple theatre of “identity good / identity bad” and think through what collective politics might look like after the stable subject had been kicked down the stairs. Useful for readers interested in feminist theory, queer theory, sociology, cultural studies, and the longer mess of identity politics before the internet turned it into a factory siren.

1995 Cambridge University Press paperback. Good copy with light shelf wear.